Bastia (AFP)

In presenting her latest film, "A Larger World" by Fabienne Berthaud in Bastia, the Belgian actress Cécile de France told AFP that playing this "real heroine" who plunges into Mongolian shamanism was "the role of her life".

"It's a world I absolutely did not know, a universal story where everyone can recognize each other because it talks about our fears, what we do not control," says the actress, saying that initiatory film, "a bit like Karate Kid" is a free adaptation of the book of the "real shaman" Corine Sombrun "My initiation in the shamans".

In this drama, presented in preview at the Mediterranean film festival of Bastia, Arte Mare and theatrical on October 30, the actress embodies a bereaved woman left in Mongolia to meet reindeer herders, the Tsaatans. Shocked by her meeting with the shaman Oyun, she learns that she herself has a gift.

"It was the possibility of interpreting a heroine, a real portrait of a free woman, strong and courageous, an exceptional role! I have not received many proposals like that in my life, it is a little the role of my life, "says the 44-year-old actress in 50 films and 26-year career.

During the month of filming in Mongolia, without running water or electricity, Cécile de France confides to having lived "a human, artistic and philosophical experience which allowed me to reflect, to question many of our certainties to us Western whites". "I learned a lot from the Tsaatans", including "this immense gratitude they have for nature".

An existential theme related to the relationship to life and death that she has already addressed in "Beyond", the fantastic drama of Clint Eastwood where she gave the reply to Matt Damon, and she will find in the next Emmanuelle Bercot's film, "In his lifetime". In this drama, she plays a "supporting role" alongside Catherine Deneuve who plays a mother who is about to lose her son (Benoît Magimel) who is ill.

- Passion for 'the unexplained' -

"It's fascinating to marvel at unexplained things, the mysteries of life and subjects not yet completely controlled by science," she explains, dismissing a blonde curl from her azure gaze.

But if these themes fascinate her, she does not stick to it. She has just finished "Comédie humaine", her third film with the director Xavier Giannoli who is "the adaptation of Balzac's Illusions Perdues, a very beautiful film shot in costumes with Xavier Dolan, Jeanne Balibar, Gérard Depardieu, Vincent Lacoste and Benjamin Voisin who has the main role and is extraordinary ".

She also slips to have the feeling to have "done a little tour" of the roles of homosexuals she has embodied five times, including in the trilogy of Cédric Klapisch ("The Spanish Inn", "The Russian Dolls" and "Chinese Puzzle" which earned him two Caesar.

Not attracted "at all" by the realization, she confides to having lived "like a great luck at the artistic level" the shooting of the last film of Wes Anderson, "The French Dispatch", where she plays "a very small scene". This comedy drama, which tells the daily life of American correspondents in Paris in the 1950s, remains an enigma for the actress: "we can not really understand what it will become because it will treat it in black and white, in animation and add things on it but see it thinking and directing us to make something really unique in the world, it was very interesting. "

As for the series of the Italian Paolo Sorrentino "The New Pope" she shot "for six months", "in incredible settings, including Cinecitta in Rome" with Jude Law and John Malkovich, the one who does not want to " not too much turning "to preserve his privacy points out that it takes projects as exciting as this one to take away from his family:" I like to shoot in France, the actors are really listened to, we can really collaborate in the character creation ".

© 2019 AFP