when success triggers envy and jealousy- Corriere.it

by time news

Evening at the restaurant with friends. Arrived at the dessert, while he struggles whether or not to take the favorite the floating, She confesses to her husband and to the other couple of diners that she is writing a novel. General amazement, giggles. The shop assistant does it in a department store, very good at capturing the tastes of customers, but still a committed. But yet. Completed in the blink of an eye, the book was published by a major publishing house and became a bestseller. A sudden celebrity who, even more than that of the author, will upset the lives of others, envious of that unexpected metamorphosis. Because, although hard to admit, nothing more difficult to swallow The happiness of others, the title of this bitter comedy, from Thursday 24 June in theaters for Academy2, starring an impeccable quartet of actors: Brnice Bejo La, Vincent Cassel her husband Marc, Florence Foresti and Franois Damiens, friends Karine and Francis.

Thorny issue, that of the success of others.
Thorny and complex – confirms director Daniel Cohen -. Fame, especially if won by someone you know, who until the day before you had considered the same as you, often turns out to be the touchstone of your mediocrity, a boomerang for those around. Who, to explain that inexplicable success, looks for a thousand reasons. Except the only right one: because he is good. I have been working in the cinema for some time, I know the subject well, the entourage of the stars is a tangle of jealousies, resentments, spite. A gnawing at the soul on an unspoken and hateful question: why him, or her, and not me?


Does La’s dazzling success have any real references?
I was inspired by the figure of JK Rowling, the “mother” of Harry Potter. Before writing her novel she was a single woman, without work or money, with a dependent daughter… And suddenly she became the queen of children’s books. Nobody believed in her talent except her. He was right.

Does Brnice Bejo look like this identikit?
I needed an actress capable of special intensity. She has the gift of knowing how to observe others, write down the small features of life with discretion and depth. Brnice’s gaze has that strength.

This film has a strange genesis, you wrote a pice for the theater but then …
cinema came first! I took the opportunity, I reshaped the text on the criteria of the big screen, I also changed the title. The original, The floating island, could make you think of a culinary film. It was Cassel who remembered a French proverb, says: the happiness of some makes the unhappiness of the others.

The only one to stay with her head on her shoulders. Who wins as a saleswoman and as a writer.
Talent is either there or not. And if it does apply to everything. But if having a good saleswoman as a friend doesn’t put your “ego” in crisis, a good writer can create problems. To the husband first who, as a good macho, wants his wife in the shadows. To friends, who try to ride the wave of ridiculous creativity to try to keep up. Karine boasts of having started a masterpiece, the incipit of which appears to have been copied from The stranger of Camus, Francis tries his hand at sculpture, the art of bonsai, finally he discovers himself as a cook and opens a restaurant.

Almost a metaphor of celebrity widespread in the days of social networks …
Where many would kill for one like! The need to be someone even for a single moment, the real lethal virus of today. With the result of creating an abyss between what you are and what you think you are. Small ephemeral celebrities make great melancholy.

June 23, 2021 (change June 23, 2021 | 19:41)

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