HOW VERY FRENCH
By Andrew Fenton
The Advertiser (Australia)
June 13, 2009 Saturday
1 – State Edition
We might know her as the exotic beauty in The Beach, but there’s much
more to Virginie Ledoyen than starring opposite Leonardo Di Caprio.
IT IS A film about a friendship that turns into something more, and
the awkwardness of a man who is not sure how to make love. There is
a tangled romance, much discussion about sex and a seemingly endless
supply of cigarettes. In other words, Shall We Kiss? couldn’t be any
more French if it tried. "We’re typically French," actor Virginie
Ledoyen says. "We drink wine, we smoke and we speak about what we’re
doing and how we’re going to do it. It’s a movie about words and
speaking and about desire."
If Shall We Kiss? is the quintessential French film, then Ledoyen is
its quintessential French star. She is popular and prolific in her
homeland and her delicate features saw her become the face of L’Oreal
from 2000 to 2005. To Australian audiences she is probably best known
as "that beautiful French girl" in Danny Boyle’s The Beach, but she has
worked with many of France’s best directors over the past two decades.
For Shall We Kiss? she’s teamed up with writerdirector Emmanuel Mouret
in a story of desire mixed with a comedy of manners. "It’s not less
difficult to do a comedy than a drama," says 33-year-old Ledoyen over
coffee in Paris. "It’s so different. With comedy you have to work on
the rhythm. The rhythm is so important – so maybe it’s more precise,
curiously."
Mouret, who also stars in the film, says the idea was to mix two or
more stories about the same theme some sort of situation each time
involving desire and the choices that have to be made.
The central story is framed as a cautionary tale which fabric designer
(Julie Gayet) recounts to an attractive stranger (Michael Cohen)
by way of explaining why she shouldn’t kiss him. She tells of how
friends Nicholas (Mouret) and Judith (Ledoyen) wind up in a physical
relationship when Nicholas tells Judith about an itch he has that
needs scratching.
"I started with a very trivial story, just about a man who wanted to
make love, and he didn’t even know who with, so he decides to ask his
best friend," Mouret says. "Starting from that I wanted to build up
into something much more complex and detailed."
These complications arise not least because Judith is already in a
seemingly happy relationship. There’s delightful humour in the scenes
where Nicholas, hesitant about making love with his friend for the
first time, keeps asking her permission every step of the way.
"Can I put my hand on your breast?" he asks, before awkwardly doing
so in the un-sexiest way possible.
"I think awkwardness is always something that is funny, because when a
man meets a woman, he wants to attract her but he’s not sure how to act
or what to say – and that can lead to comedy," Mouret says. "There’s
also the question of the human divided between his animal side and
his civilised side, and the character is torn between his desires to
be socially respectable and to give in to his animal urges."
Ledoyen says her character errs on the non-animal side and thinks
she can keep sex and love separate.
"My character is trying to organise everything, to find a scientific
reason for what is going on with her and Nicholas," she says. "But
you can’t. Love and desire are things you cannot play with. They are
stronger than you."
Ledoyen, who speaks English fluently, could be seen as a natural
to cross over into mainstream Hollywood films but she didn’t follow
The Beach with any other big studio films. "I’m not going to live in
Hollywood – that I know," she says. "(But) if Scorsese called me for
a movie I’d probably say yes!"
She points out The Beach wasn’t a "real" Hollywood film as director
Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) and crew were English and the film
was shot in Thailand.
The only American was Leonard DiCaprio. "It seems very pretty but
it’s a very dark and deep movie, so it’s more European than American,"
she says.
In any case, Ledoyen has more work than she can keep up with at
home in France. She will be seen next month as the love interest
in Lorraine Levy’s My Friends, My Loves. After being sacked from
his job as a Paris bookseller, Mathias (Vincent Lindon) travels to
London to live with his best friend Antoine (Pascal Elbe). The house
rules don’t allow Mathias to bring women home – which is a problem,
as Mathias soon falls in love with Paris-based journalist Audrey
(Ledoyen) who is on a seemingly unending assignment in the UK. It’s
based on the novel by the director’s brother, Marc Levy, a popular
author in France, who tried to adapt his own novel into a screenplay.
When he was unable to do so, Lorraine stepped in as screenwriter
and director.
Ledoyen did not read the novel before filming so as not to "pollute"
her conception of the character. She has since read it. "Lorraine
brings a feminine sensibility that wasn’t in the book," she says.
Ledoyen also appears in Robert Guediguian’s The Army of Crime, which
made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival last month. The film
is about the French Resistance during World War II. Ledoyen plays
the wife of an Armenian poet, Missak Manouchian (Simon Abkarian),
who takes charge of an underground resistance unit full of hotheads
determined to fight the Nazi occupiers.
Guerdiguian is well known for using the same core group of actors
throughout his films, and Ledoyen says she hopes she can become one of
them. "I would like to because it was a wonderful, professional and
human meeting," she says. "He is incredibly brilliant – you want to
be his friend, you want to work with him and have drinks and dinner,
so I hope I do."
Ledoyen has now worked in Asia, Israel, France and in U. S. commercials
and says what unites film-makers is greater than what divides them. "I
think there is not so much difference," she says. "(National) cinemas
have tonalities – a Japanese movie is different to a Korean movie
which is different to a French movie.
But we’re all doing the same thing, we’re all trying to entertain,
to move, to touch, to make people laugh it’s the same desire
everywhere. There are different points of view but in the end we’re
all doing the same thing – it’s universal."