This is your third time touring with Lisa Azuelos, what do you like about her?
She is who she is. We don’t necessarily look alike, we’ve had totally opposite lives, but we belong to the same generation and we both know how difficult it is today to be a woman other than being a worried woman. What is it like to be a woman in society? Lisa approaches the topic in a very personal and at the same time universal way. It touches me, and this film in particular.
Why not defend it as a biopic?
Perhaps out of modesty. When you are known as “children of”, you are part of the public world and, inevitably, Marie Laforêt, it is very evocative, very strong. Lisa probably didn’t want her out of the movie. She didn’t tell her mother’s story, but hers.
Has this film done him any good, personally?
I know there were a lot of tears on set. She was very raw, very connected…and I think she needed that connection, that she didn’t have with her mother while she was alive, that she suffered a lot from. The lack was still very present and, somewhere, there was an intuition. She almost wrote this script before her mother died. Since their relationship was complicated, it’s kind of a release to not have to deal with it again. In the end, only the good things will remain.
Like Lisa, has the desire to start a new life “away from here” ever crossed your mind?
For nothing. I love the world, I’ve explored it a lot, but I can’t see myself leaving it all behind. I admire those who dare to do this. I am more sociable. I went into exile quite a bit, lived in America and England and Poland, and long moments here and there for filming. And it was great! But I don’t have that call anywhere else.
Find the full interview with Sophie Marceau in the Ciné-Télé-Revue published this Thursday 10 March.
« I Love America », available on Prime Video.
