In her film “Enorme”, Sophie Letourneur recounts with black humor and in a unique tone an unwanted pregnancy, slyly triggered by a man with a very strong desire for paternity. For this disturbing film, the director mixes comedy and the documentary genre, calling on real health professionals, pianists, a real shaman and even… Jonathan Cohen’s mother!
Hugea high-flying comedy with Marina Foïs and Jonathan Cohen
In 2020, Jonathan Cohen takes all the light with his series The flame and four comedies: simply black, terrible jungle, Strong and Huge. In the latter, he composes with Marina Foïs an astonishing duet, that of a couple, the Girards, where only he, Frédéric, wishes to have a child. While his wife Claire, a renowned pianist, does not want it, he will give birth to her behind his back by tampering with his contraceptive pill. Funny and gritty, borrowing as much from Judd Apatow’s style as from documentary manners, Huge painted with delightful and sometimes terrifying absurdity this event in the life of a couple.
The radicality ofHuge owes a lot to its shape – framed in a square format – and the use of non-professional actors who intervene in the film. These include hospital staff, Air France employees, musicians, shaman and naturopath Victor Uzzan, filmed in their work. Thus, the last sequence of the film is for example an authentic childbirth. A very strong anchoring in reality which gives a unique texture to Hugeand which even extends to Frédéri’s familyvs.
When Jonathan follows the advice of his mother Jacqueline
In Huge, Frédéric suffers from not having a child, even though he really wants one. While visiting his mother on her birthday, he opens up about it to her. And she explains to him that, since he is Claire’s manager and that he takes care of everything, he might be able to influence his contraception… In a joking tone, she then points out to him that a Canderel candy bar looks a lot like a contraceptive pill.
Truer than nature
No sooner said than done. Frédéric will replace Claire’s pills, and she will become pregnant, triggering a pregnancy in which Frédéric will over-invest. Well this movie mother is none other than Jonathan Cohen’s mother, Jacqueline Kakou. The biography of the actor is partially known. We know, for example, that he grew up with his mother in Pantin, separated from his father when he was five years old. At the very beginning of this sequence, Frédéric arrives in a street in Pantin, and enters a building. When he arrives at his mother’s apartment, we see a photograph on the wall that looks authenticwith a pre-teen Jonathan Cohen.
Sophie Letourneur, who shot her film in real sets, with their real occupants, therefore seems to have gone so far as to put her cameras in Jacqueline Kakou’s apartment. During promoting the moviethe director said about this role that could not be more realistic:
I draw a lot of material from my films in reality. It’s very playful. People give me things that I like about them, in a very documentary way. That’s why I cast Jacqueline, Jonathan Cohen’s real mother… what an actress!
A unique role in the cinema for the one who was employed at Crédit Agricole, but who seems like her son to have an innate talent for the show, so perfect is her performance in the film!
