LITTLE GIRL BLUE Trailer (2024) Marion Cotillard

LITTLE GIRL BLUE Trailer (2024) Marion Cotillard

LITTLE GIRL BLUE Trailer (2024) Marion Cotillard
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The generational chasm between our parents’ lives and the memories we preserve of them — sure, in turn, to warp and fade when passed to our children — is elegantly explored in “Little Girl Blue,” Mona Achache‘s pained, poignant docudrama cry to her female elders. In an effort to process her mother Carole’s death by suicide in 2016, the filmmaker collates an assortment of archival materials to trace the arc of a turbulent and care-starved life, leading inevitably to the time-blurred figure of Achache’s grandmother, writer and editor Monique Lange. But it’s in the gaps between tangible records that the film gets most interesting, as Marion Cotillard steps in to inhabit the Carole of her memories, the ones Achache can’t quite find on paper.

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This is hardly a novel technique, given the evolving hybridization of the documentary form, as filmmakers chase larger audiences with the narrative and aesthetic comforts of fiction. But the involvement of an Oscar-winning actor in “Little Girl Blue” never feels like a strategic ploy, not least because Achache cops to the artifice of the entire enterprise, revealing all the seams and joins of the project as she and Cotillard rehearse and workshop their recreation of Carole. Watching Cotillard mold herself to Achache’s conception of her mother — not fluently, but by tricky trial and error — underlines the malleability and fragility of memory, buffeted as it is by unreliable glimmers of the past and the distraction of present-day counterpoints. The resulting film is effective both as a raw family therapy session (albeit with only one member present), and as a prismatic study of performance and cinema as subjective conduits of reality.

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Even from a less personally invested perspective, Carole Achache would be an interesting documentary subject. A writer, actor and photographer who was born into effective Left Bank intellectual royalty — Lange’s literary circles included Jean Genet and Violette Leduc, her father was celebrated science historian Jean-Jacques Salomon, her godfather was none other than William Faulkner — she never quite found her own footing in that world. Via a substantial trove of Carole’s letters, journals and diaries, Achache uncovers a dark tangle of trauma, headlined by the film’s most startling claim: that the aforementioned Genet groomed the 12-year-old Carole, culminating in her sexual assault by one of his lovers, a violation of trust compounded by Lange’s alleged complicity therein.

Achache doesn’t dwell luridly on such revelations, instead gathering them — quite literally, as her expanding collections of documents and photographs take strikingly vast physical form in a studio set fashioned as Carole’s apartment — into a kind of audiovisual psychological report, taking on ever more agonized, shadowy heft as the film follows her into adulthood. Against the sexual, political and intellectual liberation of the late 1960s, Carole is simultaneously freed and trapped once more, turning to sex work and drug use as healing and self-realization continue to elude her.

Carole’s connections help her forge an acting career in the 1970s, with small roles in films by the likes of Costa-Gavras and Joseph Losey, though stardom never beckons. When she tries to launch a writing career, she experiences rejection, perhaps tellingly only getting a book published after Lange’s death: Her bohemian elite background is presented throughout as a burden of privilege. Only in motherhood, with Achache’s birth in 1981, does she find some semblance of stability and satisfaction, though that may be the child’s perspective, and enduring adoration for her mother, tilting the portrait. “Little Girl Blue” is especially touching as a testament to the inner lives of parents that their children never fully know, and to the torment often silently raging behind our rosiest memories.

Achache and editor Valérie Loiseleux deftly weave the film’s evidential fragments of the past — audio recordings, home movies, an avalanche of faded photographs — into a restless, flickering slideshow of recollection that often feels, however archivally rooted, emotively pulled from memory. This material thus takes on a bleary, amorphous quality that is atmospherically consistent with DP Noé Bach’s soft, low-lit lensing of the film’s dramatized portions, with the images sometimes appearing inky and tear-stained, deepening in intensity as Cotillard and her director find their way into Carole.

In a remarkably committed, empathetic performance that (in a rare coup for a nonfiction work) earned the star a Best Actress César nod, Cotillard enters proceedings as herself, chicly attired and ready to work, before stripping down to human foundations. Gradually layering herself with Carole’s physical markers — clothes, contacts, wig, jewelry — she begins by lipsyncing to recordings of the woman herself, as the film briefly mimics the experimental construct of Clio Barnard’s 2011 film “The Arbor.” But as Cotillard finds her literal voice, these self-conscious details of process fall away, and the actor’s evocation of Carole’s mounting psychic pain turns immersive and entirely upsetting. Finally, it’s by entrusting the memory of her mother to a gifted and unrelated third party that Achache finds truth.

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Little Girl Blue, Marion Cotillard, Mona Achache
Little Girl Blue

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Mona Achache[1]
Written by Mona Achache[1]
Produced by
Laetitia Gonzalez[2]
Yaël Fogiel[2]
Starring
Marion Cotillard
Mona Achache
Cinematography Noé Bach[1]
Edited by Valerie Loiseleux[1]
Music by Valentin Couineau[1]
Production
companies
Les Films du Poisson[3]
Wrong Men[4]
France 2 Cinéma[4]
RTBF[5]
Distributed by
Tandem (France)[4][6]
Galeries Distribution (Belgium)[7]
Release dates
21 May 2023 (Cannes)[8]
15 November 2023 (France)[9]
3 April 2024 (Belgium)[7]
Running time 95 minutes[1]
Countries
France[3]
Belgium[3]
Language French[10]
Budget €910.043[10]
Box office $424,007[11]
Little Girl Blue is a 2023 biographical docudrama[12][13] film written and directed by Mona Achache based on the life of her mother, the writer and photographer Carole Achache, starring Marion Cotillard as Carole Achache and Mona Achache as herself.[12] The film is a co-production between France and Belgium and had its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival in the Special Screenings section on 21 May 2023,[8] where it competed for the Golden Eye and was well received by critics. The title comes from the song of the same name written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. The film was released theatrically in France by Tandem on 15 November 2023 and in Belgium by Galeries Distribution on 3 April 2024.

