Charlotte Gainsbourg and Niels Schneider to star in Suzanna Andler

by Fabien Lemercier

19/12/2019 - The two actors are currently filming Benoît Jacquot’s new opus - a Les Films du Lendemain production sold by Les Films du Losange - adapted from a play by Marguerite Duras

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Niels Schneider to star in Suzanna Andler

Actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, actor Niels Schneider and director Benoît Jacquot

Having kicked off in the south of France this month, filming on Benoît Jacquot’s Suzanna Andler [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] will continue into January. This will be the 26th feature film offered up by the director, who has been selected to compete four times in Venice (Seventh Heaven in 1997, Pas de scandale in 1999, The Untouchable [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] in 2006 and 3 Hearts [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Benoît Jacquot
film profile] in 2014), three times in Berlin (Farewell My Queen [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Benoît Jacquot
film profile] in 2012, Diary of a Chambermaid [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] in 2015, Eva [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Benoît Jacquot
film profile] in 2018) and once in Cannes (The School of Flesh in 1998).

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Written by the director and adapted from an eponymous play by Marguerite Duras dating back to 1968 (which the writer brought to the big screen herself in 1977 in a work intitled Baxter, Vera Baxter), the story plunges us into the 1960s to fix its gaze on Suzanna, an uptight 40-year-old woman who’s old before her time and trapped in an upper class marriage. She will find herself having to choose between a life as a wife and a mother, governed by conventions, or the more carefree existence her young lover embodies.

It’s worth noting that Benoît Jacquot worked as an assistant director on three films directed by Marguerite Duras herself at the beginning of the 1970s (Nathalie Granger, Woman of the Ganges and India Song), and that many of the latter’s works have previously been adapted for the big screen, including Memoir of War [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Emmanuel Finkiel
film profile], by Emmanuel Finkiel, The Sea Wall [+see also:
trailer
film profile], by Rithy Panh and The Lover, by Jean-Jacques Annaud.

Produced by Kristina Larsen on behalf of Les Films du Lendemain, Suzanna Andler has been pre-purchased by Ciné+ and enjoys the support of France’s Région Sud (the Provence-Alps-Cote d’Azur region, where the film will be shot in its entirety, with Christophe Beaucarne helming cinematography) and the SOFICA company Cofinova. Les Films du Losange will head up French distribution and international sales.

For the record, Les Films du Lendemain previously teamed up with Benoît Jacquot to produce Farewell, My Queen, Diary of a Chambermaid and Casanova, Last Love. The Parisian outfit is currently working towards the release of Jean-Paul Salomé’s Mama Weed next spring (read our article – with Isabelle Huppert at the head of the cast, due to be released in France on 25 March 2020).

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(Translated from French)