The Lady Dior Saga One Woman – Four Cities starring Marion Cotillard may officially have been closed with the final chapter taking place in London. However, Marion’s involvement with Dior is far from over. A preview of a beautiful new ad shot by photographer Craig McDean was released today. With the St. Basil’s Cathedral visible through the window the setting is officially Moscow in Russia but it was taken a few months ago on a set in Paris because Marion Cotillard wasn’t able to travel to Russia. The print campaign is coinciding with a major Christian Dior exhibition at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow next month as well as with the reopening of its luxed-up Stoleshnikov boutique. Interestingly, Moscow was rumoured to be the city featured in the 4th chapter of the Dior saga a year ago. It is not yet clear how the new ad fits into the Lady Dior saga and whether it will be accompanied by a mini-movie. But the new worldwide print campaign will premiere in Vanity Fair‘s May issue and the ad will then appear in many more May/June issues of a number of magazines including Town & Country, Elle, W and Vogue.

• Source: Women’s Wear Daily

from Little White Lies Press Kit

Guillaume always has plenty of ideas and stories that he’d like to make into movies. He’d been mulling over a film about a group of friends, and more broadly about our generation, for a long time. Three years ago, that desire began to take shape and he started writing the script for Little White Lies.

I followed the process from near and afar depending on my own schedule. Early on, he mentioned that he wanted us to work together. When I read the first draft. I was immediately touched by the way he gets under the surface of how we interact, and by the subtlety, honesty and sincerity of what he was trying to say. Guillaume is very observant, with a highly developed artistic sensitivity. He has created a group of believable, close-knit characters.

The process of creation

The preparation period was very productive. Guillaume is a very hard worker. He creates a structure that he controls down to the tiniest detail, providing his actors with a very solid foundation. He lets us into his world while giving us the freedom to express ourselves, to add little bits of ourselves.

We spent time with him individually, discussing his vision of our characters. Then he got us together for a series of table-reads in Paris, which resulted in certain adjustments to establish the balance between the various characters.

One of the most inspiring moments was the few days we spent in Cap Ferret in the house where we would be shooting the movie. It was an opportunity to share our insights and get to know each other better. It was important to develop a group dynamic and genuine friendships.

We had all worked on a picture of our characters’ lives, what drives them and how they get on with each other, how they all met—their back stories as individuals and as part of the group. It’s the kind of thing you don’t see on screen that adds depth and underlying energy to the characters. We told each other our characters’ life stories. It was a very moving moment, as if we were witnessing the birth of our characters and what bonds them.

On set, Guillaume constructs a space where everything possible is done to make the actors feel confident and at ease. A director who so deeply knows and understands actors makes the job very easy, even exhilarating. There were times when we felt like we simply weren’t acting anymore.

Marie

Marie’s an ethnologist. She studies human beings thousands of miles away to avoid having to face her own inner turmoil. Marie’s scared. She runs.

The trouble is, around the age of thirty, you reach a stage where new priorities emerge after a period of taking life as it comes. There is a need, partly driven by fear, to take stock. It’s a turning point that forces you into a little bit of soul-searching.

from Press Kit

Les Petits Mouchoirs (Little White Lies) is my third feature as a director and the most personal of the three. For this reason, I insisted on writing it alone and the process was uniquely intense. I say that it’s a personal film because the subject matter is particularly close to me. It’s close to people of my generation while resonating with younger and older people.

Deceiving yourself comes very easy. It allows you to convince yourself you’re right, to bury or shelve issues that are too painful to confront. It’s when we develop the annoying, self-defeating habit of telling “little white lies”.

This film talks about people who have accepted their life, job or sexuality without ever wondering if it’s really what they want from life or if they really are happy in their relationship.

Through cowardice, force of habit or fear of the unknown, we often go through life without tackling these issues, without listening to our instincts or convictions and, above all, without listening to what our heart tells us.

The importance of learning to listen is what I wanted to show through the characters in the film. They all have a weakness, a lie they’ve buried and don’t want to own up to.

