Virginie Efira is one of the essential faces of this return to cinema. While waiting for The Children of Others, she is playing this Wednesday in Revoir Paris by Alice Winocour, a drama freely inspired by the attacks of November 13.
In Paris, Mia is caught in an attack in a brasserie. Three months later, when she still hasn’t managed to resume the course of her life and only remembers the event in snatches, Mia decides to investigate her memory to find her way back to life. possible happiness.
After Nearbywith Eva Green in the costume of an astronaut, the filmmaker Alice Winocourt is interested in the subject of the attacks, in Revoir Paris, a film distantly inspired by the Bataclan. This fiction takes the decision to show in the first place the question of traumatic memory. In other words, how such a drama can affect memories.
Presented at the Directors’ Fortnight, at the Cannes Film Festival this year, the film was warmly received.
Alice Winocour, originally from Paris, sets up her camera for the first time in Paris, and shows the city as it has rarely been seen in the cinema. She films a bruised Paris, injured by the attacks, like a character in her own right.
We all have it in our memories, tonight
“I was inspired by my own memorytold us the director during an interview at the Cannes Film Festival. It is inspired by one night, that of November 13, 2015, the Paris attacks. We all have it in our memories tonight. For me, it was a bit special, and maybe it is traumatic in my memory, since my little brother was in the attacks. He survived. He was in the Bataclan and I was in SMS link with him. So I was inspired by the conversations I was able to have with him in the days and months that followed.
“What’s special is that in the meantime, I made a film called Proxima which took place in space, and which had nothing to do with it. But the desire, the need for this movie caught up with meshe continues. I decided to go into fiction, so that it wasn’t the Bataclan attack, or any other real attack. Let it be an imaginary attack. Because it is not the attack that interests me.”
It’s more of a film of healing, of resilience. It’s more about life than death
“What interests me are the traces it left in the city, among the victims. On the other hand, it was really nourished by encounters as I was able to do for my other films. brother, I really discovered the world of survivors which made me access these people. It is a mixture with these people, psychiatrists, specialists. It is a subject that interests me enormously, it was already the subject in Marylandwhich I presented a few years ago at Cannes, on post-traumatized soldiers returning from Afghanistan, with Mathias Schnonaerts. I really wanted to talk about resilience. It’s more of a film of healing, of resilience. It’s more about life than death“, she underlines.
The heroine of Revoir Paris is of course above all Virginie Efira, captivating, almost in all the shots of this feature film which offers her a beautiful, dense and complex new role. Her connection with Benoît Magimel is beautiful and works very well on screen.
On the occasion of the Cannes Film Festival, we were able to talk to Virginie Efira. An interview to discover in video above (in a condensed version) or a long version, below, in audio podcast format:
In this new school year, Virginie Efira is also expected in Other people’s children by Rebecca Zlotowski, which will be released on September 21. As for Benoît Magimel, we can see him in the adventure comedy Jack Mimoun and the secrets of Val Verde by Malik Bentalha and Ludovic Colbeau-Justin on October 12 on the big screen, then in Pacifiction – Torment on the Islands by Albert Serra, in competition at Cannes this year, and which will be released in theaters on November 9.
Interview at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival