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IT STARTED WITH A FRENCH KISS
by Andrew Fenton
The Courier Mail (Australia)
June 13, 2009 Saturday
1 - First with the news Edition
A comedy of manners takes a simple idea, then digs a lot deeper,
writes Andrew Fenton
THIS is a film about a friendship that turns into something more,
and the awkwardness of a man who is not sure how to make love.
There is a tangled romance, much discussion about sex and a seemingly
endless supply of cigarettes. In other words, Shall We Kiss couldn't
be any more French if it tried.
"We're typically French," actress Virginie Ledoyen grins. "We drink
wine, we smoke and we speak about what we're doing and how we're
going to do it.
"It's really a movie about words and speaking and desire."
If Shall We Kiss is the quintessential French film, then Ledoyen is
its quintessential French star.
She is popular in her homeland and her delicate features made her
a natural for the face of L'Oreal from 2000 to 2005. To Australian
audiences she is probably best known as that beautiful French girl
in Danny Boyle's The Beach, but she has worked with many of France's
best directors in the past two decades.
For Shall We Kiss she's teamed with writer-director Emmanuel Mouret
in a story of desire intertwined with a comedy of manners.
"It's no less difficult to do a comedy than a drama," says the
33-year-old in Paris. "It's so different. With comedy you have to
work on the rhythm."
Mouret, who also stars in the film, is like a young, French version
of Woody Allen. "The idea was to mix two or more stories about the
same theme -- some sort of situation involving desire and the choices
that have to be made," he says.
The central story is framed as a cautionary tale -- fabric designer
(Julie Gayet) recounts to an attractive stranger (Michael Cohen)
by way of explaining why she shouldn't kiss him.
She tells him of how her friends Nicholas (Mouret) and Judith (Ledoyen)
wind up in a physical relationship when Nicholas tells her about an
itch he has that needs scratching.
"I started off with a very trivial story just about a man who wanted
to make love, and he didn't even know who with, so he decides to ask
his best friend," Mouret explains. "Starting from that, I wanted to
build up into something much more complex and detailed."
These complications arise not least of all because Judith is already
in a seemingly happy relationship.
There's delightful humour in the scenes where Nicholas, hesitant
about making love with his friend for the first time, keeps asking
her permission every step of the way.
Ledoyen, who speaks fluent English, could be seen as a natural for
mainstream Hollywood films but she didn't follow The Beach with any
other big studio films.
"I'm not going to live in Hollywood," she says. "But if Scorsese
called me for a movie I'd probably say yes."
She points out that The Beach wasn't a real Hollywood film as the
director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) and crew were English and
the film was shot in Thailand. The only American was Leonard DiCaprio.
In any case, Ledoyen has more work than she can keep up with at home
in France. She will be seen next month as the love interest in Lorraine
Levy's My Friends, My Loves.
After being sacked from his job as a Paris bookseller, Mathias
(Vincent Lindon) travels to London to live with his best friend
Antoine (Pascal Elbe). The house rules mean Mathias isn't allowed to
bring women home, which is a problem as Mathias soon falls in love
with Paris-based journalist Audrey (Ledoyen) who is on a seemingly
unending assignment in the UK.
The film is based on the novel by the director's brother, Marc Levy.
Levy tried to adapt his own novel into a screenplay, but when he was
unable to do so, Lorraine stepped in as screenwriter and director.
"He came a few times to the set and he was really moved," Ledoyen says.
"He was very elegant, didn't demand any power and was very respectful
with his sister. I think he was moved to suddenly see all his stories
take life."
She says she deliberately avoided reading the novel before filming,
so as not to affect her idea of the character. She has since read it.
"She brings a feminine sensibility that wasn't in the book," says
Ledoyen. "That makes a difference."
Ledoyen also appears in auteur Robert Guerdiguian's The Army of Crime,
which made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is about
the French Resistance. Ledoyen plays the wife of an Armenian poet,
Missak Manouchian (Simon Abkarian), who takes charge of an underground
unit hotheads determined to fight the Nazi occupiers.
Guerdiguian is well known for using the same core group of actors
throughout his films, and Ledoyen says she hopes she can become one
of them.
"I would like to because it was a wonderful, professional and human
meeting," she says. "He is an incredibly brilliant director -- you
want to be his friend, you want to work with him."
