2024-01-20 08:14:14
After “Séraphine”, Martin Provost is back with a second biopic devoted to painting. In cinemas since January 17, “Bonnard, Pierre et Marthe” follows the career of Pierre Bonnard, nicknamed the “painter of happiness”, through the eyes of Marthe, the woman of his life.
Would Pierre Bonnard be as famous if he had not met Marthe? The question is legitimate when we know that the companion and model of the French painter appears in more than a third of his paintings.
For fifty years, Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) painted his wife, a woman from a very modest background, who would proclaim herself an aristocrat, before gradually falling into madness.
>> To see: trailer for the film “Bonnard, Pierre et Marthe”
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Mystery as a driving force
After “Séraphine” (2008) dedicated to the self-taught painter Séraphine de Senlis, Martin Provost did not necessarily want to remake a film in the world of painting. But several elements made him change his mind.
“I was approached by Pierrette Vernon, Marthe Bonnard’s great-niece, who told me that her great-aunt did not have the place she deserved in the history of art and that it was necessary make a film regarding it. At the time, I declined,” admits the director in the Vertigo show on January 16.
>> Listen: the complete interview with Martin Provost on his film “Bonnard, Pierre et Marthe”
Martin Provost, “Bonnard, Pierre and Marthe” / Vertigo / 24 min. / Tuesday at 5:06 p.m.
Then comes confinement. Locked up at home, Martin Provost one day comes across an art book dedicated to Pierre Bonnard. He opens it and observes the painting of “Lunch”, where we see Marthe seated at a table, her gaze unfocused. “I turned the pages and each time it was the same, we never recognized Marthe in the paintings,” he continues. The mystery surrounding this woman pushes the director to dedicate a film to this legendary couple.
A complex, multi-faceted woman
Pierre Bonnard meets Marthe in the street. Fascinated, he asks her to pose for him. The painter comes from a bourgeois background, he knows the good people, she is of very modest circumstances, but makes people believe that she is not and locks herself in lies.
The fear of being unmasked turns her into a social phobic. Marthe will therefore push Pierre to free himself from his environment and go into exile in the countryside, to live simply in nature. She will introduce Pierre to physical love. The years pass, passion fades and gives way to boredom. Pierre frequents other women, but always returns to his muse.
To play Marthe on screen, Martin Provost chose Cécile de France. A nice challenge for the Belgian actress, because she plays Marthe over several decades, which required a lot of makeup and dressing work. Without forgetting a different way of moving depending on the periods of one’s life.
Relationship to painting
To imitate the gestures of the painter Pierre Bonnard, the actor Vincent Macaigne had to take intensive painting lessons. As for the final paintings, as for the film “Séraphine”, they are the work of a “forger” artist, Édith Baudrand, who reproduces them for the cinema by reinventing them in her own way.
Asked regarding his relationship with painting, Martin Provost retorts with a smile: “I drew all the time when I was little and my mother is an unaccomplished painter. I inherited her frustrations which were a fantastic driving force.”
And the filmmaker clarifies: “Afterwards, I realized that it was a lot of solitude and uncertainty, and that it was not made for me”. Martin Provost launched into theater before devoting himself to writing and cinema. But painting retains an important place in his life: “Painting and music are arts above others, because they convey the invisible,” concludes the director.
Comments collected by Pierre Philippe Cadert
Web adaptation: Sarah Clément
“Bonnard, Pierre et Marthe” by Martin Provost, with Cécile de France, Vincent Macaigne, Stacy Martin, Anouk Grinberg, André Marcon. To be seen in French-speaking cinemas since January 17, 2024.
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