French finale lifts cannes marathon

HELEN BARLOWThe West Australian In the final days of the Cannes Film Festival it's difficult to find the energy to see yet another film. So this year's closing film, Christophe

Honore's Beloved, came as a complete surprise. We all knew it was going to be a musical with the actors trying to sing (and this isn't a comedy like Mamma Mia!). So the idea of

sitting upright during the film's 135-minute running time seemed like quite a feat. While initially it's a treat to see three of France's best-known actresses strutting their

stuff - particularly the mother-daughter combination of Catherine Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni playing mother and daughter on screen - Ludivine Sagnier probably steals the show as the

young Deneuve character. Sagnier's real-life daughter, Bonnie (with former partner French actor Nicolas Duvauchelle), also plays her daughter in the film. "Singing and acting

together was not new for me because I had sung on Christophe's Love Songs, which had premiered in Cannes four years ago," Sagnier, 32, said. "As time goes by it's

becoming more natural for the actors. We're more confident with the way Christophe works - especially Chiara, who has made four movies with him." She approached playing the younger

version of the great matriarch of French cinema with trepidation. "I've known Catherine for 10 years and it's still not enough," Sagnier muses. "It was a bit

intimidating." Spanning 43 years, from 1964 to 2007, Beloved starts in 1960s Paris with Sagnier's sunny, breezy Madeleine becoming a prostitute by chance. A handsome john, who is

actually a Czech physician studying medicine in Paris, falls madly for her, marries her and takes her back to Prague. The marriage falls apart because of his infidelity, though even as an

old man (played by legendary Czech director Milos Forman) he still seems to love her. The grittier second half of the film, with Deneuve and her daughter, is set in the 1990s when free love

and sex have been tainted by the spectre of AIDS. Sagnier had to learn a little Czech - and she is very convincing. "It's not easy. My daughter was probably better," she

notes. "In the end it's just work. What I like about being an actor is sometimes you have mountains to climb. And when you are on the top you can say, 'OK, I'm here

now.' Cool!" More than most French actresses, Paris-born Sagnier has a strong command of English. Yet she has been content to mostly work in France since she ventured to Australia

to play Tinker Bell in P.J. Hogan's Peter Pan in 2003. After coming to international attention in Francois Ozon's Swimming Pool, Sagnier has appeared in major French films,

including Mesrine: Part 1 - Killer Instinct, Public Enemy #1 and Claude Chabrol's The Girl Cut in Two. In her latest role she is almost unrecognisable as a Lebanese prostitute and the

mistress of Saddam Hussein's son in The Devil's Double, directed by Lee Tamahori. Initially Sagnier didn't want to be in movies. "I came from a family where everyone was

playing classical music," she said. "I didn't want to do that. I wanted to be a fairy and when I realised that being magical wouldn't be easy to achieve, I realised that

being an actor allowed you to believe you are magical. I guess singing in a movie fits in with that!" Beloved is screening at the Somerville Auditorium each night at 8pm until Sunday.

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