Appearances: what are the differences between the book and the film?

Released in cinemas in 2020, the movie called Appearancesworn by Benjamin Biolay and Karin Viard, will be broadcast for the first time unencrypted on French television on Sunday September 18, 2022, from 9:05 p.m. on France 2. Realized by Marc Fitoussithis feature film takes place in Vienna, and depicts the sentimental tribulations of a forty-something couple, embodied by Benjamin Biolay and Karin Viard. Eve has just realized that her husband Henri is cheating on her with Tina, their son’s teacher, performed by Laetitia Dosch. Moreover Jonas, a young man wearing an electronic bracelet, becomes disturbing and harasses Eve. The latter succeeded in hacking into Tina’s emails, and takes revenge on her with this means to discredit her publicly.

A perverse gear develops between these four characters which will lead to a drama. This feature film is in fact the cinematographic adaptation of a book by Karin Alvtegen. “I first wanted to write other original stories. If I embarked on an adaptation, it would rather be in the field of thrillers, in particular with an author that I really liked, Patricia Highsmith. But all the rights to Highsmith being held by Sydney Pollack, it was therefore difficult to imagine such a project. Christine Gozlan nevertheless continued her research and discovered this Swedish thriller that could resemble Highsmith. She asked me to read it to see what I thought. I read it, I had reservations, but it is precisely for this reason that I felt free to adapt it in my own way. I told myself that I wouldn’t be crushed by the weight of loyalty“, said Marc Fitoussi.

Appearances: the story of the original novel took place in Sweden and not in Austria

Of course, the director took some artistic liberties with the original work before adapting it to the big screen. The story of the novel takes place in Stockholm and does not speak at all of the French expatriate community. This is the story of a woman who discovers that her husband is cheating on her.she can’t bring herself to face him and prefers to go through side roads to try to get him back. “In the novel, there are already sending emails. What I found problematic was that no context explained the wife’s silence vis-à-vis her husband or her inability to conceive of a separation. Hence my idea of ​​inventing this milieu of grand bourgeois expats, the prestigious profession of the husband… This side of a closed circle of notables took on a Chabrolian aspect which I liked. The French provincial bourgeoisie today has a very dated, dusty side to it, and I found that the most exciting and contemporary closed environment was an expat community.“underlined Marc Fitoussi.

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