Mélanie Laurent, Guillaume Canet on Marie-Antoinette, Film ‘The Flood’

Mélanie Laurent is Marie Antoinette and Guillaume Canet her husband Louis XVI in Italian director Gianluca Jodice’s Le Déluge (The Flood), which opened the 77th edition of the Locarno Film Festival on Wednesday night in the Swiss town’s Piazza Grande, which seats 8,000 people during the fest.

On Thursday afternoon, the two stars, along with their director, met members of the press to discuss the movie, which is set in 1792 when the two main characters and their children were arrested and imprisoned in a chateau in Paris, awaiting their trial.

THR‘s Locarno review called the movie “an intriguing palace drama chronicling the last days of France’s ultimate royal couple,” also highlighting that “nuanced performances from both Canet and Laurent help to make the famous couple more than mere caricatures.”

The stars on Thursday shared how they got into their characters and their mindset. Actress-writer-director Laurent (Inglourious Basterds, Now You See Me, 6 Underground) shared that she read Stefan Zweig’s well-known biography Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman. “From her birth to her death, it had all the details and all the stories,” she recalled. “I started the movie when I understood her and I liked her. When you read a script about Marie Antoinette, you [know] she’s going to be cold and just be this and this – all those cliches we have. All the movies kind of stop when they get arrested. We started the movie there.”

Added Laurent: “That was super exciting to start the movie there, when she finally has time to be a mother, and understand the men of her life, but is losing her best friend, going from coldness to depression. So it’s probably the most interesting part of her when she knows, because she’s way more lucid that they going to die, and she’s scared for the first time.”

Actor-writer-director Canet (Ad Vitam, The Beach, Out of Season), the partner of Marion Cotillard, shared that he started with a great script from Jodice and co-writer Filippo Gravino. “So there were a lot of things that I was discovering as an audience,” he explained. “There are many things that I as a French [person] didn’t know. So I learned a lot of things through the script, and it gave me the wish to go and read some other things, like the [Jean-Baptiste] Cléry book where [the former valet of the king] tells all those details about Louis XVI – how shy he is, the difficulties he had being in society and with a lot of people, his relation with his women, and this kind of autistic side. The description of him was really like a child.”

Shared Canet: “So it was very interesting for me to understand that this might be one of the reasons how the revolution could [happen]. His father knew that he was not capable of holding a country [together] with the same strength, and craziness maybe, that the other kings had in France in the past.”

How did Laurent and Canet develop their famous characters’ relationship on screen?

“We had different readings of the script with Guillaume, and then separately with Mélanie,” Jodice explained.

“We knew each other and we didn’t spend that much time [discussing things] before the shooting,” the actor said. “You just play your part, and if you don’t end up with an actor or an actress who is very selfish, it goes well.”

The physical transformations to become Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were at times hard. Wearing a corset, “no matter what you do makes you feel and stand straight, and then you have no way to be like this,” Laurent said, hunching over. That was key in the first part of the movie, “when she really looks like a queen, and then, over time, I was allowed to just change body and [physical] attitude. So I didn’t have those four hours of makeup every day. Thank God! I ended the movie with literally 10 minutes of makeup, which is the best for me.”

It was different for Canet. “I had four hours of makeup every day. So it was long and tiring,” he shared. “I was quite scared at the beginning, I was quite anxious because seeing myself in the mirror with all these prosthetics was really scary. You are scared about not being able to express things, emotions and stuff because you are all hidden behind this mask.” But he got positive feedback on his first pictures. “Once we started, quite immediately I understood and realized that it would help me more than being an inconvenience, because it helped me stand straight, having this royal posture. And this guy has difficulties expressing emotions. So in a way, it was quite interesting to have this kind of mask.”

Laurent shared that when she directs with her acting background, “You just know exactly what an actor thinks before he says anything.” That is why she enjoys having a better understanding of different parts and roles in the filmmaking process. Without that, “I think most of the time there is a language issue. There is a lot of misunderstanding because of that,” she argued. “On the last movie I directed, I took the camera and I was framing the movie, and I was discovering a whole new world. I realized that all those technicians are there to make you feel comfortable [as a director or actor]. I opened a new door and just discovered something technical that I didn’t know. So I think would be great to have everybody exchange jobs for three days, so we know what everybody does.”

Canet also appreciates having seen filmmaking from different vantage points. “There are a lot of great directors who are also actors, and I love that. And there are a lot of directors who are really good actors also,” he said. “When you have the chance to experience both, you learn a lot.” He then quipped, “I know that sometimes I’ve been a pain in the ass for Gianluca, and the only thing that was calming me down as an actor was to know that as a director I would hate this happening to me.”

At the end of their chat with reporters, Laurent and Canet were asked about work-life balance and how important film work is for them. “It’s visceral for me,” Canet shared. “I cannot have any breaks. I don’t know how to go on vacation. It’s my goal sometimes to spend a week without writing something or watching something or thinking about something or reading something, and just enjoying a vacation and having some naps. I would love to know how to do that, but I just can’t. It’s an obsession. I’m a workaholic.”

That said, he said he loves his time with his family. And Canet added: “The most important thing to be able to stay creative and the only way to feed yourself is being in real life with real people.”

Laurent also loves diving into film work, and “I hate vacation,” she told reporters. “I think I’m writing stories and I’m telling stories because I think life sucks so much when you see the world and when you see what humanity is doing right now,” the star offered. “I like to write some very strong female characters. I want them to have the last word. I like it when love stories end well. I love it when I have the power of telling a story more inspiring than life, and that’s why it became an obsession.”

The two French stars also shared the pressures that come with celebrity and social media. “Most of the time, and I have had to face that for me and my partner, Marion, people are imagining stuff about us, our life, the way we live, what we do in our lives, where we live – I mean I sometimes hear crazy stuff about my habits,” Canet explained. “And the problem is that a lot of people, with social media and everything, believe that today. … I think one of the problems today with social media is how popularity can sometimes change aspects of your work and the way people are looking at you.”

Laurent chimed in, saying, “I have a solution: no social media.” After some laughs, she explained that, “I don’t read anything, whether it’s good or not good. I stopped 12 years ago, and I’m living in a bubble.”