Our review of The Poet's Bride: Yolande Moreau puts us at the wedding

In Charleville, along the banks of the Meuse, a strange procession parades. At its head, an unconventional bride and groom, a lunar cowboy in a fringed jacket and immaculate jeans, hat on his head and leather cord around his neck (Esteban), hand in hand with his “young” wife (Yolande Moreau ) in a long blue and gold embroidered dress, looking like a Slavic babushka, her long white hair pulled up in a loose bun. Behind them, the guests are in tune, including William Sheller in the role of an anything but orthodox priest and Grégory Gadebois unrecognizable, disguised in a pink dress, heels and ascot. The marriage is not quite one, the spouses are a false couple, but no matter, the time has come for the wedding.

In her new film, The Poet's Bride, Yolande Moreau has summoned a joyful and baroque cast, surrounded by a beautiful line-up of actors. “Playing the bride at my age is the icing on the cake,” rejoices the 70-year-old actress and director mischievously. In this lovely comedy, she is indeed Mireille, this “fiancee of the poet” who, after a stay in prison, returns to her hometown and her childhood home, which she inherited.

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In this large decrepit building, guarded by the statue of a monumental deer, she decides to welcome three very different tenants, but who are all hiding something. Cyril, a young student at the Beaux-Arts, where she works as a canteen worker, angry with his family; Bernard, a municipal gardener who goes out at night transformed into a transvestite; and Elvis, an undocumented Turk who loves folk and America. They are soon joined by Fernando, Mireille's former great love, who betrayed and abandoned her years before. Brooding over these rascals with her melancholic blue gaze like a falsely severe mother hen, ensuring the smooth running of the household with small cigarette deals, she will take her world on a strange adventure.

Yolande Moreau undoubtedly reveals a lot in this film, her third, a little crazy like her characters but madly endearing, with a tender humanity that is a little outdated but radiant. And that's all of its charm, as it easily imposes its zany and generous universe, which we discovered in 2004 in her first feature film, When the Sea Rises (César for best first film, César for best actress). “I actually put a lot of myself into it, starting with the filming location, the Ardennes,” she confirms.

“That’s where I met the father of my children, in a hippie community where we stayed in plastic tepees. The future was utopian, and I was convinced that we were moving towards a better world. My film talks about this, the need we all have to escape, to rediscover values ​​that are a little forgotten today.”

The other source of inspiration was a photo discovered in an art magazine, to illustrate an article on Shaun Greenhalgh, a famous English forger. “I was fascinated by the contrast between this clumsy guy with his big fingers and the finesse of the works he had created,” she says. However, there is no question of making a documentary about it. “What interested me was the theme of usurpation. Why do we dream so much about coming to terms with reality and taking on another personality?”

His whole family is gathered here. Her artistic family, François Morel and Philippe Duquesne, her lifelong accomplices, with whom she shared the Deschiens adventure in the troupe of Jérôme Deschamps and Macha Makeïeff. His daughter Héloïse Moreau too, credited as scriptwriter. Without forgetting her four grandchildren, three girls and a boy aged 18 to 28, all present, including the youngest in a scene where she flirts with Sergi Lopez in a bar. There is also Frédérique Moreau, co-writer of the film. But there, no family connection. “I was looking for someone to help me. I saw her arrive, she had the same name as me and, like me, she had a knee problem and walked with a cane. Two limping Moreaus, this image amused me, and I chose it.”

The Note of Figaro: 2.5/4