Alice Vial’s L’âme idéale now in post-production
- Jonathan Cohen and Magalie Lépine-Blondeau lead the cast of the screenwriter’s first directorial effort, produced by Les Films Entre 2 & 4 and sold by Gaumont
Shot between 28 October and 29 November in Normandy, L’âme idéale by Alice Vial is now in post-production. This will be the first feature film by the director who scooped the Best Short Film César in 2018, as well as a Special Mention within the 15th Unifrance Short Film Awards thanks to The Winkles.
Leading the film is Canadian actress Magalie Lépine-Blondeau (very well-received in The Nature of Love [+see also:
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film profile], and at his best in Daaaaaali! [+see also:
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film profile], Making Of [+see also:
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interview: Cédric Kahn
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interview: Antoine Chevrollier
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interview: Ruben Östlund
interview: Ruben Östlund
film profile]), Anne Benoît (All Your Faces [+see also:
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film profile]), Afida Tahri, Éric Nagar, Nanou Garcia, Nina Aboutadedyne, François Chattot, François Creton, Oscar Lesage, Marie Lelong and Jean-Edouard Bodziak.
Written by the director herself (who was nominated for 2017’s Best Original Screenplay César via The Innocentes and who co-authored six episodes of the series Drops of God) in league with Jean-Toussaint Bernard, the story follows forty-something Elsa, a brilliant and dedicated doctor in a palliative care unit who hides the fact that she ‘s also a ferrier of souls: sees dead people and helps them pass over to the other side. Elsa is ashamed of this gift which she didn’t choose to have and chooses to hide it. When her fiancé discovers the truth and leaves her, she decides to give up on love. She’s convinced that her gift leads to rejection. She withdraws into solitude and work, until the day she meets Oscar…
L’âme idéale is produced by Parisian firm Les Films Entre 2 & 4 (who distinguished themselves with the series La Flamme and Le Flambeau, and with the film Sentinelle) and has been pre-purchased by Netflix. Likewise buoyed by the CNC’s subsidiary for genre films and backed by the Normandy region, the feature film was shot over 23 days with Julien Poupard (nominated for the 2020 and 2023 Césars in his speciality thanks to Les Misérables [+see also:
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interview: Ladj Ly
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interview: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi
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(Translated from French)
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