“
Is your name Celine?
You're lucky, there's a really nice song about your name
."
Spontaneity, kindness, simplicity, an enthusiasm as youthful as her voice, Miou-Miou is just as we imagine her.
Rather rare in interviews, and despite her mourning (she lost her companion, the novelist Jean Teulé, last October), the actress is very keen to defend
Constance in the Underworld
,
a television film for France 2 adapted from the eponymous novel (Fleuve Noir, 1963).
Gaël Morel, who directed and co-adapted it with Gilles Taurand, has, in his words, "
happily betrayed
" this dark thriller.
"
It's a playful police comedy, which has the charm of an Agatha Christie book
," she says.
Preparing it gave me a great excuse to read it again, as well as Georges Simenon and Fred Vargas
.
»
lonely septuagenarian
The actress therefore embodies Constance, a solitary septuagenarian, who put her life on hold at the death of her parents.
She is kindly bored in their antique store until the accidental death of her neighbor, a youtuber.
Constance then helps her lover, the handsome Amine, who could be suspected because of his criminal record, to get rid of the body.
Anonymous letters and blackmail ensue… Constance is jubilant and enjoys playing amateur detectives, like Catherine Frot with Pascal Thomas (
My little finger told me
…).
Above all, the heroine is not insensitive to the charm of her young accomplice.
"
He awakens in her a very strong desire, without it being a question of love, she is revitalized,
I really like what my daughters do, but I don't want to dwell on the subject, it would be too syrupy!
Miou-Miou
With her fantasy, her audacity, her claim to the right to pleasure, Constance evokes the heroine of
Nona and her daughters
(2021), a series by Valérie Donzelli for Arte.
Or that of
Dumped
(2018), a comedy for the big screen, in which the character rediscovers a taste for the company of men after his divorce.
A sex life at 70?
So what !
This freedom, Miou-Miou has naturally embodied it since
Les Valseuses
(1973), by Bertrand Blier.
And she didn't even have to fight for it.
Parisian of modest origins
Already as a teenager, the little Parisian of modest origins – a mother saleswoman at Les Halles, a peacekeeper father – gave up her CAP as an upholsterer to go and create the Café de la Gare, with Romain Bouteille.
"
I didn't ask my parents when I wanted to do this job,
" she recalls.
I
was a
minor, but already left home, and I was emancipated to be independent.
I never said to myself:
“I'm going to be an actress”,
it relieved me of all responsibility.
“
She meets the first men of her life there – Coluche, Patrick Dewaere, Julien Clerc – and the cinema comes to look for her.
She alternates genres with
La Dérobade, La Femme cop, Love at first sight, La Lectrice, Snowy in May, La Totale, Dry cleaning
or
One stays, the other part,
by Claude Berri, telling the family history of the producer, also father of Thomas Langmann, twenty years her junior, with whom she lived a romance.
Read alsoNona and her daughters on Arte: the immaculate conception of Miou-Miou
From one generation to another, the daughters of Miou-Miou make movies.
“
However, I am not in the transmission,
she underlines.
I just insisted on the importance of their financial independence
”.
Angèle Herry (from her relationship with Patrick Dewaere) is a screenwriter for series (
The Art of Crime
…), Jeanne Herry (daughter of Julien Clerc), actress and director.
She had deserved success with
Elle l'adore
and
Pupille.
On March 29 will be released
I Will Always See Your Faces
, in which she directed her mother.
“
I am happy that they are doing a job that fulfills them
, concludes Miou-Miou.
I really like what they do, but I don't want to dwell on the subject, it would be too syrupy!
»