Little Girl Blue received three nominations at the 2024 César Awards: Best Documentary Film, Best Editing, and Best Actress for Cotillard, becoming the first actress to be nominated for a documentary film.

Plot
After the 2016 suicide of writer and photographer Carole Achache, her daughter Mona Achache, a film director, found thousands of photos, letters, and audio recordings that her mother left behind. To better understand her mother's death and who she was, Mona Achache asked actress Marion Cotillard to portray her mother in a docudrama investigating Carole's childhood, her relationship with her mother, the writer Monique Lange, and the abuses that Carole suffered at the hands of men such as writer Jean Genet.[12]

Cast
Marion Cotillard as Carole Achache[12][14]
Mona Achache as herself[12]
Marie Bunel as Kathleen Evin[15][16]
Marie-Christine Adam as Florence Malraux[15]
Pierre Aussedat as Nikos Papatakis[15][17]
Jacques Boudet as Daniel Cordier[15]
Didier Flamand as Jorge Semprún[15][18]
Brigitte Sy as Monique Lange (voice)[15]
Àlex Brendemühl as Juan Goytisolo (voice)[15]
Jeremy Lewin as Jean-Jacques Salomon (voice)[15]
Jean Achache[15]
Tella Kpomahou[19]
Guy Donald Koukissa[20]
Production
Development
On 7 January 2020, it was announced that France's CNC had granted an advance on earnings to Mona Achache's documentary project Little Girl Blue,[21] whose production details were yet to be formalized.[22]

On 10 December 2022, it was announced that Achache had recently filmed a docudrama about her mother's life starring Marion Cotillard as the director's mother, and that Achache would also star in the film.[23] Achache also wrote the screenplay.[1] The editing process started on 2 January 2023.[24]

The title Little Girl Blue comes from the song of the same name by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, whose version sung by Janis Joplin is featured in the film.[25] It was also the song that Mona Achache and her brother chose for their mother's funeral.[26]

The film is a co-production between France's Les Films du Poisson with France 2 and Belgium's Wrong Men and RTBF.[4][5] The total budget for the film was €910.043,[10] with €32.000 from Belgium's Tax Shelter.[10] The film also received investment from Chanel, of which Cotillard is a brand ambassador.[27][28]

Achache said of the film:

All my life, I have looked for my mother, in female figures around me. Mine was very flawed. And then she hung herself. I packed her belongings. I came across pictures of her. I see a sublime woman there that I don't recognize. So, for the first time in my life, I go in search of my own mother. Through it, I will also explore an era, an environment, a movement: the literary Paris of the 60s and 70s. The sexual, homosexual revolution. The liberation of women. The return of morality and conformism in the 80s. The lost illusions of the post-sixty-eighters.[a][30]

Achache said she cast Cotillard to play her mother due to the resemblance between Cotillard and her mother when she was young,[31] and also because she wanted an iconic actress for the role, as a counterbalance to her mother's death and all the darkness she had inside her.[32] "There is a kind of incredible resemblance to my young mother, this kind of insolent beauty, freedom, charisma. And then the story is so dark that I wanted to bring her a woman who would come to completely contradict her with her light," Achache said.[31] Achache had met Cotillard through mutual friends,[33] and although they did not know each other well, Achache felt that they shared "a similar sensibility and, perhaps, similar experiences",[33] and she also felt that Cotillard had the capacity to embody her mother.[32] Cotillard said the story portrayed in the film felt close to her, as her mother and her grandmother have also suffered abuse in their relationships with men.[33]

Director of photography Noé Bach said that Mathieu Amalric's Barbara (2017) and Marco Bellocchio's Vincere (2009), were some of the reference films for Little Girl Blue that he and set designer Héléna Cisterne watched together with director Mona Achache.[34]

Filming
The film was shot in 15 days.[35] Filming took place in Mulhouse in the Grand Est region of France between 20 November and 10 December 2022.[36][23]

The film was shot in chronological order.[37] Marion Cotillard filmed all of her scenes in only eight days.[34] She had only two months to prepare for the film.[33]

As Carole Achache's apartment no longer exists, both the scenes set in her apartment and all the sets in the film were shot in the offices of an abandoned factory in Mulhouse.[34]

Due to several issues such as blockage, cars, passers-by, and Cotillard's availability, it was complicated to organize a day of filming in Paris for Cotillard's wanderings, so Mona Achache suggested using a rear projection process to give the illusion of this exterior.[34] Achache and director of photography Noé Bach shot with a Steadicam in the empty streets of Paris during the early morning, at dawn and at night.[34] These shots were then projected onto a wall on the set where Cotillard walked facing the camera on a treadmill with the projection behind her.[34]

Cotillard wore a curly brown wig, brown contact lenses to cover her natural blue eyes,[38] and prosthetic makeup to achieve a resemblance to Carole Achache and also for her progressive aging.[34] The makeup was done by Daniel Weimer and Accurate Dreams studio along with makeup artist Pamela Goldammer.[39][34] The team spent between two and four hours each morning applying the makeup on Cotillard's face.[34]