An awful incident, like the one they are confronted with, forces them to face up to their lies.

I wanted to set this story in an atmosphere of comedy and friendship. But comedy underpinned with seriousness, and so with important nuances in the tone of the film as we switch from almost slapstick scenes to others that are, I hope, very touching.

I grew up with movies like Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill, John Cassavetes’ Husbands and Yves Robert’s Nous irons tous au paradis. They continue to be a source of inspiration, not just in their humor, but also in the sincerity their characters exude.

That’s why, in this movie, I wanted to be as credible as possible in the portrait of friendships, for that credibility to fill every scene.

Casting the movie, I chose people I like and admire, who share one vital qualification for being in the film—they all know each other.

I insist on the fact that it’s a personal film because it’s so close to me. Either I see myself in the characters or I’ve met people just like them.

An Interview with Guillaume Canet

You seem in a state of heightened emotion…
Yes, it’s very strange. I’ve never felt like this before about a movie I directed. I’ve made two shorts and three features, including Little White Lies, which isn’t a lot but enough to be able to say that from the beginning this movie has been very special for me.

Apparently, after Tell No One, you had quite a turbulent time personally. Is that what led you to write Little White Lies?
Turbulent, maybe not, but I experienced what you could call a crucial period in my life, for sure. After Tell No One, I went through several different stages, due to my age partly. At 35, you don’t look at things the same way as when you’re 20, you’ve already taken a few knocks. I decided to enter a process of analysis—a fairly time-consuming process that was more productive than I could ever have imagined because it resulted in me writing this script in under five months. That’s what makes the movie so special for me. I cannot make a more personal movie than Little White Lies.

What triggered this process of analysis?
Realizing how much I’d deceived myself over the years about what I really wanted, and how much energy I’d devoted to my work to avoid having to think about things. It was convenient to close my eyes to bothersome personal issues I didn’t want to acknowledge. The tipping-point came when I was finishing Tell No One. I got sick. Shooting and editing the movie had taken so much out of me that I picked up the first virus going. It developed into septicemia and I spent a month in the hospital. When I got out, I went straight into a good old depression. I eventually realized that my whole existence couldn’t begin and end with my work and that I was allowed to take the time to enjoy life.

The film shows the damage feelings of guilt can cause…
I have a relationship with guilt that most likely comes from my childhood—the major and minor dramas that occur at that age. When I realized that, I had to drive it all out and that made me feel so much better. I can’t admit to making such a personal movie without admitting publicly that I went through that stage.

What were the initial benefits?
I realized a bunch of things that allowed me to focus on what I really wanted. I realized which friends really counted for me. I straightened out my life.

And the idea for Little White Lies began to take shape?
Summer 2008, I began to play around with the idea while I was working on another screenplay totally unconnected to my inner turmoil of that time. I was sharing a house with a friend for a few days and I started throwing out stuff that was buzzing around my head, especially the fact that I’d always wanted to make a “friends movie.” The more I talked, and the more she listened, I realized that in fact a film was being born. I asked my friend to be my midwife for the next five days. She listened, asked questions, reacted, and I’d take notes. I owe her so much because right away I had the structure of the movie. I scribbled scenes down in my trailer on the set of Farewell as soon as I had some time between takes. Writing had never come so easy to me.

Is it fair to say there’s a little of you in each character?
Yes, a little bit in each. A lot of what’s said in the movie comes from my life. Afterwards, of course, it’s reworked and fictionalized to become part of a story. Even so, writing the script of Little White Lies got quite painful because it dug so deep into personal experiences and made me relive so many emotions.

The film has the audience constantly torn between crying and laughing.
Yes, we walk a very fine line. Everybody’s been in tragic situations where laughter suddenly breaks out. That’s what I wanted to capture. The situation the characters find themselves in forces them through a whole range of emotions and feelings. I wanted to show how a vacation is often the chance to let off steam, and so provokes all kinds of reactions, some comic, some dramatic.

When did you sense that everything had clicked together?
Probably after the first table-read when François Cluzet said to me, pretty emotionally, You know, there’s a bunch of scenes where you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I knew then I was on the right track.

