Details on Honoré’s ‘La Belle Personne’

If you’re the art-house/subtitle type then helmer Christophe Honoré needs no introductions. With an output like his, a recent string of pictures such as Ma Mere, In Paris and most recently, Love Songs, you know it’s just a question of time before his next project is unveiled. Cineuropa recently filled us in on the Frenchman’s latest project (a pic that will once again feature Honoré’s muse: Louis Garrel) and which was  compared to Laurent Cantet’s
brilliant exposé of Paris’ urban jungle a.k.a high school and Palme
d’or winner Entre Les murs because of the likeliness of the setting.

Co-written by the director and Gilles Taurand, La Belle Personne is a contemporary adaptation of French literary classic The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette (1678). The film retraces the misadventures of Junie (Seydoux, mademoiselle de Chartres in the book). Aged 16, the young girl changes high school in the middle of the academic year, following the death of her mother. She joins a new class that includes her cousin Esteban, who introduces her to his group of friends. Junie is soon courted by the boys in the group and becomes the fiancée of the quietest young man, Grégoire (the book’s Prince of Cleves). But soon she falls overwhelmingly in love, with Nemours (Duke of Nemours in the novel), her Italian teacher (Garrel). But their passion is doomed as Junie, not wishing to surrender to her feelings, refuses to give in to happiness, which in her eyes is just an illusion.

The main cast is made up of Garrel, Léa Seydoux, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet and Esteban Carvajal Alegria, while the supporting players are comprised of many new faces in Anaïs Demoustier, Agathe Bonitzer, Simon Truxillo, Jeanne Audiard, Jacob Lyon, Tanel Derard, Esther Garrel and some former Honoré-collaborators in Clothilde Hesme and Alice Butaud.