portrait of a hidden star
 

PostED ON 16.10.2024

With a dynamic mix between gentleness and accelerations, documentary filmmaker Eugénie Grandval retraces the career of a cinema idol who remains fiercely independent: Bulle Ogier. 

© INA

This documentary, rich in both rare personal accounts and well-placed archival footage, fully reveals what it means to be an artist.

The subject: Portrait of a funny and beautiful girl, who claims she “became an actress by accident, by meeting people”. And indeed, Bulle Ogier has had many surprising encounters. Director Eugénie Grandval folds in all these elements to create a montage of archive footage, theatrical follies and interviews with “restless revolutionaries and agitators”, as Bulle Ogier's long-time pal Jean-Pierre Kalfon puts it, also interviewed for the occasion.

The method: The actress's mantra is not to invent things alone. Bulle Ogier “abhors actors who invent by themselves”. In favour of solidarity, she doesn’t believe that “one can create alone, I believe in working as part of a group”. It's one of the rules of the craft for this actress: there must be at least two people, from a duo to a whole troupe. And anything is possible.

Plus: Learn how the actress “accepts to be watched silently”, whereas her voice is so important. And how she moves so seamlessly from the role of a Geneva factory worker in Alain Tanner's The Salamander to that of a young consul’s wife who joins a hippy expedition in Barbet Schroeder's The Valley (Obscured by Clouds). It's a matter of “not restarting something you've already succeeded at”.

Virginie Apiou

Screening

Bulle Ogier, portrait d’une étoile cachée by Eugénie Grandval (Documentary, 2024, 1h10)
Institut Lumière (Villa) Wed 16 11:30am | Institut Lumière (Villa) Wed 16 11:45am