It was the utopia of a theater larger than life. With courage and madness, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi makes us live the burning passion of these young actors and actresses at the School and at the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre, co-created by the mythical Patrice Chéreau, heavily criticized in the film. At the end of the 1980s, the director was part of the second and last promotion of this unique adventure in France, which she recounts brilliantly, thanks also to the audacity of her incredibly captivating actors.
Live. So strong that one becomes drunk. From the first scene, Stella – a constantly evolving storm of emotions, wonderfully embodied by Nadia Tereszkiewicz – gives herself up, gets angry, revolts, thrills us. For this audition at the Amandiers Theater School, at the time one of the most famous in Europe and a kind of anti-conservatory, she chose a red dress and a scene of a love gone wrong. Carried away by her emotions, she reveals herself, to the point of being ashamed. Refugee in the toilets, she meets Adèle: “ If you are ashamed, it means that you reveal yourself. That’s the importance for an actress “. In one sentence, they have become friends, and Adèle confides in her that she took off her panties for the audition, precisely to find that feeling again…
Make love in the confessional
” The utopia of the Amandiers is to manage to be stronger than drugs, stronger than disease, says Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. To be invincible. To have eternal youth. The utopia of our 20 years, that’s it. At the time, there were twelve of us in the promotion of the School of Theater, and we had the utopia that we will all succeed in life and in our desire to be an actor. »
The camera captures and caresses without filter the beauty of the declaimed words and the delicacy of the feelings expressed on stage and in life. Accompanied by the sublime texts of Berenice and Titus of Root or Platonov by Chekhov, the catchy music of Paganini, Janis Joplin or Daniel Balavoine, we live live the sentimental tug of the young “Amandiers”. For them, apart from the theatre, nothing is sacred, everything seems possible, even making love in the confessional.
burn his life
” If you become an actress, you will burn your life. You risk going crazy. Maybe you will be loved by many, but you will end up sad and alone. The butler had warned her. But Stella, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s alter ego in the film, was rich, but she wanted to become an actress, go on stage, stop time. The overflowing generosity of the actors takes us on a rollercoaster of exuberance and despair. To be caught or not. To be loved or not. To be or to disappear in an existential void.
The color of the plans matches the passion. It is not the image that is framed, but the pain and the melancholy, the hope and the disenchantment of a youth that is already fleeing. Their utopia has a name and a place, the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre, which also brings them to the Actor’s Studio in New York, but the destiny of these young actors and actresses is not played out in theaters and streets, but especially in their inner worlds so rich and rebellious, submerged in rivers of laughter and tears, pulled by the tenacious and troubled dreams of their hearts and souls.
“Theatre is dangerous”
” Theater is not a hobby. It’s dangerous. It’s serious. Even if he remains very discreet at the start of the film, the figure of Patrice Chéreau, co-founder of the Théâtre des Amandiers, hovers over each scene. And then, very surprisingly, the tireless explorer of human obsessions takes a very expensive The Almond Treeseven though the film’s end credits warn that ” some scenes are inspired by memories, but do not reflect reality “.
Almost ten years after his death in 2013, at the age of 68, Patrice Chéreau remains a living god for the theater world. At the end of the 1980s, where the film is set, the director found himself at the start of his international fame. Nevertheless, in The Almond Trees, we discover above all a character who contrasts with the image of a master crowned with an absolute genius. Louis Garrel brings to life the dark sides of the role of Patrice Chéreau with such thoroughness, such seriousness and lucidity, that he almost gives the impression of wanting to launch a male #MeToo…
Patrice Chéreau and his homosexual impulses
At the time, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi was, alongside Vincent Pérez, Agnès Jaoui, Marianne Denicourt…, one of the students of the Amandiers. In her autobiographical film, she depicts Chéreau as a terribly lonely man, very irritable, extremely authoritarian, and frequently subject to his homosexual impulses which he inflicts on others and which also guide him in the distribution of roles and the allocation of positions. Let’s find out in The Almond Trees the hidden side of Patrice Chéreau?
” Nope, relativizes Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, simply, in early drafts of the script, he was a very smooth character, with no flaws. Afterwards, it was absolutely necessary not to respect this character so much. Not to be so intimidated and respectful, because this character was not interesting, he was a bit theoretical. And then, Chéreau was not respectful with his characters when he was writing or directing the characters. So, out of respect for Chéreau, I had to be disrespectful towards this character who is called “Patrice Chéreau”, but who is not him. We kept the name, but it’s not because we kept the name that it’s him. He’s still a fictional director. »
The last curtain raiser
As for actors and actresses, the carelessness and innocence of their youth come to an end when individual and collective catastrophes shake up their lives: professional failure for some, abortion or overdose for others, and then there is Chernobyl. During the last curtain raiser, a voice from the off informs us of the first deaths after the accident at the nuclear power plant. Everything has an end, except the theater which continues as long as life goes on.
► Read also : Valeria Bruni Tedeschi: “Les Amandiers is the utopia of our 20s”