Director Mona Achache has entrusted the French star with the role of her mother, author Carole Achache, who committed suicide in 2016 without leaving a word.

To try to understand her gesture, Mona Achache, who plays herself, calls on Marion Cotillard and asks her to physically embody her mother.

In a captivating silent scene, the star takes off her clothes and puts on those of Carole Achache, as well as her accessories: the same glasses, ring, necklace, bag... and wears a wig with curly hair.

The glamorous actress gives way to an older woman with the "nerd" type. Throughout the film, she repeats in sync many passages of texts or interviews recorded with the voice of Carole Achache, until she blends completely into the character. The exercise proves so gruelling that, in one scene, she stops to say, "I've never done something so hard in my life."

Marion's "light"

"I like the transformation," Marion Cotillard told AFP. "I find it easier to play characters who are far from me. (...) That's where I discover the most about humans," she adds.

She says, however, that the story "resonated with many female journeys in my family, with many women at all".

The actress, for whom the role is a "very nice gift", went so far as to perfume herself every morning with the perfume of Carole Achache, which moved the director.

Director Mona Achache (l) and actress Marion Cotillard pose during a photocall for the film "Little Girl Blue" at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2023. © LOIC VENANCE /

In a scene where the lines blur, Mona Achache points out to Marion Cotillard that her "mother also made noise while drinking her tea". "But I thought we were taking a break!" replies the actress.

Why did you choose the star? "There is a kind of incredible resemblance to my young mother, this kind of insolent beauty, freedom, charisma. And then the story is so dark that I wanted to bring him a woman who would completely contradict her with her light, "says the director.

A dark story that will be unfolded through the incarnation of Carole Achache: she plunges into the painful memories of her childhood in an intellectual environment and "too bright adults," including her mother, the novelist Monique Lange, wife of the Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo.

"Why this transmission of pain?" is the question posed by the film, which gradually reveals the abuse suffered by Monique Lange and Carole Achache, especially when she was a little girl.

French actress Marion Cotillard arrives at the screening of the film "Little Girl Blue" as part of the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2023. © Patricia DE MELO MOREIRA /

"Women are cursed in my family," one can hear.

But the film is not about the curse, emphasize Marion Cotillard and Carole Achache.

"The idea of a curse, it was transmitted to me by my mother. It was a word I hated. The times we are going through and this film allowed me to think better. There is no curse, there is conditioning," says the director.

The facts recur when "it is not cured, it is not cleaned and we do not look it in the face," says Marion Cotillard, who says she participated with this film "in a healing process".

"Since MeToo, we know that there are a staggering number of women who have experienced the same thing. (...) I think that, for a complete recovery, we will have the need to reunite the man and the woman and that the man is in this fight too, "says the star.

© 2023 AFP