Mara Taquin: “Making cinema seemed totally inaccessible to me”

Guest of our show Entree des artistes, the Belgian actress looked back on her journey but also the way in which she embraced the role of a young burned-out intern that she plays with mastery in the body-horror Sanguine.

Mara Taquin is this week’s guest on Artist Entrance. The Belgian actress who we notably saw as Isabelle Huppert’s daughter in The Syndicalist by Jean-Paul Salomé or opposite Fabrice Luchini in The Little One by Guillaume Nicloux returned to her arrival on her debut as an actress which she had not planned.

“In high school, I was in an arts major not because I wanted to do theater or cinema but just because I was very bad at school. It was the only way I found to achieve the equivalent of the baccalaureate in Belgium. And then, one day, a director passed by my high school and asked me to do a casting for her graduation short film. I went and got the role. But this world of cinema seemed so inaccessible to me that even after this first experience, I never told myself that it was going to lead to anything. So I went backpacking to work in Portugal for 5 months. That’s when I was called back for a series in Belgium and it all really started.”

His very first role on the big screen will take place three years after his debut in front of the camera, in 2019, in front of the camera of Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, in Exceptional :

“It was one of my first castings in Paris. I remember getting lost in the metro and calling my partner at the time in tears and panic. This panic, this stage fright, I still had after being chosen. But Eric and Olivier have this strength to unite around them. They know how to put you at ease very quickly and they make you understand that you are part of their troupe. And suddenly your stress disappears.”

Mara Taquin hits the screen this week in SanguineMarion’s first feature film The Coroller. A body horror movie, cousin of Severe by Julia Ducournau and The Substance by Coralie Fargeat in which she plays a young beginner in the emergency room, overwhelmed by the influx of patients her age with unexplained symptoms that she will discover on her own body. A burned-out character who echoed what she had just gone through in her own life.

“I myself experienced burnout after losing someone very close to me. I had been shooting 3 films a year for around ten years. And I decided to stop. For a year, I went through my grief. And then, one day, my agent called me to tell me about the casting of Sanguine. I went a little backwards. I even sabotaged myself a little. I arrived at this first audition saying: “I’m sorry, I’m coming out of a complicated period, I’m very fragile, but I’m going to do the best I can”. On the way out, I called my agent, certain that I would never get this role. But I was called back for a second round. And then I told myself that I was going to show them that I am a war machine. Because I loved this scenario, especially the fact that in Sanguinethe genre serves the political purpose behind the film, not the other way around.”

Sanguine. By Marion The Coroller. With Mara Taquin, Karin Viard, Kim Higelin… Duration: 1h43. In theaters