FROM PARIS, WITH PLENTIFUL ACCLAIM
Brendan Kelly, The Gazette

Montreal Gazette, Quebec
Dec 23 2007

Quebec actress Marie-Josee Croze deluged with work since moving
to France

When Marie-Josee Croze left Montreal for Paris, she figured she’d
be in the City of Lights for a three or four month sojourn at the
longest. Four years later, the award-winning Quebec actress still
sounds surprised that she ended up staying.

"I came with my clothes for the summer and my dog stayed in Montreal
with a friend of mine," said Croze, in a recent phone interview from
her apartment in the Saint Germain des Pres district of Paris.

"It’s the most beautiful part of Paris," said Croze.

She has been back to her hometown to visit family and friends a few
times but she now calls Paris home. Her canine companion Valentine,
by the way, has also made the move across the Atlantic.

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Printer friendly Font:****Croze has been getting an enormous amount
of attention in the past few months for her breathtaking performance
in director Julian Schnabel’s Le scaphandre et le papillon (The
Diving Bell and the Butterfly). The French film, which opens here
Christmas Day, is a visually-stunning, formally-innovative and
emotionally-wrenching adaptation of an autobiographical memoir by
the late Jean-Dominique Bauby. He was the editor of French Elle who,
following a massive stroke, became completely paralyzed and was only
able to communicate by blinking his left eye.

Croze had made a bee-line for France in the summer of 2003, just
weeks after she created a major buzz in the film world by nabbing
the prize as best actress at the Cannes Film Festival for her role
in Les invasions barbares (The Barbarian Invasions).

The win was all the more notable given that Croze has so little
screen-time in the Denys Arcand film in which she plays a heroin
addict with a heart-of-gold.

Croze has not worked on a Quebecois film since, though she insists
that happened by chance.

"I just got so many offers here," said Croze. "I came here for the
first time when I was 17 and I love Paris. So it was just a normal
thing to do."

Croze was quickly deluged with offers from French producers and
directors, and she hasn’t stopped working since. She’s made 10
French films over the four-year period, beginning with the hit comedy
Mensonges et trahisons – the film that first brought her to Paris –
and the critically-acclaimed 2005 thriller Ne le dis a personne. The
actress also found time in her busy agenda to play a supporting role
in Steven Spielberg’s Munich.

Oddly, she hasn’t elicited the same interest from Quebec filmmakers
since Les invasions and she’s not quite sure why that is. She has
always been a bit of an outsider in the film milieu here.

Her defining role prior to the Arcand film was as the troubled
heroine in Denis Villeneuve’s 2000 art-house success Maelstrom,
which garnered her both Genie and Jutra Awards as best actress. She
also turned heads as a belligerent young woman in Atom Egoyan’s
Armenian-genocide drama Ararat.

She never felt entirely at home in Quebec.

"I always felt different and that people judged me in a bad way. I
have a sense of humour that’s dark and people sometimes thought,
‘Oh, she’s nasty’.

But I didn’t have that problem with French people. I feel more free
here (in France)."

In Le scaphandre et le papillon, Croze plays a speech therapist
working hard to help Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) communicate. Since he
is only capable of moving one eyelid, she holds a board with all the
letters of the alphabet in front of his face and reads the letters,
with Bauby blinking to acknowledge which letter he wants to choose.

This is the painstaking way he wrote his memoir.

Schnabel – a painter and filmmaker who previously directed Before
Night Falls – won the award as best director as Cannes for this
audacious work.

Croze said working with Schnabel was unlike anything she’s ever done
before. "He’s a painter, so he doesn’t conform to the usual directing
style. He’s really working with instinct and intuition. He doesn’t
communicate with words."

It was tough for Croze because she was portraying someone interacting
with Bauby, but for most of her scenes, Amalric was not even in the
room. "You’re playing with your imagination. I enjoy sharing with
other actors, so this was difficult for me."

Schnabel is also famous for shooting only one or two takes, which is
highly unusual, and letting his actors improvise. When Bauby tells
the speech therapist – using only his blinks – that he wants to die,
Croze just exploded, something that was not in the script. Then she
walked out of the hospital room. Schnabel called her back in and said
he wanted to shoot her apologizing to Bauby for the outburst. She
improvised the scene on the spot and the result is as moving a scene
as you’ll see on the big screen this year.

"That’s how Julian works. It’s totally immediate. He’s fearless."

The film has just opened in the U.S. and is already seen as an
awards-season frontrunner, which is why Croze is all of a sudden is
currently reading her way through a pile of A-list Hollywood scripts.

"This film has an effect on people," said Croze.