The film’s central theme is lies…
More specifically, the lies people tell themselves and, collaterally, each other—everything we don’t want to see in ourselves, that we try to gloss over.

At the beginning, the characters spend a lot of time dodging their real issues.
Yes, like a lot of people at various points in their lives. Is this truly my dream job? Do I truly love the person I live with? Is my sexuality what I truly wanted? I don’t use the word “truly” by chance. It’s the key word. And those questions are relevant at any age.

And the characters are so universal, it’s easy to identify alternately with one then the other.
That’s what I was aiming for. I wanted to make a cross-generational movie. Even the children’s characters are based on what I felt when I was 5-10 years old, surrounded by grown-ups. There’s a lot of me in all of these characters. I approached writing them with a lot of honesty and sincerity, which I think is why people seem to relate to them easily. You always have to put something of yourself into a story. What’s true and real for you, can be true and real for somebody else. At the very least, it’s authentic because it’s personal.

What was the movie like to shoot?
It was a very intense feeling but complicated because I wanted the actors to feel what I had felt when I was writing. I was pretty obsessive, asking them to say the lines exactly as I had imagined and written them. I’ve never thrown myself into a movie with such passion

You put a heap of passion into Tell No One…
Tell No One is a movie I love, but I think Little White Lies is a more personal and accomplished movie that, without sounding pretentious, gives me a particular sense of pride. I find the characters particularly touching. They inspire that passion in me.

It’s also a film about friendship…
I freely admit to drawing inspiration from great movies about groups of friends like The Big Chill (1984), which is probably the reference for me. There’s also Jean-Marie Poiré’s Mes meilleurs copains (1988) and Yves Robert’s Un elephant ça trompe énormément (1976). Cassavetes’ Husbands… And a stack of movies by Claude Sautet.

Making a movie about a group of friends must be easier when you’re working with real-life friends.
Sure. Gilles (Lellouche), Marion (Cotillard) and the crew that’s worked with me since my very first short films, we go back a long way now. Then there’s François (Cluzet) and Benoît (Magimel)… Same goes for Jean Dujardin—we realized we’d been to kindergarten and primary school together when both our families lived in Les Yvelines, outside Paris. I’d completely forgotten that. He reminded me at the premiere of Mon idole (2002). Do you remember Mrs. Pichon? And Mrs. Copeck? No kidding I remembered them. We couldn’t get over it!

So it’s a film about a bunch of friends made with a bunch of friends, on whom you nonetheless made certain demands.
When I offered them each a part, there were two conditions. Prior to shooting in August, I asked them to keep open five days in May to immerse ourselves in Cap Ferret. That way, I got to take everybody to the house where we’d be shooting. I wanted them to live there, to open cupboards and know where the coffee was, the knives and forks, and so on. I wanted it to be ingrained, so that the boat trips would look natural, so that the beach restaurant would be familiar to them. When we went back to Cap Ferret in August, they already felt like they’d been there on vacation.

You also wanted them to get to know each other…
Exactly. So that the on-screen couples would take shape and they’d get to know the kids playing their children. The second condition was that I asked for everybody to be present throughout the shoot. I wanted them to stay there, to be part of the group 24/7, and to be available for improvised shots if the need arose. I didn’t want the story to be acted out, I wanted them to live it.

You used two cameras on set the whole time. Why?
So that the actors would be as free as possible. So that, in group scenes, they could get up from the table to get a glass from the kitchen if they wanted without worrying about entering or leaving the frame. Then, in editing, I put the film together out of a vast amount of footage. To a certain extent, that’s how I managed to make such a vibrant film with such rhythm. It was amazing how everybody got into the spirit of it and that’s why this movie really touches me every time I see it. All the emotion I felt when I was writing the script comes flooding back.

It also talks about missed opportunities…
We all miss out on so much for the same reasons—you let your work and lifestyle get on top of you, you neglect your family, friends and relationships, while giving people the impression you’re there. You know it’s time to stop and think, to redefine your priorities and decide what you really want, but you don’t necessarily take the time to do it, and when you finally get round to it, it may be too late.

