Thierry Klifa on His Fascination With ‘The Richest Woman in the World’

The richest woman in the world falls under the spell of a younger man. In the space of several years, she gives her more than $ 1 billion in cash, annuities and works of art, until her daughter intervenes and looks again in what becomes an international scandal.

That is the true story of the French billionaire Liliane Bettencourt, heiress of the world’s largest cosmetic company, L’Oréal, and her former friend and confidant, author and photographer François-Marie Banier. A fictitious version of the saga, “the richest woman in the world”, starring Isabelle Huppert, will have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, which extends until May 24.

A discharge of responsibility at the beginning of the film says that it is “very freely” inspired by real -life events and contains elements of “pure fiction”, including private exchanges among family members. And director Thierry Klifa has made sure to change all the names. However, the film is still very closely to real events (as will be told in a documentary of Doc of three parts noticeable in Netflix, “the billionaire, the butler and the boyfriend”).

It is true that Huppert does not resemble Madame Bettencourt of real life, which was recognizable for her very lacquered hairstyle and strictly personalized costumes. In the movie, he has silky hair with a shoulder and a much young appearance. She presents himself as a playful Parisena who is healthy silk for the extravagant fantin (Banier’s fictitious version) and allows her to change everything: her clothes, her art collection, her life.

In a recent video interview, Klifa discussed the scandal, why he became interested and why he chose Huppert. The conversation, translated from French, has been edited and condensed.

How does it feel that your film will be released at the Cannes Film Festival, where it will leave the competition?

I am very, very happy. This was a complicated movie to do, and I have a leg for a long time. I briefly had time to make another movie in the middle. It is a great honor to be on the red carpet and in the great cinema of the Cinema of the Cannes Film Festival in the company of the actors.

The Cannes Film Festival has made a brave decision to give us this exhibition, because the issue is a bit sensitive and quite political, and can make people shudder. But the film is receiving interest everywhere. It has sold practical worldwide, only with a promotional reel. It is a winning combo.

Where did you get the idea of ​​making this movie?

When this story came out for the first time, it fascinated me instantly, because I thought about Myelf: this is not how it happened. I am sure that many things are hidden for us, and that we are not informed of them. Not long after, I decided to make a movie on the matter.

The headlines were full of money and politics, but it was not mentioned who these people really were. The thousands of press articles worldwide did not do justice. It was easy to turn them into cartoons, and they became that, and made them suffer.

My movie, and this may sound shocking, a rehabilitation issue is proposed: show what can really happen in a family. Obviously, it is not your family, and it is not mine, and affects less than 1 percent of the population. But behind the mountains of money and all the power that this family had, there were cracks that existed before Fantin appeared. He was just the explosion catalyst.

Instead of illustrating the story we already know, I thought it would show something we did not know, it will represent an environment that has almost never represented in the legs in France: the surroundings of the Bourgeoisie of the Great, the radar and the families of the abbey which, slipping, slip, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, when there were no social networks and everything was all over the press.

There is a dimension of Shakespeare, Balzacian, in this story.

Much of his film is full of real -life details, including the many secret recordings of Madame Bettencourt’s conversations. To what extent is a fiction job?

It is true that there was a huge amount of information, because everything had been made public: the thousands of letters and faxes exchanged among the couple, the newspapers, the newspaper articles. I investigated the story for three years. Having been a film journalist for 11 years before becoming a director, I found it fascinating to start with reality and fiction.

Every time a scene was inspired by real events, there was an overlap with reality.

But when it comes to the personal and family relationship, they had to be fictional, because I was a hidden niece under the table when the thesis exchanges the place.

There is a mystery in this story, and this mystery reinforces its fictional aspects.

Why did you choose hops for the main role?

I had always dreamed of working with Isabelle Huppert. Like Catherine Deneuve, she is the incarnation of cinema. Movie writers and I imagine the movie with Huppert in the main role.

I was determined not to make a biographical film. If I had proposed a biographical film to Isabelle Huppert, she would not have enjoyed it at all. You are constituting an actor, tell them to do things in this way or in that way, and the final result is an imitation exercise that hurts in interest.

It was more important for me to capture the spirit of the character instead of pointing to the similarity. When Isabelle Huppert played the magistrate research Eva Joly in “Comedy of Power” by Claude Chabrol, resembled that real life character either.

You have made Huppert look much younger than Madame Bettencourt.

Liliane Bettencourt was very young when François-Marie Banier. She was 65 years old and beautiful. If you look at her cover portrait of her for “Égoest” magazine, he looks like Ava Gardner.

I soon decided the timeline of the story to have to have to have the artificial age HUPPERT. That never works well on the screen.

Don’t you worry how the Bettencourt and Banier family will react?

I have not made absolutely an accusatory film. It would be sincerely annoying if it offended someone.

We are protected by the fact that our film is a fiction work and that the main characters are called Marianne, Frédérique and Fantin. That gives us a certain distance from what really happened.

I find that the characters in my film are monstrous but childish, threatening but moving.