Very well received and in the running for the Golden Lion, the film (which will be released on September 29 in France) tells the story of Rachel (Virginie Efira), a French teacher in her forties, without children, who falls in love of Ali (Roschdy Zem), dad of a little girl and freshly divorced.

Originality of the film, it focuses on the mother-in-law of this blended family: How to love a child who will never really be his?

How do you find your place in this new family?

What bonds will survive in the event of a break?

"When you divorce in life, you can see + Kramer against Kramer +, it helps you", says Rebecca Zlotowski, in reference to this classic from the end of the 1970s, with Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep.

"But when you are a mother-in-law, you don't have a film to help you", when these characters in tales or Disney are "often in wickedness or rivalry".

"The origin of the film is this lack of representation of a very trivial, banal and familiar experience", she continues, "a character who touches a lot of people, a mother-in-law or a handsome -father who loved a child and saw him come out of the equation at some point".

The 42-year-old director ("Belle Épine", "Une fille facile") confides that she originally thought of adapting Romain Gary's novel on male impotence ("Beyond this limit your ticket is no longer valid") before changing gear, to tell the story of a woman who also fears the decline in her fertility.

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No coincidence: "the relationship with thwarted motherhood, the end of fertility, is a form of impotence... At a time when we talk so much about the power of women, we must also look at their impotence" , underlines the director.

Subject "girl"?

Alongside Virginie Efira, Roschdy Zem portrays a modern father, far from virile standards, who takes care of his little girl, cooks, reads her stories...

"It took me four films to deconstruct myself a little personally and understand that a female subject was not a minor subject", recognizes Rebecca Zlotowski, yet committed to these issues that have become central to the film industry.

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"I made a film in a nuclear power plant ("Grand Central"), on a motorcycle circuit ("Belle Épine"), a president and attacks (the series "Les Sauvages", with Roschdy Zem, already), with lots of spectacular and situations where you had to send +some heavy stuff.+ I had an almost phallic relationship with my subjects, while this subject (of motherhood) I was afraid to confront, I had a part of me who still considered that it was chick".

The film is also an ode to Virginie Efira ("Police", "Adieu les Cons", "Benedetta"), whose career in auteur cinema is accelerating and who will also be showing on Wednesday in "Revoir Paris ", on the attacks of November 2015.

The actress confides to AFP that she was attracted to a character who made intimate chords vibrate more than ever: he is "never represented when it is in everyone's life", just like "this typical thing feminine of the relationship to motherhood, of the time we have".

With this role, for which she thought in particular of the female characters in Claude Sautet, "I had the impression of being able to make leaps in the past" intimate, she explains.

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Without completely identifying herself, Virginie Efira recognized herself in certain respects in the character of Rachel: "a slight effacement, a lack of self-confidence which means that we accept everyone's behavior by saying to ourselves + everyone has his reasons +, the smile as politeness, as modesty … These are areas that I frequented“, underlines the actress.

© 2022 AFP