PRESENT A LADY IN PARIS

Transcription

1 PRESENT A LADY IN PARIS A FILM BY ILMAAR RAG

2 A LADY IN PARIS (Une Estonienne à Paris) Starring Jeanne Moreau, Patrick Pineau and Laine Magi. IN CINEMAS FROM MARCH 21 The film opens in Estonia, where divorced Anne (Mägi) is looking after her elderly mother. When her mother dies and her two grown-up children rarely answer her phone calls - Anne decides to take up the offer of looking after an elderly Estonian woman now living in Paris. Anne s first encounter with Frida (Moreau) sets the tone for their relationship, as Moreau looks at this apparently dowdy and unsophisticated Estonian woman with a haughty distain and informs her that she will not be needed. Anne is prepared to take Frida s offer to leave when a conflict of strangers emerges - Stephane (Pineau), a friend and old lover. A role perfectly crafted for the moods and mannerisms of Jeanne Moreau. Screendaily Moreau seems to savour each line on her tongue before spitting it out with evident relish. Variety Rating: M Sexual references Run time: 94 minutes Website: CONTACT: Caroline Whiteway Publicity & Marketing Manager caroline@rialtodistribution.com

3 DIRECTOR S STATEMENT: ILMAAR RAG A personal story laid the foundation for this project that of my mother. Approaching 50 years of age, divorced, overwhelmed by a feeling of loneliness and emptiness after her children had left home, my mother was depressed and at a loss until she was offered a job in Paris looking after a rich old Estonian lady. She returned a changed woman; that s the story behind A Lady in Paris. Frida, Anne, and Stéphane embody different facets of the same theme for me: one s relationship to life, growing old and death. Of course, these issues are most clearly represented by Frida, but Anne and Stéphane depict other aspects of them. As her life draws to an end, Frida feels diminished and needs to maintain a relationship with someone to feel alive. Frida came to Paris before the war, seeking romance and freedom. Now she has to face up to the consequences of the choices she made. Her loneliness is exacerbated by the fact she broke all links to her home country. Through her relationship with Stéphane and then with Anne, the film considers the question of one s legacy what a person leaves behind. Anne and Stéphane both have experience of life, they can decide to stay as they are or change. The film deals with the need to feel alive and the fact that it is not easy for Anne to dare to express that desire, or for Stéphane to break free of Frida s influence. The film is also about Paris and what Paris means to a foreigner like me. It is a mythical place where one can project one s dreams and embark on a sort of journey of initiation. Anne admires Frida, whom she sees as the perfect Parisienne. In her small town in Estonia, Anne could never have started another romantic adventure. She has to move to Paris to start to live again. There is a scene in which she listens to a song by Joe Dassin, which not only brings back memories of her long-forgotten youth, but also represents the dream of a different life. My mother often said that she could see Paris and die in peace. When I was a student at Tartu University in the late eighties, I remember a film society screening of Otar Losseliani s film Favorites of the Moon. I was struck by the way this foreign director gave a very personal vision of Paris. Of course, Buñuel, Polanski and Bertolucci had done so before him, but Losseliani was different. Like me, he was from the other side of the Iron Curtain. For a young man from a humble background, the idea of obtaining a visa to leave the country, if only as a tourist, was almost inconceivable. As a result, Paris was a mythical destination, an Eldorado. During the shooting, it was a constant struggle to repress my desire to film picture-postcard Paris. My French crew kept telling me that it wasn t the real Paris. Deep down, I knew they were right, but it seems to me that the blend of French and Estonian visions of Paris is rich and that what we see in the film fairly reflects it.

4 Anne is played by the Estonian actress Laine Mägi, with whom I have worked before. She learned French for the part. Her ignorance of the language makes her feel inferior to Frida and contributes to the character s submissiveness. Moreover, Laine Mägi brings out Anne s innermost feelings and imbues her with a genuine sense of melancholy. Opposite her, Frida is played by Jeanne Moreau, a legendary actress who captures the crucial fragility of a character nearing the end of her life and seeing everything she believed in crumbling around her. ABOUT THE CAST: JEANNE MOREAU When people gave Louis Malle credit for making a star of Jeanne Moreau in Elevator to the Gallows (1958) immediately followed by The Lovers (1958), he would point out that Moreau by that time had already been "recognized as the prime stage actress of her generation." She had made it to the Comédie Française in her 20s, had appeared in B-movie thrillers with Jean Gabin; Ascenseur was in that genre. The technicians at the film lab went to the producer after seeing the first week of dailies for Ascenseur and said: "You must not let Malle destroy Jeanne Moreau". Malle explained: "She was lit only by the windows of the Champs Elysées. Cameramen would have forced her to wear a lot of make-up and they would put a lot of light on her, because, supposedly, her face was not photogenic". This lack of artifice revealed Moreau's "essential qualities: she could be almost ugly and then ten seconds later she would turn her face and would be incredibly attractive. But she would be herself". Moreau has told interviewers that the characters she played were not her. But even the most famous film critic of his generation, Roger Ebert, thinks that she is a lot like her most enduring role, Catherine in Francios Turffaut's Jules and Jim (1962). Behind those eyes and that enigmatic smile is a woman with a mind. In a review of Screen Two: The Clothes in the Wardrobe (1993) Ebert wrote: "Jeanne Moreau has been a treasure of the movies for 35 years... Here, playing a flamboyant woman who nevertheless keeps her real thoughts closely guarded, she brings about a final scene of poetic justice as perfect as it is unexpected". She made her debut as director in Lumiere (1976), writing the script and playing Sarah, an actress whose romances are often with directors for the duration of making a film. Still active in international cinema, Moreau presided over the jury of the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. LAINE MӒGI Is from Estonia and has been working in the local film and television industry for almost twenty years. She has previously worked with director, IImar Ragg on several occasions. In 2007, she starred in The Class, which Raag directed. She learned French especially for her role in A Lady In Paris.

5 CAST & CREW: Director Screenplay Photography Sound Music Casting Editing Set Costumes Production Manager Producers Co-producers Ilmar Raag Ilmar Raag, Agnès Feuvre & Lise Macheboeuf Laurent Brunet - AFC Pierre Mertens, Valène Leroy & Emmanuel de Boissieu Dez Mona Brigitte Moidon - ARDA Anne-Laure Guégan Pascale Consigny Ann Dunsford Angeline Massoni Miléna Poylo & Gilles Sacuto (TS Productions) Riina Sildos (Amrion Production) Philippe Kauffmann (La Parti Production), Adrian Politowski & Gilles Waterkeyn