Aurélie Saada’s first film, “Rose” follows the life course of a 78-year-old woman who is learning to live again after the death of her husband. A fair, funny and human film carried by Françoise Fabian. Meet.
After music, cinema. Former member of the Brigitte group, Aurélie Saada co-wrote and directed her first film, Rose. She is interested in the story of a 78-year-old woman, model wife and devoted mother, who will relearn how to live after the death of her husband. Before the eyes of her devastated children, the widow discovers a malice and a power of seduction hitherto hidden. In the title role, Françoise Fabian delivers and offers an irresistible interpretation.
“This movie, I think I wrote and built it with real pieces of intimacy from my life, launches the filmmaker, present at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival in August 2021 with the actress to present the feature film. It’s my story in its contours, in its linings, in its lapels. They are extremely familiar scents.“
Although one of the major themes of the film concerns mourning, Rose is a solar work, imbued with lightness and communicative energy. If the heroine of the film is a woman of a certain age, her personal quest is no less universal and can speak to many viewers. “Before being a woman or a wife, it is a human being who has an intimate revolution at a time when he no longer thought he could have any. She is what she never imagined she could be.”
The words of Aurélie Saada and Françoise Fabian on Pink :
Surrounded by a beautiful cast of actors – from Aure Atika to Grégory Montel – Françoise Fabian carries the film brilliantly. Charismatic, funny, but above all moving. “I have a sentence in my life that supports me, it’s a quote from Albert Camus: “In the middle of my winter, I feel an invincible summer within me ”. Here it is, this sentence, it’s me and this character too, launches the star at the lock of white hair. This project is the story of my life. To be honest, I’ve rarely had so much freedom in a movie.”
Interested in moments of authenticity at the cinema, Aurélie Saada made sure to create a real family on the set. She has also mixed some of her close friends with professional actors during the meal scenes. “I like the truth, the reality, specifies the director. I love people who slip intimate things into their work and don’t protect themselves. Françoise gave that. But everyone does. It was intimate and sensitive. I needed this and they felt it.”
Apollo Films
Aure Atika and Françoise Fabian in “Rose”.
Rose is part of these stories that undermine the clichés related to the elderly, especially about their intimate life. There is, for example, in a purely comic register, the series Grace and Frankie with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, but also Deux, the drama of Filippo Meneghetti. Aurélie Saada’s film is different from these two works, but extends the idea that it is never too late to accomplish, seduce and love.
As pointed out Francoise Fabian : “Sexuality in the elderly is an almost shameful subject, in life as in the cinema. Yet I know young people who would ask for nothing better than to have a thing or two with me.”The actress smiles, while the director laughs.
Conscious of her magnetism, Françoise Fabian should charm the spectators with Pink, at the cinema on December 8, 2021.
Interview by Thomas Desroches, in August 2021, in Angoulême.
