Playing the Doctor on Screen: An Interview with Marianne Denicourt
2022; Volume: 26; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/itx.2022.0004
ISSN2156-5465
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoPlaying the Doctor on ScreenAn Interview with Marianne Denicourt Peter I. Barta (bio) Translated by Lucas Wood (bio) Born in 1963, Marianne Denicourt (née Cuau) is a distinguished French actress, well-known for her career both on the French theatrical stage and in cinema, having appeared in over sixty films and scores of television productions to date.1 She has also distinguished herself as a writer and director. She has been highly praised for her work in raising awareness about the human tragedies of women affected by displacement in areas of conflict. She wrote and directed her acclaimed documentary about Afghanistan for the television channel "France 2," entitled Nassima, une vie confisquée (2008).2 Marianne Denicourt received her formal training in acting at the prominent École du Théâtre des Amandiers of Nanterre. She subsequently appeared there and in major theaters in Paris, Nice, and Avignon in plays by Shakespeare, Kleist, Schnitzler, Chekhov, Camus, Marguerite Duras, and Yasmina Reza. She also performed one of the dramatic roles in Arthur Honegger's opera Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher at Theater Basel.3 After playing in Jacques Rivette's 1991 film La Belle Noiseuse,4 she returned to work for the director in the capacity of both cowriter and the protagonist of the musical comedy Haut bas fragile (1995).5 Her subtle and sensitive acting repeatedly prompted film directors to invite her back to play in their later films. She has often featured in "dark" comedies and has been cast on several occasions in films with a medical interest. Her first such film was Passage à l'acte, directed by Francis Girod in 1996, in which she plays a psychiatrist.6 She appeared in À mort la mort! (1999),7 [End Page 69] directed by Romain Goupil, a film dealing with hospitals, illness, and death in a light-hearted way, and in Patrick Timsit's 2002 Quelqu'un de bien.8 This film, again in a comic mode, addresses organ donations in a scenario involving two brothers. Then came her work for Thomas Lilti. Along with Vincent Lacoste, she takes center stage in Lilti's epic film trilogy about physicians. Denicourt and Lacoste play doctors on the hospital floor in the first film, Hippocrate (2014).9 Then each of them appears, again in crucially important medical roles, in one of the two successive films. Denicourt is Dr. Nathalie Delezia in Médecin de campagne (2016)10 and Première Année (2018)11 casts Lacoste in the role of a struggling medical student. In both cases the actors in each respective film represent significantly different types of people. Denicourt's fine acting and convincing representation of female doctors in Lilti's trilogy led to yet another large medical part. Claude Lelouch, who to date has cast Marianne Denicourt in four of his films, invited her to play the medical director of the nursing home in Les Plus Belles Années d'une vie (2019).12 This is the final sequel of a trilogy with Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant in the title roles. The first film was Un homme et une femme (1960) which became an internationally renowned classic in the history of cinema.13 The roles of both Dr. Denormandy in Hippocrate and Dr. Nathalie Delezia in Médecin de campagne pose significant challenges to the actor playing them. Both women are highly intelligent and multidimensional, and perform very complex, challenging jobs in a male-dominated, patriarchal working environment. The level of responsibility they face does not match the limited authority at their disposal. In terms of authorial intentions regarding their characters, however, we can see marked differences. Negatively valorized, Dr. Denormandy has not even been given a first name. A fully qualified, mid-career internist, she is expected by her supervisors to deliver a "cost-efficient" operation, following bureaucratic rules imposed by the management, which can de facto harm inpatients. She is also expected to protect the unit, at any cost, from possible litigation for negligence. In one instance she attempts to cover up a patient's death as a result of the omission of a routine diagnostic examination by one of the inexperienced residents under...
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