Shall We Kiss is out now.
by Andrew Fenton
The Courier Mail (Australia)
June 13, 2009 Saturday
1 - First with the news Edition
A comedy of manners takes a simple idea, then digs a lot deeper,
writes Andrew Fenton
THIS is a film about a friendship that turns into something more,
and the awkwardness of a man who is not sure how to make love.
There is a tangled romance, much discussion about sex and a seemingly
endless supply of cigarettes. In other words, Shall We Kiss couldn't
be any more French if it tried.
"We're typically French," actress Virginie Ledoyen grins. "We drink
wine, we smoke and we speak about what we're doing and how we're
going to do it.
"It's really a movie about words and speaking and desire."
If Shall We Kiss is the quintessential French film, then Ledoyen is
its quintessential French star.
She is popular in her homeland and her delicate features made her
a natural for the face of L'Oreal from 2000 to 2005. To Australian
audiences she is probably best known as that beautiful French girl
in Danny Boyle's The Beach, but she has worked with many of France's
best directors in the past two decades.
For Shall We Kiss she's teamed with writer-director Emmanuel Mouret
in a story of desire intertwined with a comedy of manners.
"It's no less difficult to do a comedy than a drama," says the
33-year-old in Paris. "It's so different. With comedy you have to
work on the rhythm."
Mouret, who also stars in the film, is like a young, French version
of Woody Allen. "The idea was to mix two or more stories about the
same theme -- some sort of situation involving desire and the choices
that have to be made," he says.
The central story is framed as a cautionary tale -- fabric designer
(Julie Gayet) recounts to an attractive stranger (Michael Cohen)
by way of explaining why she shouldn't kiss him.
She tells him of how her friends Nicholas (Mouret) and Judith (Ledoyen)
wind up in a physical relationship when Nicholas tells her about an
itch he has that needs scratching.
"I started off with a very trivial story just about a man who wanted
to make love, and he didn't even know who with, so he decides to ask
his best friend," Mouret explains. "Starting from that, I wanted to
build up into something much more complex and detailed."
These complications arise not least of all because Judith is already
in a seemingly happy relationship.
There's delightful humour in the scenes where Nicholas, hesitant
about making love with his friend for the first time, keeps asking
her permission every step of the way.
Ledoyen, who speaks fluent English, could be seen as a natural for
mainstream Hollywood films but she didn't follow The Beach with any
other big studio films.
"I'm not going to live in Hollywood," she says. "But if Scorsese
called me for a movie I'd probably say yes."
She points out that The Beach wasn't a real Hollywood film as the
director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) and crew were English and
the film was shot in Thailand. The only American was Leonard DiCaprio.
In any case, Ledoyen has more work than she can keep up with at home
in France. She will be seen next month as the love interest in Lorraine
Levy's My Friends, My Loves.
After being sacked from his job as a Paris bookseller, Mathias
(Vincent Lindon) travels to London to live with his best friend
Antoine (Pascal Elbe). The house rules mean Mathias isn't allowed to
bring women home, which is a problem as Mathias soon falls in love
with Paris-based journalist Audrey (Ledoyen) who is on a seemingly
unending assignment in the UK.
The film is based on the novel by the director's brother, Marc Levy.
Levy tried to adapt his own novel into a screenplay, but when he was
unable to do so, Lorraine stepped in as screenwriter and director.
"He came a few times to the set and he was really moved," Ledoyen says.
"He was very elegant, didn't demand any power and was very respectful
with his sister. I think he was moved to suddenly see all his stories
take life."
She says she deliberately avoided reading the novel before filming,
so as not to affect her idea of the character. She has since read it.
"She brings a feminine sensibility that wasn't in the book," says
Ledoyen. "That makes a difference."
Ledoyen also appears in auteur Robert Guerdiguian's The Army of Crime,
which made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is about
the French Resistance. Ledoyen plays the wife of an Armenian poet,
Missak Manouchian (Simon Abkarian), who takes charge of an underground
unit hotheads determined to fight the Nazi occupiers.
Guerdiguian is well known for using the same core group of actors
throughout his films, and Ledoyen says she hopes she can become one
of them.
"I would like to because it was a wonderful, professional and human
meeting," she says. "He is an incredibly brilliant director -- you
want to be his friend, you want to work with him."
Shall We Kiss is out now.