In the movie, some characters aren’t able to talk about things and others talk too much because silence scares them…
You’re always scared you’ll wreck the atmosphere by raising certain issues that may be a bit sensitive, so you don’t say anything. But you wreck the atmosphere anyway! You let it slide because you think things will work themselves out. The “little white lies” are the rug you sweep all the crappy stuff under, until eventually it begins to show. When it all comes out, it can be gruesome, as it is for some of the characters in the movie when they finally have to face the truth.

The oyster-farmer plays a crucial role as the catalyst…
Jean-Louis is the group’s conscience, the guy who’s not afraid to speak his mind. He’s a man of integrity who lives a simple life. He’s been observing them carefully, he likes them all and he has a big heart, but he won’t give them an easy ride. He brings them face-to-face with their contradictions and their cowardice.

He’s played by Joël Dupuch, who is…
A real-life oyster-farmer from Cap Ferret. And a friend. He’s outstanding, pitch-perfect, a complete revelation!

Gilles Lellouche plays the second-rate actor constantly making his life sound bigger and better than it is.
He has to charm and seduce. He can’t bear to show his flaws, feelings or pain, so he shows off. It’s the easy way out.

Is this your most polished movie?
Technically and in terms of directing actors, I’d say so, yes. But all along, I kept realizing how much I still had to learn!

An Interview with Gilles Lellouche

Little White Lies is my fifth movie with Guillaume. We met at Alain Attal’s company Les Productions du Trésor. It was late at night. I was writing Narco and he was working on the script of Mon Idole. It was just after Vidocq was released and he was pretty down. It was soon after The Beach with Leo DiCaprio, too, so there was always a horde of people hovering around him. We talked most of the evening, openly and honestly, and I was struck by how insightful he was.

His development as a director has been spectacular. In Mon idole, you can pick out his influences (Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese…). In Tell No One, it’s already much less obvious. Formal issues are less important to him than the story. Directing isn’t Guillaume being a pretentious actor, it’s a real necessity for him. He injects life into his art. When I met him, he carried around a notebook and jotted down anything that could be a good idea for a movie or a scene even, that he had yet to write, of course.

A timeless, universal tale

Cap Ferret has been our base camp for the last ten years. All the characters draw to a greater or lesser extent on episodes that happened there or people we met there. But the strength of Guillaume’s movie is that he has transcended the raw material. Nothing is anecdotal. It’s not a movie about our vacation with comic book plotting. It’s a timeless, universal tale.

I play a second-rate actor, a superficial poser and womanizer. He’s a good friend, with the good grace not to burden the others with his problems. Eric is the dynamo of the group.

In Little White Lies, Guillaume isn’t far from what Claude Sautet used to do. He’s always liked movies with groups of friends. He asked us all to watch The Big Chill again, and John Cassavetes’ Husbands. Making a movie with eight characters, of roughly equal importance, is a real challenge and, when you see the result, he has succeeded brilliantly.

An Interview with Hugo Sélignac

Guillaume had such a specific vision of what he wanted that the read-throughs of the script with the cast probably took most of these well-established stars back to the days when they were starting out. Guillaume wanted the tone to be precisely as he described it, or it changed the meaning of the lines. And sometimes, when Guillaume asked them to appear in the background of certain shots, they may have felt like they’d been hired as extras. Obviously, that wasn’t so and, on screen, the result speaks for itself. There is so much emotion in the scenes where the friends’ interactions emerge over several shots, in the glances and expressions that Guillaume captures magnificently, not just in the dialogue. In the end, everybody agreed on this—we haven’t made a film, but the film. Guillaume gets the very best out of people on set. I realized that I went into this business to work with artists like him. Unlike some directors, he applies the concept that everybody is important on a shoot. In Guillaume’s eyes, every single person working alongside him has a specific role to play, from the intern to François Cluzet.

