interview - MARIE-JOSÉE CROZE
Spell Bound
Playing a speech therapist in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly meant that most of Marie-Josée Croze’s performance consisted of reading the alphabet aloud for the camera. So how did she make it so interesting?
By Natalia Wysocka
Marie-Josée Croze arrives for her interview at the Toronto International Film Festival looking chic and radiant. It’s been three years since the Canadian actor left Montreal for Paris, and she’s been in demand ever since, snagging roles in Laurent Tirard’s comedy Mensonges et trahisons et plus si affinités..., Guillaume Canet’s Ne le dis à personne and, best known to North American audiences, Steven Spielberg’s Munich.
Born in Montreal, Croze first grabbed attention (and a Genie Award) seven years ago thanks to director Denis Villeneuve’s Maelström. Croze played a successful young woman whose life falls apart after she accidentally kills a man with her car.
Two years later she was cast as a drug addict in Denys Arcand’s The Barbarian Invasions. Even though it was a relatively small role, Croze surprised everyone by winning Best Actress at Cannes.
Her new film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, had its North American Premiere here in Toronto the night before this interview, and the first thing Croze wants to know is, “Do you think the audience at the premiere liked the film?”
They did.
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The real-life drama was directed by Julian Schnabel based on the memoirs of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor of French Elle
magazine. After suffering a stroke, Bauby (played by Mathieu Amalric in
the film) was completely paralyzed and left unable to speak. Croze
plays Henriette, the speech therapist who teaches Bauby how to
communicate using the only part of his body he can control — his left
eye. With a pattern of blinks Bauby eventually dictates his entire life
story to Henriette.
“What I had to enact was very precise, very
complicated,” explains Croze. “After all, I am the one who has to
explain to the audience what is happening throughout the whole story.
And as I spent my time repeating the alphabet, I had to try and find a
way to do it in a way that was palatable. And that was difficult.”
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In
fact, half of her time on screen is spent enunciating the letters of
the alphabet in a loud, clear voice, waiting to see if her patient
responds by blinking.
And since a large part of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is filmed from Bauby’s perspective, the audience spends much of the film fixed on Croze as she teaches him to communicate.
“There was no one in front of me,” says Croze. “I was speaking directly into the camera. And sometimes, if I got too close, I would see myself in the lens. It was difficult because I did not have the pleasure of feeding off an exchange with another actor. It was exhausting. I had the impression I was wearing myself out from the inside. And Julian is very demanding too, he wanted to make sure that every scene was lively.”
Yet, despite the demands, Croze doesn’t regret taking the role.
“Julian has done three films: Basquiat, Before Night Falls and this one,” she says. “I think he is a great filmmaker. When it’s time for me to decide whether or not I want to work on a project, I have to ask myself if I will get along with the director. If we speak the same language, have the same sensibility and if I like what he has previously done, there is no reason for me not to accept. And that is what happened with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. In the end it is a beautiful film that I love and am very happy to represent.”
Natalia Wysocka is the deputy editor of Famous Québec.