Release
The first poster for the film was unveiled on 24 April 2023.[40] The first stills from the film were unveiled in early May on the website of the Cannes Film Festival.[1] On 26 May 2023, Deadline unveiled the first clip from the film during their interview with Mona Achache and Marion Cotillard that was conducted by Pete Hammond.[37]

The film had its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival in the Special Screenings section on 21 May 2023,[8][41] where it competed for the Golden Eye[42] and earned a standing ovation at the end of its screening.[43]

The film made its North American premiere at the 50th Telluride Film Festival on 1 September 2023.[44][45] It was screened at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival in the section Dare[46] on 12 October 2023,[47] and was screened at the 2023 AFI Fest in the Discovery section on 29 October 2023.[48]

The film was originally set to be released theatrically in France by Tandem on 1 November 2023,[49] but the release was pushed back to 15 November 2023.[9] International sales are handled by the Paris-based company Charades.[4] The film was released theatrically in Belgium by Galeries Distribution on 3 April 2024.[7]

Home video
The film was made available for streaming in France on 14 March 2024.[50] It was released on DVD in France on 4 June 2024. The extras include a 45-minute interview between Mona Achache and Marion Cotillard.[51]

Soundtrack
The album with the soundtrack composed by Valentin Couineau was released by Les Films du Poisson on 15 November 2023.[52]

Little Girl Blue (Bande originale du film)
Soundtrack album by Valentin Couineau
Released 15 November 2023
Genre Film soundtrack
Length 24:19
Label Les Films du Poisson
All tracks are written by Valentin Couineau.

Little Girl Blue (Bande originale du film) track listing
No. Title Length
1. "En avoir marre" 1:31
2. "Carole" 0:59
3. "La baleine" 2:35
4. "La métamorphose" 3:14
5. "La petite sirène" 1:16
6. "New York 68" 1:23
7. "En descente" 2:30
8. "Blue blue cafard" 1:33
9. "L'escalier" 1:31
10. "La marche" 1:30
11. "La nuit" 0:59
12. "Pampelune" 2:54
13. "Les madones" 1:50
14. "Le funambule" 3:54
Total length: 24:19
Reception
Critical response
The film received generally positive reviews from critics. AlloCiné, a French cinema site, gave the film an average rating of 4.0/5, based on a survey of 26 French reviews,[53] making it the highest-rated French film released on the week of 15 November 2023.[54] Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 83% based on 6 reviews, with a weighted average of 8.80/10.[55]

Allan Hunter of Screen Daily said in his review: "Achache's voyage around her mother ultimately blossoms into a shocking tale of abuse, shame, self-loathing and the quest for redemption. It offers a brave, cathartic reckoning with the past and the people in your life that you can love and hate, often at the same time."[12] About Cotillard's performance, Hunter said: "Cotillard dresses herself in the clothes that Achache presents – her late mother’s jeans, t-shirt, scarf and glasses. She dons a wig, accepts Carole’s handbag and its contents and a skoosh of her preferred perfume. Suitably transformed, Cotillard plays Carole in reconstructions of key events and interviews. It is an approach echoing the lip-synching triumph of Alan Cumming in My Old School (2022). Achache goes even further by making the viewer aware of the process. We witness Cotillard running her lines, fluffing her dialogue, trying to match Carole's words with her lips and receiving specific instruction from the director. It can break the spell of the performance but Cotillard does deliver, especially in the soul-searching, confessional scenes from Carole's later years."[12]

Dave Calhoun of Time Out gave the film 4 out of 5 stars and wrote: "Little Girl Blue works as a tribute, a post-mortem and an act of attempted closure. It bravely deals with inherited trauma and repeated patterns of abuse, giving us a family story dominated by women ('men were secondary,' says Carole) but darkened by men. Cotillard's role is illuminating, giving voice and life to this complicated character who ages and sours before our eyes. It's honest, revealing and inventive."[56]

Jan Lumholdt of Cineuropa called the film "an unorthodox yet proper piece of the grief process, deeply personal on Achache's side and compelling for the viewer, who is allowed into these private rooms."[25] Lumholdt called the scene where Cotillard wears Carole Achache's clothes, accessories and perfurme, "a scene that will surely make its way into the best-of-the-year summaries of French cinema of 2023".[25]

Xan Brooks of The Guardian called the film "a mesmerising docudrama inquiry" and named it as the best documentary of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.[57]

Álex Vicente of El País said that Little Girl Blue "also works as a kind of documentary about an obsessive and insecure actress — as all perfectionists are — who we watch as she tries to caress a little bit of truth, falling down but getting up again. Failing again, failing better."[33]

Valentine Servant-Ulgu of Vanity Fair France wrote that Achache "signs a singular object of cinema, of a raw and striking truth, supported by cultural and popular references", and that Cotillard "is at the top of her art. The actress signs here an interpretative performance of a rare and refined emotion."[38]

Sandra Onana of Libération wrote that "Mona Achache recruits an impeccable Marion Cotillard to bring her mother back to life for a beautiful and tortuous docu-fiction experience."[58]

Leslie Felperin of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the film is "a fascinating psychodrama — with extra scoops of meta on top — that showcases the talents of all the story's women, especially Cotillard and Achache," and praised Cotillard's performance by calling it "a full-on Method immersion that climaxes with a wrenching breakdown scene that seems to close some kind of gap between the two women."[59]

Screen Daily's critic Jonathan Romney named Little Girl Blue as one of the top documentaries of 2023.[60]

French magazine L'Obs included the film in its list of "the 23 films that made us happy in 2023".[61]