The remarkable thing about Little White Lies is the universal nature of the issues the characters are wrestling with. They are valid at age 15, 35 or 65 across all of society. The sexual frustration of Pascale Arbillot’s character, for example; or Benoît Magimel’s character’s epiphany about his true nature; Gilles Lellouche’s character’s chronic inability to commit; or wondering if somebody is really “the one”, or if you’re doing the right job, or if you can truly count on your friends, etc.

People say that Little White Lies is an ensemble movie, but I prefer to describe it as the story of a group of 8 friends, each of whom is the hero of his or her own story.

On the shoot, my job consisted of taking the weight off Guillaume’s shoulders, encouraging him to delegate as much as possible so that he could focus on the job at hand, and taking charge of fundamental logistical and technical issues, and subsidiary matters to which he would devote a half-hour of his time, like what cheese the canteen should serve for lunch, because he was genuinely concerned about the whole crew’s welfare.

It was very wise of Guillaume to dismiss, early on, the idea of acting in the movie as well as directing. It would have been very tricky to do both and almost impossible to offer such precise direction to the rest of the cast.

It was a delight working on Little White Lies. It’s a movie with heart. You come out wanting to tell people you love them.

An Interview with Alain Attal

Making a movie with Guillaume is a pleasure every time. He’s a very loyal man, for whom a working environment based on trust is particularly important. Little White Lies is his take on his generation and, more widely, on contemporary society. It’s a movie about the damage you cause (or suffer) by constantly putting off until later the really important issues.

The artistic and commercial success of Tell No One gave Guillaume the time to write the screenplay he dreamed of. And I made sure I could give him the time he needed on set and in the editing suite. The rough cut was four hours long! He insisted on putting everything he’d shot into it. I wasn’t allowed to see it because he preferred to bring it down to a more customary length on his own.

It’s the first time since we started working together that Guillaume has attained such a level of expertise and authority. He was the captain of the ship, driven by tremendous energy. During the shoot, I noticed how astonishingly determined he was. Guillaume had never been so in control of his previous movies, in every sense—from the script (the first one he wrote alone, without Philippe Lefebvre) to the locations that he chose personally, like every single song on the soundtrack.

A subtle blend of genres

I decide to ask Hugo (Sélignac) to line produce. After years working together, he’s got where he deserves to be. I met him when he was an intern on Selon Charlie by Nicole Garcia. He’s come a long way. He learns fast and manages budgets with an innate talent. As a result, I didn’t have to be on set in Cap Ferret every day. One return trip per week was enough. I received the dailies and discussed them on the phone with Guillaume.

The lessons learned on Tell No One allowed him to aim once more for a subtle blend of genres. Whether he’s making a thriller or a comedy, like this movie, nothing discourages him from infusing the story with emotion. He has a unique intuition, a sixth sense for what will work best in a movie. Little White Lies is the finest example of that.

Yesterday’s Sunday Times featured a brand-new insightful interview with Marion Cotillard in their Style section, again to promote the upcoming theatrical release of ‘Little White Lies‘ in the UK. Thank you Lorna for sending in scans.

• Truly, madly, deeply, Sunday Times Style, March 27

003 Scans from 2011 > Sunday Times Style (UK) – March 27

Finally the trailer for Woody Allen’s upcoming movie ‘Midnight in Paris‘ has arrived! Watch to see some glimpses of Marion Cotillard walking around the streets of Paris with Owen Wilson – after midnight, when the city is magic.

Gallery
005 Midnight in Paris (2011) > Screencaptures > Trailer
001 Midnight in Paris (2011) > Artwork

Video
001 Trailers – Midnight in Paris

from The Sunday Times – Style (UK) / by Jessica Brinton

With an Oscar for La Vie en Rose and a blockbuster turn in Inception, Marion Cotillard has conquered Hollywood. Now she’s coming home to Paris

“What I love about America in general is that… There’s a very strong, um… how can I say… hmm… there are so many different places.” Marion Cotillard is picking her way, painstakingly, towards her point. “But you can feel that… there’s kind of a… I can’t even find the word in French! My brain is not functioning. That word, I think it’s…” She stops. Thinks further. Blinks at me. “Solidarity?”

