ONCE UPON A TIME… MARIUS AND JEANNETTE

Intervenants :

• Robert GUÉDIGUIAN, filmmaker
• Ariane ASCARIDE, actress, role of Jeannette
• Gérard MEYLAN, actor, role of Marius
• Jean-Pierre DARROUSSIN, actor, role of Dédé
• Jacques BOUDET, actor, role of Justin
• Malek HAMZAOUI, production manager
• Bernard SASIA, film editor
• Robert MARTELLI, historian
• Jean VIARD, sociologist

Portrait of a film: Marius and Jeannette is Robert Guédiguian’s seventh feature film. In Marseille’s northern districts, Marius, the keeper of a factory that is being dismantled, meets Jeannette, a supermarket cashier who has just been laid off. Jeannette is a single mother of two children; Marius has lost both of his children in a car accident. A touching social comedy, which shows that solidarity within a group of people, is the best defence against the toughest episodes of life. Selected at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, the film won the Louis-Delluc Prize and the César for Best Actress for Ariane Ascaride. With 2.5 million spectators, it made its auteur known to the general public.

Portrait of an era: In 1997, President Jacques Chirac dissolved the National Assembly unexpectedly, but the left party won the legislative elections. The socialist Lionel Jospin is appointed prime minister. Unemployment is at its highest, social inequalities are growing, and the far-right party is gaining ground in popular circles. Shot in Marseille, a city severely affected by the crisis and where tensions linked to immigration are strong, Marius and Jeannette perfectly captures this atmosphere.

Portrait of a filmmaker: Robert Guédiguian was born in 1953 in Marseille to an Armenian father and a German mother. His father worked in the dockyards. A sociologist by training, a long time militant with the PCF, and a politically committed filmmaker, Robert Guédiguian shoots almost all his films in Marseille and its surroundings with the same film crew and cast of actors. He defines himself as “a district filmmaker”, who makes “proximity films” with the working class world and working-class neighbourhoods of his native city.