A year ago, Chiara Mastroianni was the mistress of ceremonies at the Cannes Film Festival. Camille Cottin called her to ask her for advice. She recommended that he put oil on his teeth to prevent grinding and combat stage fright. However, the actress has accompanied numerous films to Cannes. She even won the Un Certain Regard Interpretation Prize for Chambre 212, by Christophe Honoré. This year she finds the filmmaker with Marcello Mio in the running for the Palme d’Or and in theaters this Wednesday. A beautiful ghost film, as well as an elegant comedy, in which Chiara Mastroianni, an actress in crisis, thinks she is her father.

LE FIGARO. – Marcello Mio’s project was confusing at first…

Chiara MASTROIANNI. - Producers complain about not finding original subjects, but when they arrive, we sense reluctance. The financial arrangement was not easy. I have such confidence in Christophe Honoré that I had no doubts. He told me about a rather special idea. Without my agreement, he would not have written this screenplay. We had just performed Le Ciel de Nantes at the theater and I had seen how he creates fiction from real events. I played his aunt in the play but he and the actors invented the show. When he told me about Marcello Mio, I knew it wasn’t a biopic. He wanted to make a comedy out of my life even though my life is not particularly comical. She’s not sad either.

You also needed the agreement of those around you, who play their own role in the film: Catherine Deneuve, Benjamin Biolay, Melvil Poupaud…

Catherine was surprised at first: “Oh right? Am I going to play my own role? » We’ve already proposed to him plenty of times and he’s never amused. We make films precisely to escape what we are in life. It’s a cliché but it’s true. When Catherine read the script, she understood that it was a fable with fantasy. A joyful session of spiritualism with Marcello. Melvil was not happy with his character. He said to me: “I would never stop you from doing something like that. » He plays the wrong role even though in life he would be the first to tell me to go. Once the people involved understood the principle, it was very easy. And the cohesion of the group shows on the screen. In my opinion, friendship is the main subject of the film, in a comedic tone. Ghosts can be very joyful. There is nothing morbid. On the contrary, we share something very alive.

Fabrice Luchini is a sort of patchwork but he shares Italian ancestry with you…

Fabrice also speaks Italian very well. I had never toured with him, I didn’t know him. At first, I was a little scared. I liked it straight away. His way of being, of questioning Christophe, of being immediately inventive… He amazed me from the first meeting. Fabrice has made a bunch of films but Christophe has this gift of finding a new angle in an actor. Seeing him here as an ideal friend is delightful. The passage where he talks about acting is incredible. Hearing Fabrice talk about neutrality and rejecting the picturesque is superb. But the film doesn’t intellectualize anything. Nicole Garcia also plays her own role with a lot of self-deprecation.

Nicole Garcia, your mother and yourself, the three of you have a machine gun flow…

In the film, Catherine says: “You’ll see, Nicole speaks even faster than me. » My mother also passed on this rapid flow to me. It’s all his fault! My mother always explained that she grew up with three sisters and that we had to move quickly to place one. For me, it’s probably to avoid wasting too much of people’s time that I try to put as many words as possible in as little time as possible. It doesn’t come from the same place.

Your flow is slower when you speak Italian, your father’s language…

Yes, I don’t pose my voice in the same way. It’s strange. When I speak English, I almost have an Italian accent that comes through. In Marcello Mio, it’s not me who speaks Italian but my father. I made an effort. In real life, I don’t talk like I do in the movie. I never managed to nail the Italian “ r”, maybe because I never lived there.

How well versed are you in Marcello Mastroianni?

I’m very knowledgeable even if I haven’t seen all of his films. For Marcello Mio, I watched a lot of interviews. I almost no longer see the man I knew there. When I hear him respond in French to Bernard Rapp, it takes me back to our daily lives. I love Eight and a Half, but it’s a film he made at a time when I wasn’t born. For a few months, before and during filming with Christophe, I was able to bring this father back to life by digging through archives. I saw it as an extraordinary opportunity, even if the end of this experience left me very sad. I wondered who I was going to share this with. There is Fabrice Luchini, but I’m not going to bombard him with videos of my father. I can call him at midnight. And him too. With him, things are not superficial. If they interest him, they persist. It’s very healthy.

Would you like to work with Italian filmmakers?

Of course. I would love to work with Nanni Moretti for example. I also really like the films of Mario Martone, Marco Bellocchio, Alice Rohrwacher and Matteo Garrone’s Dogman. I’m going to see Parthenope, by Paolo Sorrentino, shown here in Cannes, but I admit I know better Italian cinema of the past. De Sica, Scola, Risi… I didn’t choose France against Italy. Besides, I didn’t choose anything at all. Maybe my French accent bothers Italian directors.

Are you still unknown to the Italian media?

In Italy, the number of times I get asked, “ But you speak Italian? » I am not known other than as Marcello’s daughter. Once, I was in Italy for Xavier Beauvois’ film, Don’t forget that you’re going to die. I was 20 years old. One evening, we were dining in a restaurant in Rome, we were speaking French. The waiter addresses me: “It’s funny, you look like a customer who came very often: Marcello Mastroianni. » I told him it was my father. He almost fainted. On Christophe’s film, in Rome, I happened to go out into the street with my suit and my hat. Some guys were calling out to me: “Ciao Marcello! » Even though they were not at all aware of what we were filming.

In 2019, you told us that you often argued with your mother about

I continue to think that it is very good that people are speaking out and that victims are being listened to. Now, I hope that these high-profile cases will help shake things up in other layers of society. The army, the university, the hospital… All circles are concerned and a parliamentary commission of inquiry should be extended to all these spheres. How do anonymous victims avoid continuing to suffer in silence? Hopefully the shockwave benefits these people.