FRANCE – PARIS
A key actress in French cinema (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu, L’Innocent, Les Olympiades…), Noémie Merlant is also a director. After making two short films, she directed mi iubita, mon amour in 2021: selected for a special screening at the Cannes Film Festival, this fresh first film tells the story of a trip to Romania by young French women, and the meeting between Jeanne (Noémie Merlant) and Nino (Gimi-Nicole Covaci). The actress and director, who will play Emmanuelle in Audrey Diwan’s eagerly awaited new adaptation of the famous erotic novel, shot her second feature-length film as director this summer, Les Femmes au balcon.
Announced as a horrific comedy, this film co-written by Céline Sciamma will once again follow several young women, this time sharing an apartment in Marseille in the middle of a heatwave. As they fantasise about their mysterious neighbour, they come face-to-face with a terrifying affair after a night out. “Thinking about women’s suffering and using humour as a weapon, my film turned into a comedy,” the director explained to Variety last May.
“I wanted to write female characters who resembled those around me, in order to get a closer look at violence and victimisation. I wanted to take this idea to the extreme by bringing in elements of the genre film.” We’re promised a film that’s bloody, cheeky, punk and jubilant, but never silly, featuring Sanda Codreanu (already in Mi iubita, mon amour), Souheila Yacoub (En corps) and, of course, Noémie Merlant.
Pierre Charpilloz