Phew! A few days before the release of Wow!, by Bruno Podalydès, Sabine Azéma managed to make room for us in her schedule. The actress has just arrived from Camembert (Orne), the Norman village where the cheese of the same name is ripened. She has just shown a family home there, which she intends to sell. “ My father died a few months agoshe confides, installed in the cafe of a cinema in the Latin Quarter, in Paris. There was the real estate agent, a couple of buyers…” The coincidence with Wow! obvious. Doesn’t she also play a woman determined to give up the property she shares with her husband?
Azema sees it “a sign”, as she designates the reflections that life and cinema sometimes throw at each other. The film was written in another house, near Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône). “We were on vacation, with Bruno and friends. One day, he brought us together to read the script. And he turned to me: “For this role, I thought of you.” » This is their third collaboration, after The Mystery of the Yellow Room (2003) and The Perfume of the Lady in Black (2005) – the fourth if we include the segment that Bruno Podalydès directed for You have not seen anything yet (2012), by Alain Resnais.
Sabine Azéma met him on a boat, in Japan, among a delegation of French artists. “The earth started to shake slightly, the boat rocked, we looked at each other with Bruno… » His eyes widen, surprise passes over his smile: this is the effect produced by an intersign on the face, already so stylized, of Azéma.
“Eiffel Tower Egg”
Very quickly, Bruno Podalydès bonded with the couple she formed with Alain Resnais. “With us, it was an open table. Bruno often came to dinner with our group of friends, Dussollier, Arditi… Alain considered him his spiritual son. Their films are unlike those of any other. They are two playful, unique filmmakers »she continues, surprised at the rhyme that surreptitiously invaded her palate.
In Wow!real estate advice is described as the art of “accommodate people”. And the owners, sure of themselves, oppose it to the tenants, who almost apologize for existing. “For my part, I have always been a tenant, out of a taste for freedom. » Azéma lodges as she travels, light. “At home, I try not to encumber myself with objects, so as not to be too confronted with the past. » Wow! was partly shot in the suburban house where Bruno Podalydès’ companion, photographer and documentary filmmaker Anne-Françoise Brillot, grew up. An echo, too, of the Versailles house where the filmmaker and his brother, actor Denis Podalydès, spent their childhood. “It was a place full of memories. Bruno and Anne lived there for a while. Nothing was out of the ordinary. »
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