On the occasion of the release of “Flo”, here are five things to know about this biopic dedicated to the famous and late sailor Florence Arthaud.
What is it about ? Known as “the little bride of the Atlantic”, Florence Arthaud was above all a great sailor. His exceptional record, and unique in this male universe, reached its peak with his victory in the Route du Rhum in 1990.
Beyond these exploits, FLO tells the incredible destiny of a fiercely free woman who – after a road accident which almost cost her her life – decides to reject her bourgeois environment and the life that had been mapped out for her, to live your dreams to the fullest.
Alain Delon’s goddaughter
Director Géraldine Danon, who for the occasion is directing her first feature film with Flo, is the daughter of the famous producer Raymond Danon and the goddaughter of Alain Delon. At the beginning of the 2010s, she planned to produce a biopic recounting the last ten years of Romy Schneider’s life (notably the filming of La Passante du Sans-Souci, a project led by the actress and begun in October 1981, shortly after after the tragic death of his son).
The legendary actress was in a relationship with Delon and, among other things, played alongside him in the cult film La Piscine. Ultimately, things did not materialize and it was Florence Arthaud’s journey that Géraldine Danon would focus on a few years later.
Birth of “Flo”
Géraldine Danon was considering making a film about Florence Arthaud before her tragic death in 2015 in a helicopter crash on the set of a reality TV show in Argentina: “Before leaving on this disastrous shoot, Florence had two projects which kept her very busy during the last three years of her life. Firstly ‘The Women’s Odyssey’ which was to bring together female sailors from all over the world in the Mediterranean and which would have allowed her to pass on her love of sailing but also her lifelong struggle: the place of women in the world of sailing.”
“Then, Florence wanted to make a film about her life. She talked to me a lot about it, offering to work with her, but at the time, I spent all my time at sea filming my documentaries… When she died, I didn’t I didn’t think about it anymore, until I read ‘The Sea and Beyond’ by Yann Queffélec. It was like a revelation: the scent of Florence was there… Her extremism, her fury of live was transpiring on every page and I said to myself that obviously we had to make a film about this very romantic destiny”confides the filmmaker, adding:
“I therefore bought the rights to Yann’s book with the desire to detach myself from it, while working with him on this very free adaptation as I say at the beginning of the film…”
Laura Poupon Stéphane Caillard
The choice Stéphane Caillard
Stéphane Caillard plays Florence Arthaud. Géraldine Danon chose her while doing tests, after having cast several actresses. The filmmaker had a meeting with her in a café and, as soon as she saw her enter, knew that she would be perfect in Florence’s shoes: “We had already spoken on the phone and I asked her if I wasn’t bothering her and she told me that she had a 2-year-old daughter, so she had been ‘on deck’ for a while . I saw it as an excellent omen! With Stéphane, we talked a lot about the character.”
“I tried to bring her everything I knew about Florence and all the colors of her that I wanted to find on the screen. She then worked on her own, drawing on readings, interviews, everything what she was able to find. All this work having been accomplished upstream so then, on the set, things were quite fluid. Stéphane had the ability to be able to embody Florence from the age of 17 to the end of her life! We used very little prosthetics or makeup, preferring to change his posture, his gait or his voice according to the age of the character.”
Unaccustomed to the sea, Stéphane Caillard took a sailing course before and during filming: two advisors were by his side (the filmmaker’s husband Philippe Poupon and Philippe Monnet) to teach him the right gestures: “Stéphane amazed us because she quickly became very comfortable on boats, whether monohulls or trimarans like “Flo”. She performs all the maneuvers in the film. She is the one in particular who climbs the mast . I believe that she and I had a real bond of trust so Stéphane dared everything…”recalls Géraldine Danon.
Filming at sea
Flo was filmed in Cape Town in South Africa, in Saint-Mandrier in the Mediterranean, off the coast of La Trinité and Concarneau in Brittany, in Guadeloupe around Les Saintes and in Normandy. The shots took place at sea and not in the studio. Géraldine Danon remembers: “There were days when we were constantly passing from one boat to another in a sort of quite epic frenzy. The beautiful stars of Florence must have been watching over us because no one got hurt, we didn’t drop any camera at sea and the weather was with us from start to finish…”
The filming was also intimate for Géraldine Danon: her husband Philippe Poupon helmed the trimaran in the film and her two children appear on the screen: “Wolf our son with Titouan Lamazou plays the role of his father and Marion our daughter with Philippe plays Florence as a child and I film the sailors I know best and love. This film is very precious to me because it was a real battle for it to exist. We had to find the right producer in Manuel Munz, whose constant and respectful support was essential.”
“The filming was not easy with many emblematic boats to find. We managed to bring the ‘Pierre 1er’ from Florence which was forgotten in the Philippines, belonging to a Frenchman from Hong Kong. We renamed it ‘Flo’… Philippe Brillault agreed to go get it and bring it back to us but on the way, it was attacked by pirates between Somalia and Yemen! Fortunately, the ship arrived in time for the Route du Rhum during which Philippe Poupon ran, while transporting it to Guadeloupe where we needed it!”
“We also filmed aboard ‘L’Argade’ which is a boat that Florence loved, which she had painted pink, from which she fell into the sea in 2011… On the other hand, we had to have replicas of the ‘Argade’ made. Biotherm’, ‘Petrouchka’, ‘L’Xpérimental’, ’33 export’.”
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Love stories
Géraldine Danon also chose to show on screen the love stories of Florence Arthaud and in particular that with Olivier de Kersauson (played by Alexis Michalik): “Florence was a lover of life, as we have said, but above all a lover! She was even a very blue flower, while being a very seasoned and extremely gifted sailor. It is a paradox that she totally claimed to be elsewhere! In the film, I tried to show some of these men who mattered in her life.”
“Jean-Claude Parisis, the first to introduce her to the sea, with whom she made her first Atlantic crossing on the ‘Petrouchka’. Then, I decided to make Olivier de Kersauson, the sailor of the sailors and to make them experience a great love story… This sentence at the end of the film is there to indicate that we respect everyone’s private life. Olivier is an extremely modest man and he is not in the habit of to express about his love life. But he obviously knows about what we did…”