Leo Seydou is again directing the Cannes Film Festival

CANY – The Cannes Film Festival is again owned by Leo Seid.

The French actress has already won the Palme d’Or at the 2013 festival for “Blue is the Warmest Color,” making her and Adele Exarchopoulos the first actors to win the Cana Grand Prix, which they shared with director Abdelatiff. Kecice.

Last year she had four films at the festival, but all of them missed because they gave a positive test for COVID-19. But this year, Seydou is showing two of the best plays of his career in a couple of films presented in Cannes: “One Good Morning” by Mia Hansen-Love and “Crimes of the Future” by David Cronenberg. Together, they only reinforced the view that Seydou is the main French actress of her generation.

Recently in the afternoon a few blocks from the Cannes Palace of Festivals Seydou cheerfully greeted the reporter. How was she? “Great!” she replied. “Shouldn’t I be great?”

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Seidou, 36, has already made a big mark in Hollywood, most notably by taking the once stereotypical role of “Bond Girl” and spreading the character – “Bond Woman”, which she renamed – in several films, adding a new dimension to the depth of the franchise. Saidu was so good that even James Bond wanted to stay.

But it is especially clear at this year’s Cannes that Hollywood was just one stop out of many in the fast-growing, exceptionally diverse career of Seydou, who managed to be one of Europe’s most famous faces but still exuded a mysterious melancholy on screen. She is ubiquitous and elusive at the same time.

“I have sadness,” Seydou says, taking him back to a shy childhood. “For me, cinema is a game. This is a real consolation because in a sense I have turned my sadness into an object of beauty. Or I tried, anyway. It doesn’t work every time. “

“If I didn’t have a movie, I’d be very sad,” she adds. “That’s why I work all the time. It’s a way to stay in touch.”

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In “One Good Morning”, one of the most beautiful in Cannes, Seydou plays a young widow who raises a daughter in Paris, caring for an elderly father whose memory is slipping away. After resuming communication with an old friend follows a passionate romance. “One Good Morning” is a semi-autobiographical film by Hansen-Love, written shortly before her father died of COVID-19. Hansen-Love, director of “Bergman Island,” wrote it with Seydou in mind.

“She may have been my favorite actress for this generation,” explains Hansen-Love. “She’s mysterious in the sense of how few actresses are. She’s not trying to show things. She was not hurt. ”

“She has sadness and melancholy that contrast with her superstar status that drives me,” the screenwriter-director adds. “On the one hand, she is a very glamorous figure in cinema. She is very sexy. She’s starred in movies where she’s been seen in terms of male imagination, and I think she really likes it. But it has innocence and simplicity that make me feel the same way when I shoot unknown actors. ”

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Sony Pictures Classics purchased the film Monday for U.S. box office, calling it “Seid’s best performance to date.”

By this point, Seydou had experienced some of the worst aspects of the film business. In 2017, she said Harvey Weinstein once forcibly tried to kiss her in a hotel room at a meeting that was allegedly about a potential role. The technique of shooting the lesbian novel “The Warmest Blue”, in which Kecice shot up to 100 shots of one shot, was also questioned.

But Seydou, who recently signed on to film the erotic novel Emanuel with Happening director Audrey Carpet, says she has never hesitated to express her sexuality on screen. “One Good Morning” from Hansen Lava’s point of view is one of the most sensual films in Cannes.

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“I felt that this film was about passion,” says Seydou. “I have no problems with nudity. This is what I like to see as a spectator, as a spectator. I think it’s beautiful. I love sex scenes in movies. ”

In Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future,” which opens in theaters on June 3, Seydou co-starred with Vigo Mortensen in a film even more focused on the body. In the future, where people and plastic have come together, she plays a surgeon who performs operations to remove tumors and organs with a bright artist.

“Honestly, I didn’t understand everything in the film,” says Saidu, smiling. “For me, it’s like a metaphor for what it means to be an artist.”

“Crimes of the Future” may represent the ordinary world of science fiction, but Seydou is perfectly grounded in it. Eager for more open cinematic adventures, Seydou says that starring in various films “I feel free. I don’t want to be stuck in one place.”

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“I’m not crazy about ‘funny’ movies,” says Seydou. – I don’t think I go to the cinema to have fun. I know this is a great thing in America. I prefer to ask myself questions. I don’t like it when people give me answers. I don’t want to stop thinking. I think some movies are just to feed you images. ”

“I like to feel that I have touched something true,” adds Seydou. “In this world we live in today, Instagram and all that is just a lie. I feel that with the help of cinema we can touch a certain truth. And a lot of truth. I love when I am touched. I feel alive. “

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Follow AP writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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