In January 2024, The Hollywood Reporter included the film in its "top 10 list of still-unsold international features from 2023 that U.S. audiences deserve to see".[62]

Box office
The film was released to 101 theaters in France,[63] where it debuted at number nine at the box office in its first day of release,[64] and number four in Paris among the new releases on 15 November 2023, selling 361 admissions from 8 sessions.[65] In its first weekend of release in France, the film sold 20.092 admissions from 101 theaters, ranking at number eight among the new releases.[63]

Accolades
For her performance in Little Girl Blue, Marion Cotillard became the first actress to be nominated for a César Award for Best Actress for a documentary film.[66]

Award / Film Festival Date of ceremony Category Recipient(s) Result Ref(s)
Cannes Film Festival 27 May 2023 Golden Eye Mona Achache Nominated [42]
CineLibri 20 October 2023 Best Documentary Nominated [67]
Rencontres du cinéma francophone en Beaujolais 12 November 2023 Jury Award Nominated [68]
Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie 24 November 2023 Best Medium or Feature-Length Documentary Nominated [69]
Prix Louis-Delluc 6 December 2023 Best Film Nominated [70]
Lumières Award 22 January 2024 Best Documentary Nominated [71]
Paris Film Critics Awards 4 February 2024 Nominated [72]
Best Actress Marion Cotillard Nominated
Trophées du Film français 6 February 2024 Scam Award for Best Documentary Mona Achache Nominated [73]
César Awards 23 February 2024 Best Actress Marion Cotillard Nominated [74][75]
Best Editing Valérie Loiseleux Nominated
Best Documentary Film Mona Achache, Laetitia Gonzalez and Yaël Fogiel Nominated
Brussels Art Film Festival 17 November 2024 Best Film - National Competition Little Girl Blue Nominated [76]
Notes
A "sixty-eighter" ("soixante-huitard" in French) is a person who participated in the May 1968 protests in France.[29]
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"Little Girl Blue". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on 25 March 2024. Retrieved 25 March 2024.
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Onana, Sandra (22 May 2023). "Mi-docu mi-biopic | Festival de Cannes : "Little Girl Blue", la mère à voir". Libération (in French). Archived from the original on 3 June 2023. Retrieved 28 May 2023.
Felperin, Leslie (30 May 2023). "'Little Girl Blue' Review: Marion Cotillard Plays a Troubled Mother in Powerful and Personal Doc/Psychodrama Hybrid". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 3 June 2023. Retrieved 2 June 2023.
"Screen critics' top documentaries of 2023". Screen Daily. 26 December 2023. Archived from the original on 22 January 2024. Retrieved 16 April 2024.
Schaller, Nicolas; Grassin, Sophie; Forestier, François; Leherpeur, Xavier (26 December 2023). "Les 23 films qui ont fait notre bonheur en 2023" [The 23 films that made us happy in 2023]. L'Obs (in French). Archived from the original on 30 December 2023. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
Roxborough, Scott (5 January 2024). "10 International Festival Favorites From 2023 That U.S. Audiences Deserve to See". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 29 February 2024. Retrieved 16 April 2024.
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Colon, Tanguy (16 November 2023). "Box-office 1er jour : Hunger Games : La Ballade du serpent et de l'oiseau chanteur réussit son entrée dans l'arène" [Box office day 1: The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes successfully enters the arena]. Boxoffice Pro (in French). Archived from the original on 17 November 2023. Retrieved 18 November 2023.
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External links
Little Girl Blue at IMDb Edit this at Wikidata
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Little Girl Blue at Unifrance
Little Girl Blue at Cannes Film Festival
Little Girl Blue at Cineuropa
Little Girl Blue at Rotten Tomatoes Edit this at Wikidata
Press kit (in French)
Official trailer on YouTube
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Films directed by Mona Achache
The Hedgehog (2009)Les Gazelles (2014)Valiant Hearts (2021)Little Girl Blue (2023)
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Marion Cotillard
OOAL LoH

Cotillard in 2019
Born 30 September 1975 (age 49)[1]
Paris, France
Other names Simone[2]
Occupation Actress
Years active 1982–present
Works Full list
Partner Guillaume Canet (2007‍–‍present)
Children 2
Awards Full list
Marion Cotillard (French: [maʁjɔ̃ kɔtijaʁ] ⓘ; born 30 September 1975) is a French actress who has appeared in both European and Hollywood productions, and her accolades include an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, two César Awards, and a Golden Globe Award. She became a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in France in 2010 and was promoted to Officer in 2016, the same year she was named a Knight of the Legion of Honour.

Cotillard began her career at the age of seven. She had her first English-language role in the action series Highlander (1993) at the age of seventeen, and made her feature film debut in The Story of a Boy Who Wanted to Be Kissed (1994). Her breakthrough came in the French film Taxi (1998), and she won the César Award for Best Supporting Actress for A Very Long Engagement (2004). She had her first major English-language role in A Good Year (2006) and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of French singer Édith Piaf in La Vie en Rose (2007), becoming the only actor to win an Academy Award for a French-language performance. She also acted in major English-language films such as Public Enemies (2009), Nine (2009), Inception (2010), Contagion (2011), Midnight in Paris (2011), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and Allied (2016).

On stage, Cotillard has portrayed Joan of Arc in numerous productions of Joan of Arc at the Stake. She has served as a spokeswoman for Greenpeace since 2001 and was the face of the Lady Dior handbag from 2008 to 2017, and Chanel No. 5 from 2020 to 2024.

