Backstage (2005)

User Rating:

5.7/10   

Director:

Emmanuelle Bercot

Writers:

Emmanuelle Bercot (writer)
Jérôme Tonnerre (writer)

Release Date:

16 November 2005 (France)

Genre:

Drama | Music

Plot:

An adolescent groupie (Isild Le Besco) zeroes in on her Blondie-like idol (Emmanuelle Seigner) after the singer chances to cross her orbit on a publicity tour. Gradually their lives intertwine as, with near-operatic intensity, the film delves into the emotional dependency on both sides of celebrity culture. |

Plot Keywords:

Celebrity | Groupie | Singer | Maid | Toilet

Awards:

2 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Emmanuelle Seigner	...	Lauren Waks
Isild Le Besco	...	Lucie
Noémie Lvovsky	...	Juliette
Valéry Zeitoun	...	Seymour
Samuel Benchetrit	...	Daniel
Édith Le Merdy	...	Marie-Line, la mère de Lucie (as Edith Le Merdy)
Jean-Paul Walle Wa Wana	...	Jean-Claude, le garde du corps
Mar Sodupe	...	Nanou
Lise Lamétrie	...	La femme de chambre
Claude Duneton	...	Le père de Lauren
Joëlle Miquel	...	Une fan
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Julien Bossé	...	Appearing
Fulvia Collongues
Anne-Lise Heimburger
Sandy Lakdar
Marjolaine Pottlitzer	...	A fan (uncredited)

Directed by
Emmanuelle Bercot

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Emmanuelle Bercot		writer
Jérôme Tonnerre		writer

Produced by
Caroline Benjo	....	producer
Christoph Hahnheiser	....	co-producer (as Christoph Meyer-Wiel)
Carole Scotta	....	producer

Original Music by
Laurent Marimbert

Cinematography by
Agnès Godard

Film Editing by
Julien Leloup

Casting by
Antoinette Boulat

Production Design by
Éric Barboza

Costume Design by
Jean Marc Mirete

Makeup Department
Pierre Olivier Persin	....	special makeup effects artist

Production Management
Pascal Bonnet	....	production manager
Christina Crassaris	....	post-production supervisor
Benjamin Dewaele	....	assistant unit manager
Frédéric Morin	....	assistant unit manager
Christophe Rabinovici	....	unit production manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Guillaume Huin	....	third assistant director
Sébastien Matuchet	....	first assistant director

Art Department
Eleonore Chaspoul	....	props

Sound Department
Pierre André	....	sound
Jérôme Chenevoy	....	boom operator
Jean-Pierre Laforce	....	sound
Fred Mays	....	post-synchronization
Gael Nicolas	....	supervising sound editor
Stéphane Thiébaut	....	sound re-recording mixer
Jean-Alexandre Villemer	....	sound recordist

Camera and Electrical Department
Loïc Andrieu	....	Steadicam operator
Julien Bossé	....	camera operator

Casting Department
Christine Campion	....	extras casting

Editorial Department
Carlos Pinto	....	assistant editor

Other crew
Heike Kresse	....	production assistant: Germany
Fabien Pondevaux	....	location scout
Isabelle Ribis	....	script supervisor

Production Companies

• Black Forest Films
• CMW Films
• Canal+
• CinéCinéma
• Haut et Court
• arte France Cinéma

Distributors

• Bir Film (2006) (Turkey) (all media) (limited)
• Cinema Mondo (2006) (Finland) (theatrical)
• Distribution Company (2008) (Argentina) (theatrical)
• Farbfilm-Verleih (2008) (Germany) (theatrical)
• Haut et Court (2005) (France) (theatrical)
• Strand Releasing (2006) (USA) (theatrical) (subtitled)
• Argentina Video Home (2009) (Argentina) (DVD)
• Atlantis Entertainment (2005) (Czech Republic) (all media)
• Atlantis Entertainment (2005) (Hungary) (all media)
• Atlantis Entertainment (2005) (Slovakia) (all media)
• Gateno Films (2006) (Peru) (all media)
• KinoVista (2008) (Algeria) (TV)
• KinoVista (2008) (Morocco) (TV)
• KinoVista (2008) (Tunisia) (TV)

Runtime:

USA:112 min | Argentina:115 min | Canada:115 min (Toronto International Film Festival)

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Singapore:R21 | Finland:K-15 | Portugal:M/16 | Germany:12 | Argentina:16

Company:

Black Forest Films

Movie Connections:

Remade as Backstage (2010)

Soundtrack:

Love Is Blindness

As dead as a stuffed deer

Some friends took me to see this film in Helsinki. I really had no idea what to expect. The evening started, as evenings at the cinema do, with a series of trailers. There came what seemed to be a trailer for a French film featuring an ageing chanteuse (shades of a Gallic Madonna perhaps) performing in front of a young, hysterical audience. I thought that there was a film I would not go and see…

… and then it turned out it wasn't a trailer, but the start of the evening's main entertainment. The first five minutes set a scene, and a plot line appeared to be established. Not a particularly enthralling plot, perhaps, but something which might carry us along.

How wrong we were. The plot got stuck in a Paris hotel suite, and the characterisation wasn't even skin deep. The chanteuse – Lauren, or Sylvia – was a diva with problems. But not interesting problems, or dramatic problems; just time-consuming ones. She had some sort of artistic block. She sent a star-struck fan who had implausibly joined her entourage, Lucie, not to buy drugs, but to buy tampons. She was mobbed by fans, a strange and unconvincing mixture, who mostly looked like thirty-something resting actors told to wear something red and plastic. She had family problems of some sort. It was immensely boring. For all I know it perked up in its last forty minutes. But by then we were already in a nearby restaurant wondering why this film should have been made, let alone marketed, or rated by the critics.

There was one good line, when the diva's agent or boyfriend or whatever said that "she likes to appear wild, but underneath she's as dead as her stuffed deer" - a major feature of the hotel suite, which did indeed give a livelier performance than most of the cast. Let that be the epitaph for this exceptionally disappointing movie.