Seventh Heaven
, broadcast this Thursday on OCS, received the prize for the best series in 26 minutes at the last La Rochelle Fiction Festival.
This series tells a love story between two octogenarians in a retirement home.
A bold series that shakes up the codes of representation of seniors on screen.
There is no age to love each other!
Seventh Heaven
, broadcast this Thursday on OCS, tells a love story between two octogenarians, Rose (Sylvie Granotier) and Jacques (Feodor Atkine) in a retirement home.
A hilarious, tender, spicy and daring series co-written by Clémence Azincourt, Clément Marchand and Alice Vial, who also directed the ten episodes.
Prize for the best series in 26 minutes at the last La Rochelle Fiction Festival, this series shakes up the codes of representation of seniors on screen.
And that's good.
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It all starts when Jacques, who has become too cumbersome for the married life of his daughter Isabelle (Irène Jacob), is placed in a residence for the elderly.
If the widowed former soldier first sees the residence of the Dunes as a place of death, his meeting with Rose changes the situation.
"Deconstructing the assigned identity of old"
“When we see elderly people in nursing homes, often we only see old people.
We forget that these people were young, in love, crazy, etc.
They had a thousand lives.
They turned 20 in the 1960s, they listened to rock, not Charles Trenet.
We tried to deconstruct the identity assigned to old people”, underlines Clément Marchand during a round table at the La Rochelle Fiction Festival.
"These are people, individuals, and already if we change that look, to know that we are dealing with a person and not a species, we will have gained something", adds Sylvie Granotier.
At 80, both rediscover love and physical pleasure.
"They're just characters falling in love and they just happen to be older.
The elderly or retirement homes are not a theme, ”warns Clémence Agincourt.
“It's not a series about retirement homes, it's a love story in a retirement home.
The arena is treated as an arena and not as the subject”, abounds Clément Marchand.
And to clarify: “We bet on a place that is going well.
»
“We wanted to sublimate these two characters”
“We wanted to be in the screening and to take on the romance and indeed, when I saw Feodor Atkine and Sylvie Granotier in the casting, I found them beautiful and sexy.
We said to ourselves that we were not going to make a realistic documentary, but to say to ourselves: "That is possible and they will make us dream like other younger characters would make us dream."
We didn't look for hyperrealism.
We wanted to sublimate these two characters”, develops Alice Vial.
Their love story will both be strewn with pitfalls and sow discord within the residence.
“Obviously they have their own obstacles.
But what prevents them from loving each other is going to be a lot outside.
They quickly become a couple and it's complicated to meet and love each other in a place like that, ”says Alice Vial.
“Sexuality among seniors is often taboo”
Their relationship disturbs those around them because it questions everyone's libido: their family, the nursing staff and the management of the establishment.
How to love each other when each resident has to sleep alone in his room?
How to love each other when children infantilize?
They will love each other like teenagers in secret.
Yet 10% of residents of retirement homes have a sexuality.
"'I'm too old or old to love again' is what a lot of single seniors think.
Love life, but more importantly sexuality among seniors, are often taboo subjects, little covered by French television", underlines Alice Vial, who, in her prize-giving speech at the La Rochelle Fiction Festival, hopes that this series will give "want to live and love at any age with humor and emotion".
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Retirement home
Love
Senior
Sexuality
nursing home
Old age