Go to Les Cyclades with the new comedy by Marc Fitoussi (Pauline Détective, Dix pour cent…). Laure Calamy and Olivia Côte take us on a joyful road movie, on the theme of the Big Blue! Meeting with the team.
As teenagers, Blandine and Magalie were inseparable. Years passed and they lost sight of each other. As their paths cross again, they decide to take the trip they’ve always dreamed of together. Direction Greece, its sun, its islands but also its galleys because the two former best friends now have a very different approach to holidays… and to life!
After The Origin of Evil by Sébastien Marnier and Annie Colère by Blandine Lenoir, Laure Calamy returns to the register of pure comedy. The actress revealed to the general public thanks to the series Ten percent is on view this Wednesday, January 11 of the Cyclades by Marc Fitoussi.
The Cyclades is a crazy road movie (or rather “boat & island movie”), in which two childhood friends who had lost sight of each other will find themselves in a rather improbable way. From twists and turns, they will find themselves going on vacation together and criss-crossing several Greek islands.
A warm and sunny comedy in the image of the landscapes filmed, and its performers. The tandem Laure Calamy – Olivia Côte (You women, Pupilles …) sparks. Add to this tandem Kristin Scott Thomas in an unexpected look and role, and you have one of the tastiest French comedies of this beginning of the year.
Memento Distribution Olivia Cote and Laure Calamy
On the occasion of the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival, AlloCiné was able to speak with the director and screenwriter Marc Fitoussi, and one of his main performers, Olivia Côte.
About the starting point of the film, in this case Le Grand Bleu and the cult around the film phenomenon, we questioned the tandem.
“Some time before I started writing, I happened to have traveled to the Cyclades, explains Marc Fitoussi. I stop in Amorgos and there, I discover that this island is entirely dedicated to Luc Besson’s film. Great change of scenery! The taverns broadcast images of it on the big screen, the music of Eric Serra is in all the hotels, even the café du port renamed with the name of the film. That the phenomenon persists beyond my generation amazes me. Something had to be done.”
“This island continues to fuel that successhe continues. But it is a pretext, it is above all to speak of a generation. This choice of film immediately places these two girls“.”It’s a film that crystallized an era“, completes Olivia Côte.
In addition to this starting point around the Big Blue, the film is based on a fairly universal idea, that of imagining the reunion between two friends who have lost sight of each other. “I wanted to talk about sorority, but between characters who don’t look alike“.”When it comes to sisterhood, sometimes you see people who are already in tune with their life choices. Here they are two very different women“, adds Marc Fitoussi.
The film also seduces in its way of borrowing from the codes of the “buddy movie” (film of friends, often based on a duo). If Marc Fitoussi does not speak of references strictly speaking, he had in memory the memory of beloved films, and often in various genres: “I obviously wanted to see duo films, if possible female, that I had liked: Thelma and Louise by Ridley Scott, whom I adore, but it’s such a drama that it wasn’t going to help me much to tell, for example, of Bijou’s arrival on a quad. I wanted to review Dangerous in all respects by Jonathan Demme, with Melanie Griffith and Jeff Daniels, because of their mismatched duo. In the end, I pay her a discreet tribute by making Laure wear the kind of African bracelets that Melanie Griffith wears in the film.
I also reviewed Sideways by Alexander Payne, because of the dissonant duo formed by Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church and We stole Jupiter’s thigh by Philippe de Broca because I might not have made this film in Greece without this film which I loved to see and see again when I was a child. Finally, I saw movies about the sorority again, including Everything that shines by Géraldine Nakache and Hervé Mimram. But, deep down, I realize that, as always, I don’t get much out of this research. We end up with his film and we make it“.
For the record, Les Cyclades has experienced casting changes, the filming period having been postponed. When redoing the casting, Marc Fitoussi took some time to find the actress playing the character of Blandine. “The actresses I contacted all wanted to play Magalie, happier, more hedonistic, and quite simply sexier. None saw the comic potential of the character of Blandine“, remembers Marc Fitoussi.
Marc Fitoussi finally turned to Laure Calamy for Magalie, and Olivia Côte for Blandine, more accustomed so far to supporting roles. “It’s the role I’ve had the most composition for in my entire acting career. It’s the opposite of who I am, of my energy. I felt like I was masked, like in mask classes!”, Olivia Côte is having fun at our microphone.
For Laure Calamy, “we guess that his fantasy is always tinged with drama. It’s too much to get so excited about everything, it hides something. I think we guess it’s not for pure hedonism“.
In his end credits, Marc Fitoussi also warmly thanks these two, “for the overflowing and generous suggestions of the actresses“.”The film has reinvented itself a lot, due to its casting“, specifies Marc Fitoussi. He notes for example the addition of small improvisations suggested by the actresses. “However, this involves additions. In its first version, the film was 2h30!“The film has been shortened, but the filmmaker has kept a certain number of suggestions, and underlines the good mood reigning on the set, despite the not always obvious weather conditions.
The Cyclades is released this Wednesday, January 11, 2023.
Interview at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival 2022