In the cinema, Simple as Sylvain is Monia Chokri’s 3rd film. Punctuated by its retro soundtrack and its exhilarating staging, this comedy tells the story of Sophia, a woman in a relationship who will rediscover herself thanks to her meeting with Sylvain. Focus.
Simple like Sylvaincurrently and exclusively in cinemas.
WHAT DOES IT TALK ABOUT ?
Sophia is a philosophy professor in Montreal and has lived as a couple with Xavier for 10 years. Sylvain is a carpenter in the Laurentians and must renovate their country house. When Sophia meets Sylvain for the first time, it’s love at first sight. Opposites attract, but can it last?
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A PROJECT THAT DOES NOT DATE FROM YESTERDAY…
Revealed in front of Xavier Dolan’s camera a little over 10 years ago, in Les Amours Imaginaires and Laurence Anyways, Monia Chokri started her career as a director with a short film in 2013 (Quelqu’un d’extraordinaire), before to tackle feature films from 2019.
Memento
After Babysitter in 2022, she is back with her 3rd film, Simple comme Sylvain, in which she addresses the theme of couples and love across social classes. A subject that she had in mind as she finished shooting her very first feature film.
“I started structuring it when I was finishing My Brother’s Wife, so it’s been almost five years. At the time of my first feature, I was still a bit of an actress, and then there was Babysitter. I took breaks (…). I see this time I took as an ally.”
BEST FRIENDS BEHIND AND IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA
To play her heroine, a forty-year-old living an orderly life and whose heart is carried away by a vibrant and unexpected love passion, Monia Chokri chose Magalie Lépine-Blondeau.
A very well-known actress in Canada, whether thanks to her roles on screen or in the theater, she notably played in the play La Nuit where Laurier-Gaudreault awoke, by Michel Marc Bouchard, and in its adaptation in series signed Xavier Dolan.
Memento
An actress that Monia Chokri knows very well, since in addition to having directed her in her first short and her first feature film, the director is also her best friend in life. Far from bothering her, this relationship on the contrary helped the filmmaker in her production.
“I am still quite directive, I align the actors to a certain tone, and we rehearse a lot during filming. But with Magalie, we have the same tastes, the work is easy.
I also wanted to leave her quite freeshe says. She has exceptional mastery, and she trusted me, she really wanted to defend this project, this character, this story..”
FILMING SEXUALITY AT A WOMAN’S LEVEL
If it addresses questions of love through the prism of philosophy, and allows us to enlighten us on the meanings of notions such as the couple or desire, Simple comme Sylvain also gives a large place to bodies.
Living in a separate room with the man whose life she has shared for 10 years, Sophia suffers a devastating shock when she meets Sylvain. An attraction and an evolution in her way of approaching sexuality that Monia Chokri makes appear unvarnished on the screen, but with a fairly new perspective.
Memento
“There are so many sex scenes in cinema… They never really interest me, we always treat them from a graphic point of view. For me, they are only good if they advance the story, she admits bluntly.
It’s quite complicated, because we were educated by men’s vision of eroticism and sensuality. We always say that a woman’s body is sensual, and that a man’s is not sexy. It’s yet another injunction to expose our female bodies.”
“My challenge was not to show the actress’s body, I wanted it to be her point of view. We then have very tight shots of Sylvain’s body. In the cunnilingus scene, she is also the one in charge. (…) So I treated the sex scenes like dialogue sequences.”