GARANCE
The Making of Garance (Another Day): Jeanne Herry, tuned into reality
This is the first time that Jeanne Herry has been selected for Cannes, where she is presenting Garance (Another Day) in Competition. After the outstanding Pupille (In Safe Hands) and Je verrai toujours vos visages (All Your Faces), the director returns with a story spanning eight years about an alcoholic actress, Garance, played by Adèle Exarchopoulos.
Jeanne Herry never writes something “out of thin air.” She draws on the real world, people’s voices and their life stories. In her previous films, she met with judges, educators, and foster families, using their stories as her raw material that she then reworked into a choral narrative. For Garance (Another Day), her process was slightly different, but was still rooted in this attentiveness to reality. It was based on interviews with a young alcoholic who told her about her journey to recovery. Jeanne Herry adds a more personal dimension to this documentary material, drawing on her own past as an actor. Like her heroine, she attended a music conservatory. She is familiar with the constant anticipation, the need to be chosen, desired, and noticed.
There is a wonderful irony in the film in that Adèle Exarchopoulos plays an actress who is either invisible or struggling, reliant on directors’ whims, even though, in actual fact, she is one of the most in-demand French actresses of her generation.
With its extremely well-written dialogue, the film uses ellipses, a narrative voice, and a musical theme to create the sensation of moving through Garance’s life, rather than simply telling her story.
In particular, alcohol almost becomes a character in its own right. It’s always there — in the corner of the frame, in a glass that’s filled at a party without thinking…Jeanne Herry avoids all the common clichés about alcoholism and instead she shows the denial, the banal nature of the danger, and the way Garance convinces herself that she still has it under control. Even when she agrees to seek help, she often seems to do it to reassure others rather than for herself.
Playing opposite Adèle, Sara Giraudeau brings a deeply moving tenderness and stability to the role. The Adèle/Sara duo works wonderfully, and their relationship becomes the emotional heart of the film, a love story between two women based on being there, being non-judgmental and being kind, with a key line: “Fragility and sensitivity are worth their weight in gold.”
