To see in cinemas: This film presented at Cannes brings together two of the great actors of French cinema on the screen.

Released in theaters on August 28, Prison in Bordeaux stars the brilliant Isabelle Huppert and Hafsia Hertz, an acting duo that audiences have already seen at Les Gens d’ this summer. Next to Andre Techine.

In this melodrama, which sometimes leans towards social comedy, they play two women who are opposites of each other but meet and bond over the same life experience: their husbands in prison.

Alma, single in her big house in the city, and Mina, a young mother in a distant suburb, organize their lives around the absence of these two men in the same place. Around the guest room, they get to know each other and begin a friendship that is as unlikely as it is tumultuous…

The genesis of the project

Directed by Patricia Mazoui, to whom we owe Saint-Cyr, Travolta et Moi et Peaux de Vaches, La Prisonnière de Bordeaux could have been very different, as the film was originally supposed to be directed by Pierre Courage (Un Homme d’ State) in 2012. . “His intention was to make a social film about women in reception centers and guest rooms: those who, as wives, sisters, mothers or daughters of prisoners, spend part of their lives in prison and therefore also spend a lot of time in the neighborhood.” On a train, nowhere… these were strong initial circumstances. “ The director explains.

After writing the screenplay in collaboration with François Bégoteau (Entre les Murs), Pierre Courage tried to get the project off the ground, in vain. Seven years later, Ivan Taib, a friend of producer Xavier Ples, suggested it to Patricia Mazoui, who accepted and reworked the text with François Begoteau.

“In their script, two female characters, rich and poor, white and Arab, already existed. They already had dialogue exchanges, strong and even funny, saturated with class relations.

Very early on I wanted to find a metaphor for the liberation of two trapped women, each in a particular life. Alma and glass become porous to each other. The latter’s arrival in the great house and the former’s seclusion reinforces Alma’s awareness of her helpless life among gilding and flowers. A reverse metaphor for love, ladies, husbands in prison. he says.

I present to you the unknown

Before making this film, Patricia Mazui was not familiar with the prison environment and had to research specifically on this topic. “I discovered reception houses, these places next to prisons. Places, waiting, women together…” But it wasn’t the only part of the unknown that made him make this feature film, which forced him to leave his comfort zone.

“I really didn’t know either the big provincial bourgeoisie or the suburbs, their “intimates”, their flesh. It was difficult for a film that should not be afraid of naturalism. As far as I know, they are farmers and traders. So, even if it’s always good to be in front of the unknown, shooting Alma and Mina, this city, Bordeaux… was as foreign to me as shooting at the North Pole. He specifies.

And yet, the on-screen result is no less accurate, with the birth of this beautiful, unexpected and complicated friendship between two women, played by Isabelle Huppert and Hafsia Hertz, that will mark their lives forever. Selected for the recent release of the Cannes Film Festival in the Directors’ Fortnight, this excellent actor’s film is currently available in cinemas.