Anne Fontaine Offers a ‘Nightmare’ Scenario for Huppert and Poelvoorde

Anne Fontaine, a filmmaker who hasn’t had many problems exporting her films to the U.S. (Nathalie…, The Girl From Monaco), has began shooting her 12th feature film this week. The unlikely rom com tale about the fusion of two families stars Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Poelvoorde, who was in Fontaine’s last film, Coco Before Channel.

Co-scripted by Fontaine and Eric Mercier, My Worst Nightmare begins when Agathe (Huppert) takes in Tony, her son Adrien’s best friend, she doesn’t realize it at first, but her life ends up being turned upside down. Behind every child, there are always the parents, in this case a father with no job security, Patrick (Poelvoorde), who is as coarse and brazen as Agathe is cerebral and self-composed. Patrick, who is initially hired to do some work on the house, ends up doing much more: having indirectly caused Adrien’s father to run off with his social worker, he takes over the role of man of the house. He thus sweeps Agathe up in a merry existential chaos, which may free her from herself. The rest of the cast include André Dussollier (Alain Resnais’ Wild Grass), Virginie Efira, Corentin Devroey, Donatien Suner and Eric Berger. The project will be produced by Philippe Carcassonne for Ciné@ in collaboration with Maison de Cinéma, F.B Productions (Francis Boespflug) and Belgium’s Entre Chien et Loup, with co-production support from Pathé and M6 Films. The pic should be ready before Cannes, and though it contains Huppert, I doubt that this would be a contender for a slot at the fest.