Inseparable in life and on screen, they were John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands. For better and perhaps sometimes also for worse, as their place on the fringes of Hollywood cinema has not always been easy and their personal life intimately linked to their art. It is around this legendary duo that Sébastien Pouderoux, actor in the troupe, and Constance Meyer, screenwriter and film director, designed and directed this show. And it is probably no coincidence that they themselves form a couple in life.
Far from the biographical story, the play interweaves three narrative threads: the fairly complicated preparation ofA woman under the influencethe most emblematic film by John Cassavetes released in 1974, the controversial reception of his works through a program like “The Mask and the Feather” where the venomous criticism of the New Yorker Pauline Kael, and a police investigation carried out following the complaint of a technician who accused the director of having molested him during a party.
An impressionist painting
From this series of sketches, often funny and excellently performed, emerges the ambiguous portrait of the misunderstood creator, constantly evolving on the margins and never satisfied, as generous with his friends as he is brittle and sometimes devious. Elusive, just like her accomplice Gena, a sublime and slightly pert actress who tries to reconcile as best she can her life as a mother and her job, the main matrix of her husband’s work. Marina Hands brings this slight crack and this instability that we find in the famous scene of the film, replayed on stage, where she prepares spaghetti for her husband and his colleagues, after returning from a night of work.
Around her and Sébastien Pouderoux in the role of John Cassavetes, the troupe, like the band which surrounded the filmmaker, works wonders and communicates to us its pleasure in playing. From Nicolas Chupin in the role of Peter Falk – the interpreter of Columbo –, inseparable friend who financed part of the film with his fees, or Jordan Rezgui in that of the apprentice director and eternal scapegoat of the master, through Dominique Blanc, who vividly asserts his detestation of the director.
The actors and the direction manage to breathe lightness into what could otherwise appear as a “collage” of moments from the couple’s life, otherwise well documented, intended only for those initiated into the life and work of the couple. couple. Through this relaxed story, in the style of the filmmaker’s films, the authors also speak to us intelligently about their art, the difficulty of creating, and the difficulty of freeing oneself from the gaze of others and from criticism. As cruel as it is.
Until November 3. Vieux-Colombier, 2:10 am. and reservations: comedie-française.fr or on 01 44 58 15 15