Here we are, Marion and I. She, perched on a sofa in a hotel off the Place Vendôme in Paris, a total knockout in a wool jumper dress that must be Sonia Rykiel and flat, suede Stella McCartney over-the-knee boots, eyes so wide and glassy she might be about to cry, skin radiant, unenhanced and looking not at all 35. And me tap-tap-tapping my foot because I’ve never, ever had a slower or more frustrating conversation than this.

“To have had the opportunity of working in a country like America,” she continues, nosing her way around her words like a snail examining a lettuce, “to work with Chris Nolan and Michael Mann is, for an actress who loves going from one experience to a totally different one, the most beautiful, exciting playground ever.”

Take that, France. You can keep your scruffy, street-urchin actresses. Cotillard — with her lovely hair, her teenager’s skin, her blockbuster-sized heart — is equally adored by America. She is a fully networked international female movie star, perhaps the first French one since Deneuve. Ask one of her gushing A-list friends. Leo DiCaprio, her co-star in Inception, has called her “one of the greats”. Nicole Kidman, with whom she appeared in Nine, described her as having “a fairy quality”.

Restlessly moving around the seat, she’s still expounding, slowly and carefully, about what America means to her, and I’m beginning to feel sorry I asked. Then, suddenly, she’s back in the room. All it takes is a question about her latest piece of work. “Work,” she says, as if announcing a chapter heading, “don’t ever think you don’t need to work. As an actor, this is the biggest mistake you can make, and it is disrespectful towards this wonderful job. My parents told me that the more work you do, the more work you have to do.”

She spent her twenties appearing in French movies, but not making a breakthrough. A committed environmentalist, at one point she almost gave it up to work for Greenpeace. It was her debut appearance in an American film, Tim Burton’s Big Fish, that finally did it. Her Oscar-winning performance as Piaf in La Vie en Rose only cemented her status on the A list.

Cotillard’s work ethic dazzles directors, who adore her. Her Oscar acceptance speech (“Thank you life, thank you love. It is true that there are some angels in this city”) was pitch perfect. Even her awkward faux pas about 9/11 being an American conspiracy to free up real estate, and the moon landings never happening, has not dented her career. She can just disappear into her work, and she does. One critic described her Piaf performance as “the most astonishing immersion of one performer into the body and soul of another that I have ever encountered in film”.

Her latest film, Little White Lies, is a French ensemble piece about the tangled relationships of a group of thirtysomethings during a rosé-soaked summer holiday on Cap Ferret.

Cotillard plays a beautiful, sexually confused, emotionally damaged commitment-phobe, prone to utterances such as: “I mess up with all the other guys, too.”

Everyone — male and female — is in love with this character, but she’s too scared to love them back. The movie is about wanting what you can’t have, having what you don’t want, and nothing or nobody ever being enough. The people are pathetic and irritating because they’re precisely like us. It’s all highly watchable

“I think we’ve been washed up,” she sighs. “We have so many opportunities that even when you feel deep inside that you are in the right place with the right person, you still think, am I still in the right place with the right person? And it’s terrible. Terrible.” Oh dear, maybe she’s right.

“Because there are so many things you can do, so many places you can go, that it’s totally disturbing. And I would say it’s created a category of person, and in this category there are many types. It’s almost a species.”

The film was written and directed by her real-life boyfriend, the actor and director Guillaume Canet, whom she met 14 years ago and first worked with when they acted together in Love Me if You Dare, a film about mad passion, in 2003.

Canet was married to Diane Kruger at the time. Cotillard had a boyfriend. They only coupled up, quietly, in 2007, following Canet’s divorce. “Sometimes love takes a long time,” he has said. “Maybe it’s something you didn’t see at first.” In interviews since the divorce, Kruger — who now steps out with Joshua Jackson of Dawson’s Creek fame — has admitted the split left her so poleaxed, she no longer believes in marriage.

