Marceau confesses to murder in Lilienfeld’s Arrêtez-Moi
Next Monday, shooting will start on Jean-Paul Lilienfeld’s fifth feature, the thriller Arrêtez-Moi (“Arrest Me”). After Skirt Day [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which was unveiled in the Berlinale Panorama 2009 and earned Isabelle Adjani the Best Actress César 2010, the director has once again given the starring roles to actresses, this time Sophie Marceau (to be seen on screens in June in Un Bonheur N’arrive Jamais Seul) and Miou-Miou (Best Actress César in 1980 and nominated nine times between 1977 and 1998, recently acclaimed in The Concert [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Radu Mihaileanu
film profile]). The cast also includes young thesp Yann Ebonge.
Adapted by Lilienfeld from Jean Teulé’s novel Les Lois de la Gravité (“The Laws of Gravity”), Arrêtez-Moi opens one night in a deserted police station where a woman (Marceau) turns up asking to be arrested for having murdered her husband by pushing him out of the window of their eleventh-floor apartment because he was an alcoholic and had always beaten her. Officer Pontoise (Miou-Miou), a policewoman close to retirement, grumbles because she only had three hours of duty left before her weekend.
There’s no hurry: the murder dates back several years. But why give oneself up so long afterwards? Because she feels remorse. Because it is, to the very day, the tenth anniversary of the death... The more the policewoman questions this woman, the more she knows about her life, and the less she wants to arrest her. Why does this guilty woman want so absolutely to go to prison? Why is this policewoman so determined not to arrest her?
Punctuated by flashbacks, the enclosed confrontation between these two women will bring answers to these questions. And one of the two women will win. It is 9pm when the face-to-face encounter begins. At midnight on the dot, ten years will have passed and there will be a verdict.
Produced by France’s Rezo Productions, Luxembourg’s Iris Production and Belgium’s Iris Films, Arrêtez-Moi has received co-production support from France 2 Cinéma, as well as pre-acquisitions from Canal+ and Ciné+. The seven-week shoot will take place in Luxembourg, Belgium and France. French theatrical distribution will be handled by Rezo, which is also managing international sales.
(Translated from French)
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