Marcello Mastroianni sometimes had funny theories. Like the one according to which people with long noses, including him, catch a cold more easily. His daughter Chiara having inherited his features, he used to worry. Also, this May 19, 1996, the actor may be at the Cannes Film Festival, giving interviews, presenting the new film by director Raoul Ruiz in competition, he is nothing but a daddy hen anxious to see his beloved daughter catching cold. Chiara Mastroianni, with whom he shares the poster of Three lives and one death, prepares to climb the stairs in a black dress that is too open in her eyes, barely covered with a tulle scarf. Especially since the actress has just announced that she is pregnant with her first child (with the sculptor Pierre Torreton).
He who has known everything, galas and pharaonic premieres, also cares about the looks that will immediately turn to him and Chiara, the daughter of the couple he once formed with Catherine Deneuve. Modest, he does not want his private life to eclipse Raoul Ruiz, a surrealist Chilean living in France, with whom he was so happy to work. And his funny film, which has for voiceover that of Pierre Bellemare, and in which he shot with the young Melvil Poupaud, Ruiz’s favorite actor, and former lover of Chiara Mastroianni.
But the picture is too beautiful. When the daughter and the father, who are making their first public appearance together that day, walk side by side on the red carpet, the Festival is breathless. The emotion crosses the onlookers, the photographers and even Francis Ford Coppola, president of the jury. Everything comes together: the incarnation of the great years of a vanished Italian cinema, the shyness of a young actress, the pride of one for the other, the love between a 23-year-old girl and her 71-year-old father. years, who will die a few months later.
A large common filmography
Almost thirty years later, this Tuesday, May 16, the guests of the opening ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival will climb the same steps, pass under the giant poster of this 76e edition, illustrated by a photo of Catherine Deneuve taken at the end of the 1960s. Chiara Mastroianni will take the stage of the Louis Lumière auditorium as mistress of ceremonies. In the process, will be projected Jeanne du Barry, by Maïwenn (in theaters the same day), notably with Melvil Poupaud. Three days later, it will be the actress’s turn to walk the red carpet for Eureka, by the Argentinian Lisandro Alonso, with Viggo Mortensen, presented in the Cannes Première selection. And, in the same category, will be screened on May 24, at the same time as its release on screens, Love and forests, by Valérie Donzelli, with Melvil Poupaud. Finally, on the 27th, Chiara Mastroianni will be at the helm of the closing ceremony.
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