“The not knowing what you want, it’s a horrible feeling,” Cotillard says. “Because it doesn’t do good. So many times, I asked myself, or boyfriends have asked me, what do you want? And I was not able to answer. And,” her accent grows stronger for a moment, “it ’urts. But you cannot force yourself to answer and give a wrong answer. You just don’t know.”

Most people just fake it until they make it, I say. “Yes, but then you live with a lie. Knowing that eventually you will hurt someone who is you, or someone else who is your boyfriend or your girlfriend.” Really? Anyway, I don’t think she needs to worry. These days, Cotillard and Canet hold hands all the way through awards ceremonies and live together discreetly in the Places des Vosges. The dashingly handsome, multitalented Canet sounds ideal for her. “For me, I need to be with someone who is searching, who is wide awake,” she says.

Last January, Cotillard pulled a swerve from Hollywood and headed home, after four years. In the summer she shot Woody Allen’s latest, Midnight in Paris. But for an undisguised Yankophile, that can’t be the reason she’s still there? Then I read somewhere that it’s Canet who isn’t so keen on LA. “I need my family and friends right now,” she says, her voice wandering off a bit. “It’s something I had forgotten because of working all the time. Last night I was at an event and then two friends called to say, hey, we’re round the corner having a drink, and I said, ‘I’m on my way.’ It was so great.” She looks down at her lap. “I get shy about calling them when I’ve been away a long time, but it’s coming back now. You meet new people who you love, but old friends are different. I miss them.”

It sounds as if her journey has taken her full circle. I suppose that’s what success is, I say. “Sometimes in my life I’ve let something happen because I didn’t know any better. And it’s scary! Because you’re only involved because you stopped choosing. Sometimes the best thing can come from that, but sometimes you also have to be the master of your life.”

In one of the final scenes of Little White Lies, there’s news of a pregnancy and I ask her if she plans to have a family. “I’m not sure that you get pregnant when you’re not ready,” she says. “I think you get pregnant when you are ready. You just need some help from existence to say that you’re ready. It happens because it has to happen.” Which, in Cotillard world, vaguely sounds like a yes.

Two days later, she and Canet announce that she is three months gone with their first child. And then, of course, it all makes sense.

Little White Lies is out on April 15

Kate Winslet is putting together a book called ‘The Golden Hat‘ with celebrity self-portraits to raise awareness and support for autism. The book will be published by Simon & Schuster in November 2011.

Winslet has amassed a collection of photos from an amazing array of her friends and renowned personalities who have donned this special hat, taken a self portrait, and passed the hat along from one person to another. Among the participants whose photos are featured in the book are Anna Wintour; Ben Stiller; Brigitte Lacombe; Christina Aguilera; David Souffan; Demi Moore; Don Cheadle; Elijah Wood; Ellen Page; Javier Bardem; Joseph Gordon-Levitt; Jude Law; Julianne Moore; Kevin Bacon; Kyra Sedgwick; Laura Dern; Live Schreiber; Maggie Gyllenhaal; Maria Sharapova; Marion Cotillard; Meryl Streep; Michael Kors; Naomi Watts; Pedro Almodovar; Peter Sarsgaard; Ricky Gervais and many, many more.

• Source: Golden Hat Foundation via Kelly

from The Guardian (UK)

Guillaume Canet’s drama opens in the UK on 15 April. Enjoy the movie in style, with £250 worth of clothing from agnès b

Little White Lies, the new film from the director of Tell No One, Guillaume Canet, opens in a whirl of sex, drugs and late-night revelry. Party animal Ludo sweeps through a Parisian nightclub, flashing a cheeky line to a passing potential conquest after hoovering up more than a few of the above in the venue’s toilets. But just as the audience is girding its loins for a celluloid blitzkrieg of debauchery and fast-living, Ludo whips out of the club, leaps on to a motorcycle and is promptly sent reeling by a collision with another vehicle.

It’s a bravura opening sequence that sets the scene for what is to come, offering a note of caution and a hint that the tight-knit group of Ludo’s friends who visit him in hospital may face similar curbs on their bacchanalian lifestyles. Canet is careful not to judge, but as the gang gather to enjoy their annual summer holiday and try to forget that Ludo remains in hospital, battered and quite possibly on the brink of death, it soon emerges that none of them are living the perfect lives they pretend to.

