With “The True Family”, director Fabien Gorgeart is inspired by a very personal story. It features, among others, Mélanie Thierry and Félix Moati, both heartbreaking on screen. Encounter.
It’s a story similar to his. In La Vraie famille, his second feature film, Fabien Gorgeart portrays a foster family that has to part with a child. He, too, grew up with a little boy who had to find his biological parents. “I’ve been trying to tell this experience for 25 years”, reveals the director.
Encouraged by his producer, Marie Dubas, the filmmaker launches and shares his experience with this moving film carried by an excellent cast: Mélanie Thierry, Félix Moati, Lyes Salem or even Gabriel Pavie, who plays Simon, 6 years old. At the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival, in August 2021, The True Family captivates the spectators. He was awarded twice with the Valois of the jury and that of the best actress.
Although it is part of the pure tradition of melodrama, the film avoids its pitfalls with characters without Manichaeism. Mélanie Thierry plays a woman at the head of a loving family who raises a little boy from 18 months to 6 years old. Felix Moati, he embodies his biological father. A young widower trying to rebuild himself. If one must unlearn how to be a mother, the other must reclaim his role as a father.
“I was devastated at the end of the script readingspear Melanie Thierry. However, I never cry when I read a script. There was something so sincere. It’s lived from the inside so it doesn’t cheat.” In the film, she wears the role which is directly inspired by the director’s mother. “It’s a lot of responsibility, I was not calm”, she adds.
Cedric Sartore
Félix Moati and Mélanie Thierry in “The True Family”.
Félix Moati, for his part, did not know that the story was autobiographical, even if “the ground of truth was obvious.” “What I find very beautiful in this film is that all the characters have their reasonshe says. This explains the melancholy, the grief and this powerlessness for the spectator to take sides.”
Throughout the story, Fabien Gorgeart takes care to respect a gray area: “There is love everywhere and yet this story remains complex. Mistakes are made on both sides.” For the filmmaker, the “real family” does not exist : “It’s just a constantly changing cell.”
Cedric Sartore
Gabriel Pavie is a revelation in the film.
Three cinema classics inspired the film: Robert Benton’s Kramer vs. Kramer, Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid and… AND Steven Spielberg’s Extra-Terrestrial. “This story is that of ETlaunches the director. We welcome someone into our home, we become attached to them, we create an almost supernatural bond with them and we have to let them go..”
Many elements are reminiscent of the sci-fi classic: the decor of the housing estate, the red hooded jacket of one of the characters, a scene on a bicycle… “My desire for cinema and to tell this personal story was born the day I discovered ET., continues the filmmaker before adding, with a smile on his face: Un foster family also means welcoming an extra-terrestrial.”
Interview by Thomas Desroches, in Angoulême, in August 2021.
The True Familyin theaters February 16, 2022.