Early life
Cotillard was born on 30 September 1975 in Paris,[1] and grew up in Alfortville, in the southern suburbs of Paris, where she lived with her family in a flat on the 18th floor of a tower block[2] until she was 11 years old,[3] when her family moved to the small commune of Aulnay-la-Rivière in the Loiret department in north-central France.[3] She grew up in an artistically inclined household.[4] Her mother, Niseema Theillaud [fr], is an actress and drama teacher.[2][5] Her father, Jean-Claude Cotillard, is an actor, teacher, former mime, and theatre director, of Breton descent.[2] She has two younger twin brothers, Quentin and Guillaume, a writer and a sculptor.[2][6] The family later moved to La Beauce, a town near Orléans, where her father set up his own theatre company.[2]

Cotillard's father introduced her to cinema, and as a child she would mimic Louise Brooks and Greta Garbo in her own bedroom.[2] She began acting during her childhood, appearing in one of her father's plays.[7] At the age of 3, she appeared on stage for the first time opposite her mother.[8] At the age of 15, Cotillard entered the Conservatoire d'art dramatique [fr] in Orléans.[9] She graduated in 1994 and then moved to Paris to pursue an acting career.[4] In order to pay her bills in her teens, she started making key-chains in her own factory at home and sold them at candy stores.[10][11]

Cotillard speaks French and English fluently.[12] She learned English at the age of 11.[13] She started learning Spanish at school but then abandoned it.[14] Years later, she began studying the language again after watching Lovers of the Arctic Circle (1998) by Julio Medem, which is one of her favorite films.[14] She also started learning Danish because she wanted to work with director Thomas Vinterberg after watching his 1998 film The Celebration, but that did not work out.[15]

Career
1982–1999: Early roles and breakthrough
In 1982, at the age of 7, Cotillard made her on-screen debut in the short film Le monde des tout-petits,[16][17] directed by Claude Cailloux and broadcast by the French TV channel TF1.[18] The following year, she appeared in another short film for TF1, Lucie, also directed by Cailloux.[18] In 1991, she appeared in a TV spot against alcoholism titled "Tu t'es vu quand t'as bu?" ("You've seen yourself when you're drunk?"),[18] launched by the French Committee for Health Education.[19]

After small appearances and performances in theatre, Cotillard had occasional, minor roles in television series such as Highlander in 1993,[20] where she had her first English-speaking role aged 17.[10] Her career as a film actress began in the mid-1990s, with minor roles in Philippe Harel's The Story of a Boy Who Wanted to Be Kissed (1994), which was her feature film debut at the age of 18,[12] and in Arnaud Desplechin's My Sex Life... or How I Got into an Argument, and Coline Serreau's La Belle Verte, both released in 1996.[21] Also in 1996, she had her first leading role in the television film Chloé,[22][23] directed by Dennis Berry and opposite Anna Karina, with Cotillard starring as a teenage runaway who is forced into prostitution.[24]

In 1998, she appeared in Gérard Pirès' action comedy Taxi, playing Lilly Bertineau, the girlfriend of delivery boy Daniel, played by Samy Naceri.[1] The film was a box office hit in France with over 6 millions tickets sold,[25] and Cotillard was nominated for a César Award for Most Promising Actress.[26] She reprised the role in Taxi 2 (2000) and Taxi 3 (2003).[1][27]

Cotillard in 1999
In 1999, Cotillard ventured into science fiction with Alexandre Aja's post-apocalyptic romantic drama Furia.[1] That same year, she also starred in Francis Reusser's Swiss war drama film War in the Highlands (La Guerre dans le Haut Pays),[1] for which she won the Best Actress Award at the 1999 Autrans Mountain Film Festival.[28]

In 2001, she appeared in Pierre Grimblat's romantic war drama film Lisa, playing the title role and younger version of Jeanne Moreau's character, alongside Benoît Magimel and Sagamore Stévenin.[29] She also starred in Gilles Paquet-Brenner's drama film Pretty Things (Les Jolies Choses), adapted from the work of feminist writer Virginie Despentes, portraying twins of completely opposite characters, Lucie and Marie,[1] for which she earned a second César Award nomination for Most Promising Actress.[30] In 2002, Cotillard starred in Guillaume Nicloux's thriller A Private Affair (Une Affaire Privée), in which she portrayed the mysterious Clarisse.[1]

2000–2009: Transition to Hollywood and acclaim
Cotillard started the transition into Hollywood when she obtained a supporting role in Tim Burton's 2003 fantasy comedy-drama film Big Fish, in which she played Joséphine, the French wife of Billy Crudup's character, William Bloom.[1] The production, her first English-language film,[13] allowed her to work with well-established actors such as Helena Bonham Carter, Albert Finney, Ewan McGregor, Jessica Lange and Allison Lohman.[1] Big Fish was a critical and commercial success,[31] and marked a turn for Cotillard,[9][12] who was unhappy with her career in France at the time for not getting good roles,[9] and considered taking some time off until she got the role in Big Fish.[9] She next starred in Yann Samuell's 2003 French romantic comedy film Love Me If You Dare (Jeux d'enfants), as Sophie Kowalsky, the daughter of Polish immigrants who lives in France and begins playing a game of dares with her childhood friend, portrayed by Guillaume Canet.[32] The film was a box office hit in France with over 1 million tickets sold.[33]

In 2004, she won the Chopard Trophy of Female Revelation at the Cannes Film Festival,[34] narrated the children's audio book Cinq Contes Musicaux Pour les Petits ("Five Musical Tales For the Little Ones") by Isabelle Aboulker,[35] and had supporting roles in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement (Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles), as the vengeful prostitute Tina Lombardi,[36] a femme fatale[32] who goes on a killing spree to avenge her lover's death,[37] for which she won a César Award for Best Supporting Actress,[38] and in Lucile Hadžihalilović's mystery thriller Innocence as the ballet teacher Mademoiselle Éva;[1] both films were acclaimed by critics.[39][40]

In 2005, Cotillard starred in six films: Steve Suissa's Cavalcade, Abel Ferrara's Mary,[1] Richard Berry's The Black Box (La Boîte Noire); Rémi Bezançon's Love Is in the Air (Ma vie en l'air), Fabienne Godet's Burnt Out (Sauf le respect que je vous dois), and Stéphan Guérin-Tillié's Edy.[21] In May 2005, Cotillard portrayed Joan of Arc for the first time in the Orléans Symphonic Orchestra's production of Arthur Honegger's oratorio Joan of Arc at the Stake at the Palais des Sports d'Orléans, in Orléans, France.[41] She reprised the role several times when performing the oratorio in different countries in the following years.[36][42][43]

In 2006, the actress took on significant roles in four feature films, including Ridley Scott's romantic dramedy A Good Year, in which she had her major English-language role up to that point, Fanny Chenal, a French café owner in a small Provençal town, opposite Russell Crowe as a Londoner who inherits a local property.[1][32] She played Nadine in the Belgian comedy Dikkenek, alongside Mélanie Laurent, and the role of Nicole in Fair Play. She also played Léna in the satirical coming-of-age film Toi et moi, directed by Julie Lopes-Curval,[44] for which she learned how to play the cello for her role.[5][45]

Cotillard attending an event for La Vie en Rose at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival
Cotillard was chosen by director Olivier Dahan to star as French singer Édith Piaf in his biographical film La Vie en Rose before he had even met the actress, after he noticed a similarity between Piaf's and Cotillard's eyes.[46] It was dubbed "the most awaited film of 2007" in France, where some critics said Cotillard had reincarnated Édith Piaf to sing one last time on stage.[47] During the film's premiere at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival, Cotillard was in attendance and received a 15-minute standing ovation.[48] Hollywood talent agent Hylda Queally signed Cotillard shortly after the premiere at the festival.[49] La Vie en Rose was a box office hit in France, with more than 5 million admissions,[50] and made US$86 million worldwide on a US$25 million budget.[51] Cotillard became the first actress to win a Golden Globe for a non-English language performance since 1972 (when Liv Ullmann won for The Emigrants), and also the first person to win a Golden Globe for a (Comedy or Musical) non-English language performance.[52] On 10 February 2008, Cotillard became the first French actress since Stéphane Audran in 1973 to be awarded the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.[53] At the Academy Awards, she won Best Actress, becoming the first woman and second person (after Adrien Brody in The Pianist six years earlier) to win both a César and an Oscar for the same performance.[54] Cotillard is the second French actress to win this award,[55] and the third overall to win an Oscar, after Simone Signoret in 1960 and Juliette Binoche in 1997.[56] She is the first Best Actress Oscar winner for a non-English language performance since Sophia Loren in 1961.[57] She is also the first and (as of 2024) only winner of an Academy Award for a French-language performance.[58] On 23 June 2008, Cotillard was one of 105 individuals invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[59]

Following her Oscar win, Cotillard continued her Hollywood career and starred alongside Johnny Depp and Christian Bale in the role of Billie Frechette in Michael Mann's Public Enemies, released in the United States on 1 July 2009.[9] Later that year, she appeared in Rob Marshall's film adaptation of Nine, the musical based on the 1963 Federico Fellini film 8½.[6] As Luisa Contini, the wife of Guido (Daniel Day-Lewis), Cotillard performed two musical numbers: "My Husband Makes Movies"[60] and "Take It All."[61] Time magazine ranked her performance in Nine as the fifth best female performance of 2009, behind Mo'Nique, Carey Mulligan, Saoirse Ronan and Meryl Streep.[62] She won the Desert Palm Achievement Actress Award at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival – her second prize from the festival[63] – and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for her work in Nine.[64] Cotillard appeared on the cover of the November 2009 issue of Vogue with her Nine co-stars, and on the magazine's July 2010 cover by herself.[65][66]

2010–2019: Established actress
Cotillard was the Honorary President of the 35th César Awards ceremony, held on 27 February 2010.[67] She played Mal Cobb, a projection of Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio)'s deceased wife, in Christopher Nolan's film Inception, released on 16 July 2010. Nolan described Mal as "the essence of the femme fatale", and DiCaprio praised Cotillard, saying "she can be strong and vulnerable and hopeful and heartbreaking all in the same moment, which was perfect for all the contradictions of her character."[68] The film made US$825 million in worldwide box-office receipts, and Cotillard and DiCaprio's pairing in Inception ranked eighth on the Forbes list of "Hollywood's Top Earning On-Screen Couples."[69] That same year, she also starred as Marie, an environmentalist, in Guillaume Canet's drama Little White Lies (Les petits mouchoirs).[21]

In 2011, Cotillard co-starred in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris as Pablo Picasso's fictionalised mistress, Adriana, with whom Owen Wilson's character, Gil, falls in love. The film grossed $151 million worldwide on a $17 million budget.[70] That same year, she also appeared alongside Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Matt Damon in Steven Soderbergh's thriller Contagion;[71] and had the top rank on Le Figaro's 2011 list of the highest-paid French actors of 2010, the first time in nine years that a female had topped the list.[72] She also tied with Kate Winslet as the highest-paid foreign actress in Hollywood.[73] In 2012, Cotillard was ranked ninth on the list of the highest-paid French actresses in 2011,[74] and portrayed Talia al Ghul (alongside her Public Enemies co-star Christian Bale) in Christopher Nolan's Batman feature The Dark Knight Rises.[75][76]

Cotillard next portrayed an orca trainer who loses her legs after a work accident in Jacques Audiard's romantic drama Rust and Bone (De rouille et d'os), costarring Matthias Schoenaerts.[77][78] The film premiered in the main competition at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and received a 10-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening.[78][79] Cotillard received rave reviews for her performance,[80] and Cate Blanchett wrote an op-ed for Variety describing the film as "simply astonishing" and stating that "Marion has created a character of nobility and candour, seamlessly melding herself into a world we could not have known without her. Her performance is as unexpected and as unsentimental and raw as the film itself."[81] She earned a fifth César Award nomination, a fourth Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, a third Golden Globe nomination (her first for Best Actress – Drama), and her second Critics' Choice Award and Lumières Award nominations. James Kaelan of MovieMaker magazine wrote that it was a travesty that Cotillard was not nominated for an Academy Award for Rust and Bone.[82] Cotillard also received several other honours and career tributes in 2012, at the Telluride Film Festival,[83] Hollywood Film Festival,[84] AFI Fest,[85] Gotham Awards,[86] and Harper's Bazaar Awards.[87]

In 2013, Cotillard was named Woman of the Year by Harvard's student society Hasty Pudding Theatricals,[88] and Le Figaro also ranked her the second highest-paid actress in France in 2012[89] and the seventh highest-paid actor overall.[90] In May 2013, she appeared with Gary Oldman, her co-star in The Dark Knight Rises, in the controversial music video for "The Next Day" by David Bowie.[91] Cotillard had her first leading role in an American movie in James Gray's The Immigrant as Polish-born Ewa Cybulska, who emigrates hoping to experience the American dream in 1920s New York. James Gray wrote the script especially for Cotillard after meeting her at a French restaurant with her boyfriend.[92][93] Cotillard had to learn 20 pages of Polish dialogue for her role,[94] and Gray stated that she is the best actor he's ever worked with.[95] Her performance was widely acclaimed,[96] and she was awarded the New York Film Critics Circle Award,[97][98] the National Society of Film Critics Award,[99] the Toronto Film Critics Association Award[100] and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Actress in 2015.[101] She starred in Guillaume Canet's Blood Ties in 2013 with Clive Owen, Billy Crudup and her Rust and Bone co-star Matthias Schoenaerts;[102] and had a cameo in Adam McKay's comedy film Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues,[103] acting opposite Jim Carrey in the battle scene between rival news teams.[104] In December 2013, Cotillard was a member of the 13th Marrakech Film Festival jury presided by Martin Scorsese.[105]

Cotillard attending an event for Macbeth at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival
In 2014, she starred in the Dardenne brothers drama Two Days, One Night (Deux jours, une nuit),[106] as Sandra, a Belgian factory worker who has just one weekend to convince her co-workers to give up their bonuses so that she can keep her job. The film premiered in the main competition at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and earned a 15-minute standing ovation,[107] with Cotillard's performance praised as "a career-high performance",[108] and favored to win the festival's Best Actress prize,[109][110][111][112][113] which ended up going to Julianne Moore for Maps to the Stars.[113] Several critics' awards followed, as well as a European Film Award for Best Actress, a second Academy Award nomination, making Cotillard the first actor to be nominated for a Belgian film,[114] and a sixth César Award nomination.[115][116] Her performances in both The Immigrant and Two Days, One Night shared the fourth spot on Time's list of Best Movie Performances of 2014.[117] In November 2014, Cotillard participated on Comedy Central's All-Star Non-Denominational Christmas Special, in a duet with Nathan Fielder on the Elvis Presley song "Can't Help Falling in Love".[118]

In 2015, Cotillard took on the role of Lady Macbeth in a film adaptation of William Shakespeare's play, directed by Justin Kurzel and starring Michael Fassbender in the title role.[119] The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival[120] and Cotillard's performance earned her a nomination for the British Independent Film Award for Best Actress,[121] and high praise from critics, particularly for her "Out, Damned Spot" monologue. Variety critic Guy Lodge remarked: "Her deathless sleepwalking scene, staged in minimalist fashion under a gauze of snowflakes in a bare chapel, is played with tender, desolate exhaustion; it deserves to be viewed as near-definitive."[122] That same year, she starred in the New York Philharmonic's production of Arthur Honegger's oratorio Joan of Arc at the Stake,[123][124] and voiced the roles of The Rose in both the English and French versions of Mark Osborne's The Little Prince,[125] Scarlet Overkill in the French version of Minions;[126] and April, the title character in the French-Canadian-Belgian 3D animated film April and the Extraordinary World (Avril et le Monde Truqué).[127]

Cotillard attending an event for From the Land of the Moon at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival
In 2016, Cotillard played Gabrielle, a free-spirited woman in a convenience marriage in Nicole Garcia's romantic drama From the Land of the Moon (Mal de Pierres), an adaptation of the bestselling Italian novel Mal di Pietre by Milena Agus, which marked her return to French cinema after 2012's Rust and Bone,[128] and earned her a seventh César Award nomination.[129] She also played the role of Catherine, the sister-in-law of a gay playwright (portrayed by Gaspard Ulliel), who returns home to tell his family that he is dying in Xavier Dolan's Canadian-French co-production It's Only the End of the World (Juste la fin du Monde).[130] Both films premiered in main competition at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival,[131] to polarized reactions from critics.[132][133] It's Only the End of the World was a box office hit in France with over 1 million tickets sold.[134] Also in 2016, Cotillard starred opposite Brad Pitt in Robert Zemeckis's Allied, a spy film set in World War II in which she played Marianne Beausejour, a French Resistance fighter.[130][135][136] While critical reviews were mixed, Stephanie Zacharek of Time magazine wrote that "Pitt and Cotillard give sturdy, coded performances that feel naturalistic, not phony: They understand clearly that their chief mission is to tap the tradition of melodrama, and they take it seriously. Somehow, almost incomprehensibly, it all works. Allied looks old but smells new, and the scent is heady."[137] The film grossed US$120 million worldwide.[138] That same year, Cotillard reteamed with Macbeth director Justin Kurzel and co-star Michael Fassbender in the film adaptation of the video game Assassin's Creed.[139]

On 30 January 2017, Cotillard was honoured with a special award for her career at the 22nd Lumières Awards in France.[140][141] In 2017, she also starred in Guillaume Canet's satire comedy Rock'n Roll, and in Arnaud Desplechin's drama Ismael's Ghosts (Les Fantomes d'Ismaël), alongside Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Louis Garrel.[142] The Hollywood Reporter, in its review for the former film, asserted that "Cotillard offers up such a sincere performance that you can't help but laugh".[143]

In the 2018 drama Angel Face (Gueule d'ange) by director Vanessa Filho, she portrayed Marlene, a woman who suddenly chooses to abandon her daughter for a man she has just met during yet another night of excess. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival.[144]

In 2019, Cotillard was a member of the jury of the Chopard Trophy at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.[145] That same year, she reprised the role of Marie in Little White Lies 2, sequel to 2010's Little White Lies directed by Guillaume Canet.[146]

2020–present
In 2020, Cotillard voiced the fox Tutu in the comedy film Dolittle, directed by Stephen Gaghan.[147] In 2021, she starred as opera singer Ann Defrasnoux alongside Adam Driver in the musical film Annette directed by Leos Carax,[148] which earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.[149] The songs "So May We Start" and "We Love Each Other So Much", performed by Cotillard and Driver, were released as singles.[150][151] Cotillard produced the documentary Bigger Than Us, directed by Flore Vasseur, which explores the social movement of young people fighting for change in the 21st century.[152] The documentary was released in France on 22 September 2021 following its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival,[152] and it was nominated for a César Award for Best Documentary Film in 2022.[153]

Cotillard voiced German artist Charlotte Salomon in the French version of the animated biographical film Charlotte, directed by Eric Warin and Tahir Rana, which follows the last 10 years of Salomon's life, a Jewish woman who struggled with depression amid World War II and the Holocaust while exiled in the South of France.[154] Cotillard was also an executive producer on the film that made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2021.[154] In October 2021, Cotillard played the stylist Kim Randall in La Vengeance au Triple Galop, a comedy TV film for France's Canal+, directed by Alex Lutz and Arthur Sanigou.[155]

Cotillard made her third collaboration with director Arnaud Desplechin in the film Brother and Sister (Frère et Sœur), which follows two siblings, Alice and Louis, played by Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud, who are forced to reunite after the death of their parents following two decades of shared silence.[156] The film premiered in the main competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival in May 2022.[157] During the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, Cotillard launched alongside filmmaker Cyril Dion and producer Magali Payen her new production company, Newtopia.[158] The company's central aim is to create content around issues such as environmentalism, science, society, health, geopolitics, feminism and gender "that imagine a better future for the world based on ecologically sustainable and socially fair practices".[159] In June 2022, Cotillard played Joan of Arc in the oratorio Joan of Arc at the Stake directed by Juanjo Mena at the Teatro Real in Madrid, Spain.[160][161] She also voiced Coco Chanel in Rencontre(s), a 15-minute immersive virtual reality project directed by Mathias Chelebourg, which premiered at the 79th Venice Film Festival in September 2022.[162]

Cotillard and Mona Achache attending an event for Little Girl Blue at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival
In 2023, she appeared in the Apple TV+ climate-change anthology series Extrapolations,[163] and played Cleopatra in Guillaume Canet's adventure comedy film Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom.[21] She also voiced Louise de Savoy in The Inventor, a stop-motion animated film about the life of Leonardo da Vinci, written and directed by Jim Capobianco,[164] and portrayed Solange d'Ayen, the fashion editor of French Vogue magazine in the World War II biographical drama Lee, directed by Ellen Kuras and starring Kate Winslet as photographer Lee Miller.[165] Cotillard portrayed French writer and photographer Carole Achache in the docudrama Little Girl Blue, directed by Carole's daughter, Mona Achache,[166] which had its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival in the Special Screenings section.[167] Cotillard's performance in the film was praised by critics,[166] with Time Out calling her "illuminating";[168] Libération calling her "impeccable";[169] and The Hollywood Reporter writing that her performance is "a full-on Method immersion that climaxes with a wrenching breakdown scene that seems to close some kind of gap between the two women."[170] She earned her eight César Award nomination for Best Actress for Little Girl Blue at the 2024 César Awards,[171] becoming the first actress to be nominated for a documentary film.[172] In December 2023, Cotillard was a member of the jury of the Prix André Bazin by French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma.[173] In May 2024, Cotillard narrated the documentary Olympics! The French Games, directed by Mickaël Gamrasni, which premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.[174] In June 2024, Cotillard reprised her role as Joan of Arc in the oratorio Joan of Arc at the Stake in Berl