“Guermantes” mixes reality and fiction around the actors and actresses of the Comédie-Française.
Christophe Honoré gathered around him the performers of “Côté de Guermantes” which he staged in 2020.
Everyone got in tune with their fantasy for a tribute to acting and theater.
Imagine Laurent Lafitte chasing his partners at the Comédie-Française to show them the trailer for
L'Origine du monde
, the film he made! This is what we see in
Guermantes
by Christophe Honoré, presented at the Deauville Festival, which mixes reality and fiction around the actors of the famous troupe.
"I have never behaved so roughly!"
This scene comes from the imagination of Christophe Honoré!
tells Laurent Lafitte at
20 Minutes
.
He questioned us one after the other about what we had done during the confinement and was inspired by our answers for his film.
The director of
Chambre 212
first directed the actors and actresses of the Comédie-Française to the theater in a show inspired by Marcel Proust,
Le Côté de Guermantes
.
He got the idea for the film when the performances were canceled in full rehearsal due to Covid-19 in the summer of 2020.
The spirit of the troop
"We thought then that the play would perhaps never be performed," Christophe Honoré confides to
20 Minutes
. This is what made me want to film the actors in their work by embroidering around extracts from the show and their personal lives that I reinvented for the occasion. So we see the actresses interacting freely both in work and in their privacy. "It's funny that the viewer cannot determine what is true or false," insists the filmmaker.
What is very real is the spirit of the troop that emerges from this lively and creative little band.
Florence Viala, Sébastien Pouderoux and Stéphane Varupenne, who surrounded the director during the presentation in Deauville, were unanimous on this subject.
"It is our complicity and our pleasure of playing that Christophe Honoré knew how to capture", declares Stéphane Varupenne, who plays Marcel Proust in the play.
From the backstage of the theater to the gardens, passing to the hotel room where the performers pay homage to Proust, the director pushes a cry of love to his performers.
Long live the theater!
This enthusiastic cry, the spectator takes it again with happiness as it is communicative.
The only regret he feels when the film comes out is not being able to be part of this happy group that is as playful as it is hardworking.
We would like not to have to leave them or find them again quickly thanks to a ticket for the Comédie-Française.
If the play was finally performed only briefly in the fall of 2020, it is not the least quality of
Guermantes
that to give a furious desire to return to the theater.
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