Released in 2003, “Children’s Games” marks the meeting between two actors who will form the most glamorous couple in current French cinema: Guillaume Canet and Marion Cotillard. Their first kiss took place in front of the camera of the director of the film Yann Samuell. But by the way, how did it happen between the two future lovebirds?
Child games : heading or not heading?
In the romantic film genre, French cinema has a few arguments. Child games is also part of these arguments since it not only met with success when it was released in 2003 in French cinemas (1 million admissions), but it has also exported well internationally.
Yann Samuell’s first feature film counts above all two future great actors of French cinema. The first is called Guillaume Canet and began his career as an actor in the early 90s. Active in cinema and on television, the role which brought him the greatest exposure at the time was The beach, film by Danny Boyle released in 2000 and in which he co-starred with Leonardo Di Caprio and Virginie Ledoyen.
The second is called Marion Cotillard. At that time, the actress is not yet the international star and Oscar-winning actress that we know. Indeed, she is then best known for her role in the first two Taxi.
Child games follows two inseparable childhood friends, Julien and Sophie, who spent their youth creating challenges with the famous “cap ou pas cap? “. The older they get, the more extreme their games will become. And yet, without knowing it, their friendship turns into mutual love. Irony of fate: before being the couple that everyone knows, Guillaume Canet and Marion Cotillard were very good friends. A bit like the characters they play in Child games. The two actors were also so accomplices that they had also reproduced the famous “cap or not cap” in real life.
An on-screen romance come true
Very good friends on the set and both as a couple each on their side, their kiss on the screen was therefore most embarrassing. And the two actors then refused any other interpretation than that of being two professionals willing for the needs of the film. When promoting Child games in 2003, in a video rebroadcast during a broadcast of Hello Earthlings! in 2017, Thierry Ardisson thus asked Guillaume Canet if he was “able” to kiss Marion Cotillard on the mouth. At the time, the actor was still married to actress Diane Kruger. Respondent’s response:
Absolutely not. The first reason is because I am an actor and I do it in a film. The second reason is that I have my lovely sweetheart and lover who wouldn’t like that, and I would understand that.
Furthermore, in 2015, Marion Cotillard returned at the microphone of Nikos Aliagas on Europe 1 on this very particular exercise during filming, given their friendship.
It’s less complicated to play with your lover than to make a love story with a very good friend. (…) The first time we had to kiss on Child games, it was very, very complicated because we were very good friends. We found ourselves in this church having to roll a shovel… We had fits of giggles for half an hour before being able to do the scene because it’s absurd to kiss a friend.
four years later Child games, Guillaume Canet and Marion Cotillard have become much more than friends and have since formed the most famous couple in French cinema.
