Presented at Cannes and finally in the cinema, A young girl who is well is the very first feature film by actress Sandrine Kiberlain, centered on the last carefree summer of a Jewish teenager under the Occupation. Intimate, personal and very impactful…
She waited for the right story, the vital, personal story to tell. That of a Jewish family under the German Occupation, but especially that of a young girl discovering her first passions and emotions as a teenager while advancing unconsciously towards the Horror that awaits her.
A young girl who is well is a sunny, very intimate film, which depicts the war without showing it, and leaves the occupied French terrain off-screen while it reveals the youth and unconsciousness (in the strict sense) of a young artist whose life drive will be hampered.
In Cannes, last July, we met the now director Sandrine Kiberlain and her revelation Rebecca Marder, an actress of timeless beauty and crazy charm. Both were delighted to give an interview together for the first time and spoke to us about their collaboration with passion. Meeting (video above then comment below).
HelloCine: “How would you define this heroine “unconscious” of what she is going through and this, in more ways than one?
Sandrine Kiberlain : “We are 70 years ahead of this young girl who is going towards life. She cannot presume what could possibly look like a drama. A drama that we could not imagine and in which we still finds it hard to believe. She is moving towards the discovery of the world, of others, of her passion, of her love. Her fainting betrays something she has a presentiment of. I always wanted to be on the move with her because it it is she who takes the adults in her movement. The adults are more at a standstill.”
Rebeccar Marder : “It’s also the insolence of that age. This heroine looks a lot like Sandrine and her story is quite timeless.”
Sandrine Kiberlain : Yes at that age, I became an actress. I had the impression of being reborn with the theater and when I wrote, I wanted to tell this heroine who brought me back to my student years, where I had the impression of discovering the world, life, to free myself from my parents, even if I was in a loving family, which I also wanted to stage.
The real bias of the film was to talk about the war without showing it…
The film says a lot of things without saying them frontally but also shows without showing with a lot of off-camera…
Sandrine Kiberlain : “It was the real bias of the film: to show the war without showing it. To dwell on this girl, her momentum, as a point of view to talk about the worst through the best. I had given film references to my cinematographer and I told him to watch Nanni Moretti’s The Son’s Room because we are so happy with them that what they go through next is even more unbearable. happiness so that the worst is even more poignant.”
This subject has been discussed a lot and I also know that it is very personal to you. What did you want to highlight yourself, especially with the free character of the grandmother?
Sandrine Kiberlain : “I had testimonies and meetings of women in my life who went through this era or other eras with a crazy instinct, which was not necessarily in line with what had to be done. The men I knew me, were more concerned with respecting the rules, the laws and thus had the impression of saving their family, by being exemplary.
The grandmother refuses to give up, to be afraid, she refuses the rules, to be considered different. My question is still there: what would have been my attitude, my state? Before it changes. What do you do when you feel that something serious is going to happen? How do we react, how do we save?
In my family, women saved the family by a miraculous instinct not to go to the town hall at some point because they did not feel it. In the worst as in the best and the love story of the film also testifies, life is that: to be at the origin of what happens to us. It’s a film that talks about all of us. We can all live tomorrow something that stops us in full swing. But how does it happen just before it changes?…”
Discover this “Young girl who is well” in pictures: