Arte broadcasts this Wednesday September 27, 2023 at 8:55 p.m. Nathalie…drama erotic and disturbing around a funny trio. Around the three main actors, a fourth personality gravitates… Why?
This Wednesday, September 27, 2023, Arte broadcasts at 8:55 p.m. Nathalie…, Anne Fontaine’s sixth feature film. It follows a woman who, in order to put her relationship to the test, asks a prostitute to start an affair with her unfaithful husband and to tell him everything. A disturbing but uneven drama that explores the secret world of female fantasies. In the cast, we only find big names: Fanny Ardant and Gérard Depardieu – reunited for the third time as a couple on screen, after The Woman Next Door And Colonel Chabert – and Emmanuelle Béart. An ambiguous and incandescent trio which, by a coincidence of casting, could have been very different. Find out why.
Nathalie… : this duo of actresses who make the film so attractive
But in reality, Nathalie… is less a story of a trio than of a duo, that of two women: Nathalie (Emmanuelle Béart) speaks, tells the story of an extra-marital relationship and Catherine (Fanny Ardant) listens. To the point of giving birth to a strange friendship, linked by a secret. This complicity, which combines fantasies, jealousy, fascination and manipulation, works thanks to the brilliant and fine interpretation of the two actresses. However, the very special alchemy that unites them could have been completely different, if the casting as Anne Fontaine had imagined it had not been upset by an unforeseen (but happy) event. Because the blonde actress, who is currently in the news with a documentary project called A silence so loudin which she reveals the incest she suffered, was not initially considered for the role.
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The reason why Vanessa Paradis could not participate in the filming
The director, to whom we also owe Coco before Chanel, had another famous blonde in mind: singer and actress Vanessa Paradis. But we are then in 2001 and the latter, still in a relationship with the American Johnny Depp, is pregnant with their second child. This pregnancy, which will give birth to Jack – Lily-Rose’s little brother, forces her to abandon the project. Never mind, Emmanuelle Béart takes on the character brilliantly and plays a prostitute in the cinema for the second time in her career. The film even earned the two main actresses a nomination for the European Film Awards, before receiving an American remake, called Chloeseveral years later.
