They say that the organs have a memory… In the grip of strange nightmares after her heart transplant, Florence Arietta (
Claire Keim
) embarks on the footsteps of her donor, who died in a car accident whose circumstances remain unexplained.
The emotional storm she is going through inevitably upsets the balance of her whole family.
His own, but also that of his daughter Zoé (Jessyrielle Massengo), a teenager of African origin adopted when she was a baby, and of her husband, Vincent (Pierre-François Martin-Laval), whose every attempt to help him ends in failure.
A Franco-Belgian co-production in six episodes,
Enquête à Coeur Ouvert
, first titled
Renaissances
, recounts each stage of this destruction reconstruction.
And does it like TF1, but rather very well.
What the actress testifies.
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TV MAGAZINE. - A few words about the character of Florence?
Claire Keim.
-
Actually, when I read the script, I didn't expect anything.
I didn't know my character, his trajectory, the themes addressed, the police investigation… I didn't know anything and I was totally involved in this story.
And it's only today, three years later and thanks to the promotion, that I manage to verbalize things that were so deep inside me that I was unable to point them out.
It is very complicated to answer in a few words to the question: “Hello, who are you?”.
Well, that's just as good as briefly recounting a character, a feeling, a sometimes irrepressible attraction, issues, emotions...
But still ?
I was just touched and I absolutely wanted and needed to play Florence, to tell this story.
And it's only today that I realize that it's about adoption, that it's about the rejection of a heart by a body or of a child by its family, that it's about identity, of the quest for oneself and the other, of the difficulty of finding one's place in society… To be very honest, I hadn't become aware of this at all before, neither by reading it nor even by playing it.
Deep down I believe that I didn't play it but that I lived it, intensely.
Would you say then that your incarnation is totally instinctive?
Without a doubt.
When I started to be with her, breathing naturally became more complicated, I got damaged, tired, my gait also changed, the threads became tied, untied... That's why it's complicated speak of it.
I realize the responsibility we have to evoke a shoot, a subject, a character.
Even as I walked through the work without blinking.
And that is perhaps where the density of this series lies.
Dense by his story?
I have rarely taken part in the imaging of a story in which each of the characters takes on, at one time or another, a very special importance.
There is mine, that of my husband, that of my daughter, but also those of the donor, her father, the boyfriend, the surgeon, the mother, the cop… So many trajectories, some of which are not intended to intersect, but which nevertheless intersect, so as to maintain the relationship, to maintain its richness, to combine the genres and to conclude the whole without using neither shortcut nor artifice.
The characters are numerous.
Some are complex.
The exercise was not easy.
I find the result accomplished and captivating.
“One of the shoots on which I was happiest”
Claire Keim
From your character to that of the surgeon, the most important roles are female. What do you think ?
I think it's still too rare and that's very good.
However, men are not left out.
I would even dare to say that if the character of Vincent, for example, seems to exist only to support or accompany that of Florence, he has at his service a palette of emotions much richer than that of many of the principal male roles of many series that I have seen or in which I have played.
I really like the idea of looking for masculinity elsewhere than in stereotypical behavior.
Ditto for the character of the father of the young Belgian injured.
It is all in emotion, all in finesse, all in accuracy.
Precisely, it is a Franco-Belgian co-production, shot by an international team. Easy or difficult?
An adorable, delicate, supporting, marvelous director… Pef and I were overwhelmed by the quality of his work and more broadly that of the set.
He has a look at the actors.
He is an amazing acting director.
He made us believe that it was easy where precisely it was not.
It was harmonious, magnificent.
I think it's one of the shoots on which I was happiest, in the sense that it brought together everything for which I love my job.
A sublime family history carried by a real yet very raw.
A real acting challenge.
Suspense with the investigation.
A touch of fantasy around nightmares.
A technical team of incredible rigour.
A big, super well-oiled machine… Everything.
Finally playing with Pef…
I received a wonderful message a few days before the start of filming, in which he said something like: “Hey, do you want to be my friend?”.
How to resist ?
