PortraitWhile waiting for the new film by Nanni Moretti, “Tre Piani”, in competition at Cannes, she holds, in “Sous le ciel d’Alice”, in theaters on June 30, her first leading role in French. The Italian actress who feels “everywhere foreign” lives in the cinema with grace in all languages.
Suddenly, she kneels down and summons all the gods or saints who come to her mind, whether they are Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Maronites … Intertwined hands, Alice, Swiss expatriate in Beirut in the midst of the civil war for years 1970, puts all his faith in his request. May the conflict end, may her astrophysicist husband, her daughter, her family and her finally live in the stillness of a life of peace.
This scene from Under Alice’s sky, Chloé Mazlo’s first film, in theaters on June 30, lets unfold the play of its interpreter, Alba Rohrwacher. For the first time, the Italian actress is playing a leading role in French. And it is in French that she wishes to answer the interview, by video from her Roman apartment, where she appears in a zipped sweatshirt on a white T-shirt, hair tied up and face naked.
If she offers herself a foray with a French director after appearances at Nicolas Saada or Arnaud Desplechin, Alba Rohrwacher has shot with many Italian filmmakers, of all possible aesthetics: her sister, Alice Rohrwacher (in particular Wonders, Grand Prix at Cannes in 2014), Luca Guadagnino, Marco Bellocchio, Saverio Costanzo, Matteo Garrone or Nanni Moretti, with whom she will go to Cannes in July present Tre Piani in competition.
“I feel like a stranger everywhere, admits the one who recently finished filming The Lost Daughter, the debut film by American actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. Of course, my roots are Italian, but I am not fully comfortable anywhere, “half-blood”, as Elsa Morante writes in Arturo Island to talk about this uneasy teenager. It is not with me a neurosis but a kind of anxiety of the soul. The advantage is that this feeling makes you adaptable: since I’m not at home anywhere, it allows me to shoot everywhere. ”
A multilingual talent
Film buffs agree in praising his sense of rhythm, the complexity of his compositions, his malleable face. There remains a tension. How to pronounce this impossible name that he was advised to change at the beginning? “The Italians pronounce“ Rol-va-kèr ”, the Germans“ Ro-va-rrreur ”and you, the French,“ Ror-va-cheur ”. “ What about the Americans? ” Then… she laughs, we are closer to a “Wô-wâ-tcheu”! ” She puts up with it.
When Frédérique Moidon, her agent for France, called Alba Rohrwacher one day in 2018 to offer her three French projects, the over-solicited replied: ” Not now. “ “I was too busy. Then, I saw this postcard of a naive painting from Beirut and, on the back, a magnetic writing, like that of fairy tales. “ That of Chloé Mazlo. “She was my first and, frankly, only choice, explains the filmmaker. She has this timeless face, this lunar air with remnants of childhood, and this naturalness not always common among 40-year-old actresses. ” After reading the script, conversations convinced Alba Rohrwacher to shoot for seven weeks between Cyprus, Paris and Bry-sur-Marne.
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