With “The Forgotten Prince”, Michel Hazanavicius and Bérénice Bejo sign their fifth collaboration. But the wife and muse of the director was not at all convinced by his character at the first reading, to the point of considering a refusal…
The Forgotten Princea family matter
Since 2006 and the great comedy success OSS 117: Cairo, nest of spies, director Michel Hazanavicius and actress Bérénice Bejo never leave each other. Married and parents of two children, they work together and Bérénice Bejo has been in all of Hazanavicius’ films since 2006, except – logically – for OSS 117: Rio is unresponsive and the sketch film segment The unfaithful.
She is obviously The Artistfor which her performance showers her with awards, including the César for Best Actress in 2012.
It is therefore natural to see it play a dual role in The Forgotten Prince. A very ambitious family adventure comedy where a father, Djibi (Omar Sy), does everything to remain the hero of his daughter Sofia, in the real world but especially in the fantasy world of the stories he tells her. In this film – whose dazzling special effects detonate in French cinema – Bérénice Bejo embodies the neighbor of Djibi and Sofia, Clotilde, and “the woman at the door” in the imaginary world.
But it took little for the actress, not really convinced by the writing of her character, to refuse to appear in The Forgotten Prince.
“I didn’t really like this character who didn’t really exist”
As she tellsafter reading the first version of the scenario, she is not convinced by the role of Clotilde, neighbor of Djibi and Sofia.
The neighbor, originally, was not very developed in the first scenario. I even said to Michel: “Listen, this is probably going to be the first film we’re not going to make together!”. I didn’t really like this character who didn’t really exist, a little behind the story of a father and his daughter. Michel has reworked all of this, I put my paw on it along the way, and on arrival I find that this neighbor resembles the typical heroines of American romantic comedy cinema: the famous “girl next door”!
Indeed, in the scenario first presented to Michel Hazanavicius by Noé Debré and Bruno Merle, Clotilde is an unattractive role, because her character is established as very secondary. Almost like a pure landscape element, which in itself is a weakness, but which in addition reflects negatively on its “double” in the imaginary world.
“His ideal job in the cinema is that of the young premiere of comedy”
Michel Hazanavicius also quickly saw the limits of the first development of this character in the film The Forgotten Prince. So he reworked it.
This role is one of the elements that I reworked a lot in the script because this character was fairly underdeveloped. So I imagined tailor-made for Bérénice because, regardless of the woman I live with, I think she’s an extremely bubbly actress. She’s funny, charming, and she has a sense of comedy, timing, accuracy. For me, her ideal job in the cinema is that of the young premiere of comedy.
By reworking the character of Clotilde together, Bérénice Bejo and Michel Hazanavicius kill two birds with one stone. Indeed, with a more substantial “real” character, his imaginary double also takes on thickness, while in the fantasy world she is a character on the verge of being forgotten and in danger of disappearing. From an initially very secondary character, she therefore becomes, thanks to the rewriting and in the words of Omar Sy“a true pillar of history“.
