Honoré puts finishing touches to La belle personne
Parisian teenagers are popular subject matter in French films at the moment. After the secondary school featured in Laurent Cantet’s The Class [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Carole Scotta
interview: Laurent Cantet
film profile], high school students are the protagonists of Christophe Honoré’s La belle personne (“The Beautiful Person”). Currently in post-production and set for initial release on television, the feature will be launched in theatres in the autumn after its broadcast on Arte and possible presentation at a major festival.
A contemporary adaptation of French literary classic The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette (1678), La belle personne stars Louis Garrel, Léa Seydoux, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet and Esteban Carvajal Alegria. The cast also includes Anaïs Demoustier, Agathe Bonitzer, Simon Truxillo, Jeanne Audiard, Jacob Lyon, Tanel Derard, Esther Garrel, Clothilde Hesme and Alice Butaud.
Co-written by the director and Gilles Taurand, the film retraces the misadventures of Junie (Seydoux, mademoiselle de Chartres in the book). Aged 16, the young girl changes high school in the middle of the academic year, following the death of her mother.
She joins a new class that includes her cousin Esteban, who introduces her to his group of friends. Junie is soon courted by the boys in the group and becomes the fiancée of the quietest young man, Grégoire (the book’s Prince of Cleves). But soon she falls overwhelmingly in love, with Nemours (Duke of Nemours in the novel), her Italian teacher (Garrel).
But their passion is doomed as Junie, not wishing to surrender to her feelings, refuses to give in to happiness, which in her eyes is just an illusion.
Produced by Arte France and Scarlett Production, La belle personne is Honoré’s fifth feature after Seventeen Times Cécile Cassard (2002), My Mother [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2004), Inside Paris [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (2006) and Love Songs [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (in competition at Cannes in 2007).
The title will be released domestically by Le Pacte, who are also handling international sales.
(Translated from French)
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