18/08/2011

SBS Productions, which will soon be the centre of attention at the Venice Mostra with Roman Polanski’s Carnage [+see also:
trailer
film profile], will get shooting underway in October on Pascal Bonitzer’s sixth feature: Cherchez Hortense (“Look For Hortense”).

Having penned 12 screenplays for Jacques Rivette and six for André Téchiné, Bonitzer won the Jean Vigo Award in 1996 for his debut feature (More) and was selected in competition at the Berlinale 2003 with Small Cuts. For Cherchez Hortense, he has put together a stellar cast including the too-rarely-seen Jean-Pierre Bacri (seen this year in The Night Clerk) , Isabelle Carré (Romantics Anonymous [+see also:
trailer
making of
film profile]) and Kristin Scott Thomas (set to grace screens from November 23 in The Woman in the Fifth).

Co-scripted by the director and Agnès de Sacy, the film centres on a Chinese civilization teacher (Bacri) who is urged by his theatre director wife (Scott Thomas) to contact his high-ranking civil servant father to help a certain Zaria Velickovic to obtain residency papers. But asking his father for something is tantamount to torture and he can’t admit his failure to his wife who, for her part, is not indifferent to the flirting from one of the actors in her theatre company.

While an increasingly tangled web of lies is woven, Damien meets Aurore (Carré), a charming young woman who hangs around with his group of friends, loves books and seems to have an interest in him. What he doesn’t know is that, in Serbian, Zaria means Aurore.

Produced by Saïd Ben Saïd for SBS Productions, Cherchez Hortense will have a €6.5m budget. French theatrical distribution will be managed by Le Pacte.

(Translated from French)