Histoires parallèles (Parallel Tales) © Carole Bethuel
Who is Adam Bessa, the excellent actor in Histoires parallèles (Parallel Tales)?
For his second film shot in France after Le Passé (The Past) (In Competition 2013), Asghar Farhadi enlisted Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Pierre Niney, and Vincent Cassel. He rounds off the star-studded cast of Histoires parallèles (Parallel Tales) with Adam Bessa a promising young actor in French cinema, whom we interviewed just before the Red Carpet Ceremony.
In Histoires parallèles (Parallel Tales), the French-Tunisian actor plays young Adam. This key character disrupts the life of a novelist, played by Isabelle Huppert. Her niece hired him to help the author in her daily routine, while she fantasizes about the lives of her neighbors in the building opposite to write her next novel. But the young man’s arrival distorts her perception and disrupts the project.
Histoires parallèles (Parallel Tales), is a film that takes place between two apartments that face each other. Isabelle Huppert writes in the first one, and in the other one, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, and Pierre Niney create sound effects. Adam Bessa is the link between these two spaces and the only actor to have scenes with everyone.
“At first, Asghar guided me a lot so that I could find the character’s complex blend of sweet and vicious,” recalls Adam Bessa. This character has a lot of pitfalls, but after a while, he gave me some leeway, I think, when he felt I understood the role.”
Adam Bessa’s strength lies in his expressive gaze, which was already very powerful in Ghost Trail (Les Fantômes), his 2024 breakthrough film in France. His blossoming talent was noticed by the Un Certain Regard Jury for his role as the angry young Tunisian in Harka by Lotfy Nathan, which won him the award for Outstanding Lead Performance in 2022.
However, the 34-year-old did not dream of becoming an actor. “I had a strong curiosity from a very young age to know about other people, about life, about the human psyche, but I didn’t make the link between all of that and acting.”
A former law student, he enrolled in drama school, but felt out of place. “I was a big movie fan. I would watch Sean Penn films, and then I had to play Molière as a Tunisian. I didn’t exist in the French reality at the time.”
Adam Bessa has since found his way in French cinema. He will soon appear in Bertrand Bonello’s Santo Subito!, alongside Mark Ruffalo and Charlotte Rampling.
