04/04/2005 - An adaptation of Albert Cohen’s famous novel, Belle du seigneur (1968), is being prepared for the screen. Glenio Bonder’s first feature film will be starring Ludivine Sagnier and Alessio Boni

An adaptation of Albert Cohen’s most famous novel, Belle du seigneur (1968), is being prepared for the screen. This film, a European coproduction, with France as the main partner, will be starring Ludivine Sagnier and the Italian actor Alessio Boni. It is Glenio Bonder’s first feature, but it is not his first work on Cohen, since he and William Karel made a documentary entitled Albert Cohen by Albert Cohen in 1995.
Belle du seigneur narrates an overwhelming passion set in 1935-1936. It starts in Geneva at the Society of Nations where Adrien, the archetypical bourgeois husband, and his superior Solal (Alessio Boni), the typical Don Giovanni, both work. The latter inevitably ends up seducing the former’s wife, Ariane (Ludivine Sagnier), a young aristocratic protestant. She tries to resist but finally yields and both of them start a love story the intensity of which will taint their love with tragedy. Glenio Bonder made the novel into a script which was thoroughly revised by Vincenzo Cerami and James Dearden.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

The project is produced by Thierry de Navacelle for the French company TNVO TNVO ; Belle du seigneur is a €10M film also involving the Swiss producer Jean Marc Henchoz for Productions JMH. More negotiations will take place during the upcoming Festival de Cannes to include an Italian (Cattleya was one of the three companies which showed interest) and a German production company into this project. The film will start shooting next Autumn ; it will last 12 weeks shared between France, Italy (Stresa and Amalfi), and Switzerland. Alessio Boni, one of director Marco Tullio Giordana’s favourite actors (he can be seen at the moment in Nos meilleures années and Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti), will travel to Paris in three weeks to start preparing for the film.

(Translated from French)