Midwife on Arte: Catherine Deneuve and Catherine Frot imperial (review)
The two actresses were brought together on screen for the first time in this film by Martin Provost.
This Wednesday evening, Arte is rebroadcasting Sage femme (also visible in streaming on Arte.TV), a film by Martin Provost released in 2017 that Première recommends. Especially if you like its two main actresses, Catherine Deneuve and Catherine Frot! Our review:
Combining the two most popular Catherines in French cinema, no one had yet thought of it. It must be said that we are no further away than them: Catherine Frot the earthly side and programmatic filmography; has Catherine Deneuve the glamor and the dizzying career. It is precisely these contrasts that are nourished (sometimes a little mechanically) Martin Provost who wrote tailor-made roles for them.
The first plays a diligent midwife, living a home life. The second plays the fiery former mistress of her deceased father. Their unexpected reunion (the whimsical Béatrice, sick and unattached, invites herself into Claire’s life) provides the director of Séraphine and Violette with the opportunity to explore the issue of emancipation which is at the heart of his cinema.
Painless childbirth
The two women will obviously, it is the law of the genre, evolve in the right direction through contact with each other and question their femininity (the introduction of the character of Olivier Gourmet, in love with Claire, participates quite subtly), but this is not the real point of Provost who addresses a theme little treated in the cinema: that of love, full and complete, that we feel for a parent or a surrogate child. With small touches, with nuanced and progressive evidence, without resorting to the mania for explanatory flashbacks, the Belgian filmmaker manages to make us forget a few facilities to produce a gentle and peaceful film, less painful than one might have feared.
