In the midst of a wave of autobiographical films that have raised filmmakers such as Alfonso Cuarón in Roma or Paolo Sorrentino with Fue la mano de Dios, -at the end of the year it will be Spielberg's turn with The Fabelmans- the Cannes festival also has stories to competition that speak of the past of its directors.
James Gray has conquered critics with his Armageddon Time, where he revisits his childhood in the eighties while launching a critical message of the triumph of neoliberalism in the United States. And it is precisely that time that she was chosen by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi to remember her beginnings as an actress, although her bet has not had the expected reception by the specialized press.
In Les Amandiers, the Italian director based in France looks back with nostalgia at her time at the prestigious theater created in Nanterre by Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Romans, the cradle of learning for other figures such as Agnès Jaoui, Vincent Perez, Bruno Todeschini or Marianne Denicourt. The film brings together a group of very young aspiring performers who attend a casting to study at school.
Of the 40 who pass the first round, only 12 will be chosen, including Stella (magnificent Nadia Tereszkiewicz as Bruni Tedeschi's alter ego), a girl from a good family who has a complicated love relationship with Etiènne, a rebellious spirit a la Marlon Brando. who becomes an actor to please his mother and cannot avoid suicidal impulses.
The film reflects with burning passion the hunger to experience new things of this group that also includes a pregnant woman and a 19-year-old boy who has just become a father. Suzanne Lindon, daughter of Vincent Lindon, later president of the jury of the official section, also has a brief role. They all travel to New York to study for a season at Lee Strasberg's academy. There is a desire to enjoy life, to loosen up with the theater, to dance and drink, to be ambitious, but they are no strangers to the ravages of AIDS and heroin that marked that time.
"At one point in my life, around the age of 35, I was afraid of depending on others, that nothing would come to me. The possibility of writing, of telling my own stories, opened up a new horizon in my life, gave me independence and that has been vital for my mental health", commented the actress and director, who aspires for the Palme d'Or for the second time - the first was in 2013 with A castle in Italy - with her fifth feature film behind the camera.
Les Amandiers is partly reminiscent of the romantic drama The souvenir, by Joanna Hogg, although the director points out that she was basically inspired by the works of John Cassavetes, who made the actors see, but above all in Panic in Needle Park by Jerry Schatzberg, with Al Pacino starring in a harsh story about the world of drugs. She has also mentioned Chekhov, since in the film the actors prepare a montage of Platonov, by the Russian playwright.
The truth is that Bruni Tedeschi is inclined to portray themes from her own personal and professional life in her films and in her second feature film, Actresses, she was already delving into theatrical terrain. For the role of the complicated and demanding Chéreau, whom he portrays in a scene as a homosexual stalker and cocaine addict, he has chosen his fetish actor Louis Garrel, who fully exploits the ego of the French director who died of lung cancer at the age of 68. Quite a tribute.
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