“After Tell No One, I experienced what you could call a crucial period in my life,” says Canet, whose second film won four Césars (the French equivalent of the Oscars), and was a worldwide box office hit. “I went through several different stages, due to my age partly. At 35, you don’t look at things the same way as when you’re 20. You’ve already taken a few knocks.

“I went through a period of soul-searching, which helped me realise a bunch of things that enabled me to focus on what I really wanted. I realised which friends really counted for me. I straightened out my life, and the main themes of Little White Lies started to crystallise in my mind.”

The holiday retreat’s owner is Max (François Cluzet), a successful but supremely uptight restaurateur who is plagued by weasels in the architecture, the inability of his younger friends to get up in the mornings and the revelation that his long-term friend Vincent (Benoît Magimel), a father-of-two who has brought his family along for the holiday, may have feelings for him. Meanwhile, the gorgeous, irrepressible, weed-smoking rebel Marie (Oscar-winning Marion Cotillard in a these-days rare French role) is nursing an inability to connect to her many lovers, actor Eric (Gilles Lellouche) is struggling to overcome his penchant for hurting those closest to him, and Antoine (Laurent Lafitte) is apparently bamboozled by unrequited love.

“I was immediately touched by the way Guillaume gets under the surface of how we interact, and by the subtlety, honesty and sincerity of what he was trying to say,” says Cotillard of the screenplay, which she read at an early stage. “Guillaume is very observant, with a highly developed artistic sensitivity. He has created a group of believable, close-knit characters.”

Little White Lies is comparable to The Big Chill for its portrayal of a group of friends experiencing shared joy and individual heartbreak as they emerge blinking into the sunlight of fading youth’s epiphany. Canet has created a rich, heartfelt paean to open-heartedness, a wily polemic, subtle yet determined in its conviction that personal blemishes are insignificant in the face of genuine camaraderie and continuing friendship.

The film opens in the UK on 15 April. To celebrate its British debut, the Guardian in association with Lionsgate Films is offering £250 worth of vouchers to spend at French fashion boutique agnès b. To be in with a chance of winning, simply fill in your details below. Good luck.

NB This competition is only open to UK residents

In just little over two weeks, on April 15, ‘Little White Lies‘ (Les petits mouchoirs) will open in the UK. A number of publications have published new interviews with Marion Cotillard – conducted in Paris last December – to promote the movie. By the way, how interesting that one of the publications is actually really called ‘Little White Lies’! I added scans and transcripts – enjoy!

• Style Statement, Vogue India, March (Lady Dior Promo)
• Runaway Train, Little White Lies, March/April
• “I admired Greta Garbo, but I wanted to be Peter Sellers”, Empire, April
• Marion Cotillard, Dazed & Confused, April
• French Fancy, Total Film, May

001 Scans from 2011 > Vogue (India) – March
002 Scans from 2011 > Little White Lies (UK) – March/April
003 Scans from 2011 > Empire (UK) – April
001 Scans from 2011 > Dazed & Confused (UK) – April
007 Scans from 2011 > Total Film (UK) – May

Kindly do not redistribute the magazine scans at another Marion Cotillard fan site as they were scanned exclusively for ‘Magnifique Marion Cotillard’. Thank you.

As always unannounced Simone (aka Marion Cotillard) made an appearance with Yodelice at their concert in the famous music hall Olympia in Paris. It was her second performance at the venue with Yodelice (after last May) and also where some of the filming for ‘La Vie en Rose‘ took place (one of the most famous Édith Piaf concerts took place at that venue). Last night, Simone only joined Yodelice for 2 songs: she was playing the guitar on My Bood Is Burning and More Than Meets The Eye. Heavily pregnant she seems to have been enjoying herself tremendously. Watch videos on YouTube.

• Sources: PurePeople & Steven Bellery

016 030 Yodelice > Olympia, Paris – March 22, 2011