Les Jeunes amants: why could this film have never seen the light of day?

There are films whose story is as beautiful as the screenplay. A kind that The Young Lovers illustrates perfectly. This melodrama of great accuracy, broadcast on Tuesday January 17, 2023 at 9:10 p.m. on Canal+, recounts the crossed trajectories of Pierre (Melvil Poupaud) and Shauna (Fanny Ardant). He, a 45-year-old doctor and father, falls in love with her, a 70-year-old former architect, free and independent. And if this rare and euphoric love at first sight is brought to the screen by Carine Tardieu, the idea comes back to another: Sólveig Anspach. The American-Icelandic filmmaker was keen on this scenario inspired by her mother’s last love, but not everything went as planned. Tele-Leisure tells you the fascinating and moving underside of this beautiful project.

A big promise

It all started in the fall of 2012 when, during a dinner with friends, Sólveig Anspach announced the relationship of his almost octogenarian mother with a married man thirty years younger than her. The story excites the director and her producer, who want to make a feature film out of it. Only here, the filmmaker knows that she is seriously ill, since she suffers from breast cancer. There is no question of giving up on the film. For a year, a small team meets regularly to work on the script. “One day, I was working in a bistro, and in the café across the street, I saw Sólveig with his co-screenwriter Agnès De Sacy and their producer, Patrick Sobelman. I had gone to greet them, and I knew afterwards that it was their first work meeting around the Young lovers”, recalls Carine Tardieu. But in 2015, the state of health of the American-Icelandic woman worsens. Two days before her death, she made her friends promise to carry out the project and choose a woman for her accomplishment.

“I felt liberated”

For those close to him, the shock is immense and the film an orphan. Patrick Sobelman and Agnès De Sacy, heirs to the screenplay, think of Carine Tardieu to bring it to the screen. “I knew Sólveig, we had met two years before his death at the Rome festival. We had spent three very happy days at the Villa Medici, it was a great meeting […] We saw each other regularly,” tells the interested party who, however, finds the story too “dark“and the proposal too heavy to bear.”But by dint of talking to them about the project, I got to work, in spite of myself“The director appropriates this script and extends the work undertaken by Sólveig Anspach and his team, with the agreement of Clara, Sólveig’s young daughter – very important in her eyes.”She remembered that her mother had spoken to her about me in a kind way, she had seen and liked my previous films, so she told me banco… From then on, I felt liberated.“The film sees the light of day: word kept.

find The Young Lovers Tuesday, January 17, 2023 at 9:10 p.m. on Canal+ and on MyCanal