8 Women (Chérie 25): Ludivine Sagnier a scapegoat on the set

Chérie 25 broadcasts this Thursday, December 29, 2022 at 9:05 p.m., the successful film by François Ozon, whose film Thanks to God almost didn’t hit theaters, 8 women. In the 1950s, Suzon (Virginie Ledoyen, seen in Milf in 2018), a student in England, returned to France for the end of year celebrations. In the vast family home isolated by the snow, she finds her mother Gaby (Catherine Deneuve, very close to Johnny Hallyday), her paternal aunt Pierrette (Fanny Ardant, magnificent in Nicolas Bedos’ film The good times), her sister Catherine (Ludivine Sagnier who can be seen in Lupine on Netflix), her grandmother (Danielle Darrieux, who died at the age of 100) and her maternal aunt Augustine (Isabelle Huppert who caused a sensation in her green dress at Cannes in 2022). To ensure the well-being of these ladies, Louise (Emmanuelle Béart, eternal heroine of Manon of the sources) and Madame Chanel (Firmine Richard who had a hard time with her son), the servants, busy themselves between the living room and the office. When Marcel (Dominique Lamure), the master of the house, is found murdered in his bed, a dagger stuck in his back, the women present are terrified. Soon, they suspect each other of the murder…

A crazy cast

In this Cluedo-style police investigation comedy, we are obviously seduced from the outset by the five-star cast. In a long interview with the Swiss magazine, Time, François Ozon returned to each of these actresses with a kind word or an anecdote about each. For example, he paid homage to Danielle Darrieux, the doyenne of the film, “She was able to go, from one minute to the next, from humor and lightness to depth. Everything was expressed with a look”or to Catherine Deneuve: “Catherine is generosity. She does not work in rivalry at all. She seeks complicity. She constantly wants everyone to be well.” But for Ludivine Sagnier, the youngest of the actresses, the speech was not the same. And for good reason…

The scapegoat Ludivine Sagnier

François Ozon spoke of the young actress thus: “Among Ludivine’s films, I almost have to mention the one we had already shot together: Water drops on hot stones (1999) based on a play by Fassbinder. Inevitably: that’s where I discovered it. His role allowed him to develop a great sensuality. She suffered a little from it, people said to her: “You were naked in this movie.” So I wanted to give him a different role.” A different and successful role, but one that Ludivine will pay for in a certain way. “Everyone on the set thought of her as the little girl that all the actresses wanted to mother, resumes the director. In the group, she is probably the one I cared the least about. Maybe I allowed myself to be tougher on her because I didn’t dare use others as scapegoats. When things went wrong, I took revenge on her.” She will not blame him since Ludivine Sagnier will find the director in 2003 for the main role of swimming pool.