Snuggled up in her down jacket on a gray January morning, her hands clutching a cup of lemon-honey tea at the table of a somewhat dull brasserie in the capital, Ophélie Bau doesn’t chit-chat: “Paris is not my climate, not my energy, not my temperament. » At 30, the actress has just moved to Ile-de-France after almost a decade spent in Montpellier, her “dream town” that of the sunny holidays of childhood and the first gaming experiences at Cours Florent at the age of 22.
She entered the cinema with Mektoub, My Love : canto uno, by Abdellatif Kechiche, in 2017. We saw him in an idealized vision of Sète, tanned skin, completely at ease in his mini clothes, his long hair dried in the wind of the Mediterranean, to the point that many have imagined in girl from the South, the one who grew up in the Doubs…
In The Sandman, Steve Achiepo’s first feature film, in theaters February 15, Ophélie Bau plays the former girlfriend of a credulous sleep dealer. Aurore, mother of a child, is an employee of a rehousing association helping migrants. This character of a combative woman, “ultimately helpless in the face of the world’s distress”, she remarks, is the opposite of her first role as a shepherdess’s daughter. ” I arrived on this set thinking of playing a rebel and, as I went along, I realized that she was less armed than I imagined. »
The film, which warns against poor housing and which has received support from the Abbé Pierre Foundation, combines directing ambitions and committed words. A credo shared by Ophelie Bau. “Comedy, realistic drama, social film: I seek to make, beyond genres, a cinema of public utility, at the service of the population”, claims the one who cites Vincent Lindon or Andréa Bescond, director mobilized against sexual violence, among her inspirations.
A social fiber
After a baccalaureate in health and social sciences and technologies, she imagined herself as a specialist educator. But failed twice in the competition and multiplies internships and fixed-term contracts in a reception structure for disabled people or in the cardiology department of the CHU of Besançon. “I liked the contact with the patients. I was not present with them when the diagnoses were announced, bad news, but for everything else, the moments of happy respite or relief: meals, snacks, cleaning, transport in the corridors . »
“With me, anything can happen as long as I am safe, caring and humane. » Ophelie Bau
You have 62.14% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.