Isabelle Huppert and Fabrice Luchini open the doors behind the scenes of their work in Par cœurs, followed by Benoit Jacquot in the heart of summer 2021 at the Festival d’Avignon. Experience them like you’ve never seen them before.
Avignon Festival, summer 2021. An actress, an actor, facing their role, their text, just before the performances. In front of Benoit Jacquot’s documentary camera, Isabelle Huppert and Fabrice Luchini at work.
Go behind the scenes of the preparation of actors, alongside Isabelle Huppert and Fabrice Luchini. This is what the documentary by Benoit Jacquot, By hearts, at the cinema this Wednesday offers.
Shot during the summer of 2021, the documentary takes place over a fairly tight period (2 days) in the middle of the Avignon Festival. It parallels two experiments, a large play in the Court of the Popes, and a single on stage led by Fabrice Luchini.
Diamond Films Fabrice Luchini in Avignon
By heart includes rare moments, actors shown without filter, in the work. For example, we can retain a sequence during which Isabelle Huppert has to fight with a line that she simply cannot memorize, in this case from the piece she has to play, The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov (“Misfortune seems so implausible to me that I even come to not even know what to think, I get lost in it“). The two actors also confide a lot on the road, talk about learning, the front, work, their doubts, stage fright, fatigue. Rare moments, far from promotional interviews.
The relationship established with the actors has a lot to do with it. Benoit Jacquot wanted to avoid a simple device that would consist of installing cameras everywhere. “There, we were in a kind of familiarity, even intimacy with them that should not be broken by any technical device. Isabella [Huppert] would have known how to manage that very well, but precisely, she would have managed. While in the movie, she doesn’t manage. She relies on us. Throughout the filming, by decision and by friendship, she was in a rare abandonment. And in his own way, Fabrice too. I knew they’d both be willing to let the situations drive them“, explains Benoit Jacquot in the film’s press kit.
Remember that Fabrice Luchini and Isabelle Huppert had both played under the direction of Benoit Jacquot, for Pas de scandale, and they will soon be reunited in the new film by François Ozon, My crime, which will be released on March 8, 2023.