Every day, AlloCiné recommends a film to (re)watch on TV. Tonight: a feminist road trip.
Written by screenwriter Callie Khouri in 1991, Thelma and Louise tells the story of two women — played by Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon respectively — whose weekend excursion turns into a runaway across the United States. Ode to freedom, rejection of patriarchy, female emancipation… difficult to sell the project at the time. Attached to the production, Ridley Scott struggles to find a director and comes up against a succession of refusals from the studios. Falling in love with the two revolutionary heroines, he decided to direct the film himself.
During the auditions, he gives his chance to a young actor still unknown: a certain Brad Pitt. The latter has been trying to make himself known in the profession for ten years, obtaining small roles in the cinema (Sens unique) and on television (Dallas, 21 Jump Street). But it is a sulphurous advertisement for Levi’s jeans that allows him to stand out in the middle of show business.
His appearance as a sexy hitchhiker in Thelma and Louise finally allows him to emerge from anonymity and attract the attention of the public. His love scene with Geena Davis propels him among the new sex symbols of American cinema. From then on, the filmmakers are interested in him. The following year, Robert Redford offered him an important role in And in the middle flows a river, which definitively launched his career.
Note that Brad Pitt will be playing Bullet Train alongside Aaron Taylor-Johnson on August 3. An explosive cocktail of humor and action directed by David Leitch, this is the eighth collaboration between the actor and the director.
Thelma and Louise by Ridley Scott with Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel…
From 16 years old
Tonight on Arte at 8:50 p.m.