Maria dreams: why the main female character had to be over 50

This Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 9:10 p.m., Canal+ is broadcasting maria dream, a bittersweet comedy that honors people who are not used to being honored in French cinema. But why ? Tele-Leisure explains to you.

The Covid crisis has highlighted these women and men whose essential nature of the jobs they carry out on a daily basis is inversely proportional to the consideration they are given. Rarely mentioned on the screen, the labor of nurses, road hauliers, garbage collectors or cleaning ladies nevertheless largely deserves attention. This is what Lauriane Escaffre and Yvonnick Muller, directors of maria dream, broadcast this Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 9:10 p.m. Karin Viard plays precisely a cleaning lady there. At his side, we find an actor that the cinema has been tearing up for a few years: Grégory Gadebois.

Discreet charm

The problem is that there is often a disconnect between what people complain about and what they do to correct it. So, maria dream had the merit of being interested in the fate of one of these invisible, embodied by Karin Viard. Solitary, dreamy, Maria carefully keeps a small flowery notebook in which this housekeeper records her poems. But when she is transferred to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Maria changes universe and finally opens up to life. Inspired by the creative impulse that emanates from it, she also meets Hubert, the caretaker of the establishment (played by Grégory Gadebois), who will paint her daily life pink. Little covered by the press which, overall, finds it “touching” (The Parisian) and even calls the film “tenderness jewel” (20 minutes), maria dream hardly attracts the spectators in the rooms. Between blockbuster comedies and Marvel, what place should be reserved for Maria’s dreams? The tender breakaway of Lauriane Escaffre and Yvonnick Muller will total only 135,462 entries!

Making women over 50 visible

The business failure of maria dream is regrettable on another level. If, in France, 50% of adult women are over 50, the latter are represented on screen by only 8% of female characters. In order to correct this differential, the Associated Actresses and Actors of France (the AAFA) created in 2015 the AAFA-Tunnel commission of the Comédienne de 50 ans, which has set itself the objective of changing mentalities and promoting more female faces said “seniors” headlining. This is precisely one of the arguments of maria dream who, to move the lines, wanted to make visible a heroine over 50 years old. As the film’s co-director Lauriane Escaffre rightly points out: “We note that if we like to show mature men because they are often in full power, we tend to erase from the landscape women who have passed their forties despite being just as strong in their experience..” Hopefully the televised catch-up session will do justice to maria dream and her little flowery notebook…