Marilou Aussilloux: “Guédiguian’s cinema takes me back to my childhood”

Guest of our show Entree des artistes, the actress, masterful in the title role of A Woman Today, talks about her very strong bond with the filmmaker and his films.

We discovered it in 2020 in Goodbye idiots. But Marie Aussilloux finds with A woman today the first leading role of his career. And this under the direction of Robert Guédiguian, a filmmaker with whom she has had a strong bond since childhood, as she explained to us in the program Entree des artistes:

“For me, who comes from Narbonne, in my youth there were few French films in which I could spontaneously project myself or find figures of my loved ones. And when I begin to discover Robert’s cinema, which we watched as a family, everything seems familiar to me. I will grow up with his films. And for a long time, the only one I didn’t see of him was… Marius and Jeannettehis greatest success! I discovered it at 19 in the first year of the Conservatory and Ariane Ascaride shocked me. I’m going to make this poster my computer wallpaper. And I still can’t believe I had the chance to be part of this family.”

His first meeting with him dates back to 2024 with The Thieving Magpie in a role that Anaïs Demoustier, one of the members of the “Guédiguian family, was initially supposed to play before having to give it up for scheduling reasons:

“But it was a meeting that I dared to provoke. I had written a letter to Robert a few years earlier to tell him all my admiration and to what extent his films had been benchmarks for me. I then had the chance to meet him with Ariane Ascaride. And then I played with Ariane in Under the carpet by Camille Japy. And it was after seeing me in this film that Robert called me to ask me to take over the role of Anaïs. The first day, I was very stressed but I felt like I knew them because I had grown up with their films, so I felt like family, even if they didn’t know me! (laughs)”

Two years later, Marie Aussilloux plays the title role ofA woman today. Juliette, a working girl dedicated to her job where she excels, whose world collapses the day she is sexually assaulted by one of her colleagues. The actress wonderfully gives substance to the nuances of this character and takes on a new dimension in this second collaboration with Guédiguian.

“At the end of a shoot, we all hope that the director calls you back. Over the years, however, I have learned not to hope for anything, to welcome everything that comes. But when Robert asked me if I wanted to collaborate with him again, I obviously immediately answered yes. He then sent me the script forA woman today without telling me the name of the character he had thought of for me. So I read it while looking for who he had thought of entrusting to me. I didn’t think for a second that it would be the title role. And when I close the script, I leave him a message telling him how much I liked it and asking him in which character he saw me. And there, he answers me JULIETTE in capital letters. It really took me half an hour to realize the gift he was giving me.”

A woman today. By Robert Guédiguian. With Marilou Aussilloux, Ariane Ascaride, Jean-Pierre Darroussin… Duration: 2h02. Released October 21, 2026