When Marion Cotillard played Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, she didn’t have the opportunity to show off the singer’s bisexual side. Now the French actress plays “a conflicted bisexual” in the new film Little White Lies (Les Petits Mouchoirs).
While attending the Toronto International Film Festival this week, Cotillard spoke of her role as Marie, “who gets flak from her friends for being too immersed in her job as an ethnologist in the Amazon rainforest.”
She’s attached to her job for sure, but she’s also very attached to her friends. I think she’s escaping a part of herself by going so far and trying to understand how some human beings behave in order to not face who she is.
Little White Lies is directed by Cotillard’s rumored boyfriend Guillaume Canet and it’s received fair reviews. It follows a group of friends who go on an annual summer vacation, despite a “recent traumatic event.” According to the TIFF website, there are several gay themes in the movie.
One of them, happily married, finds to his great surprise that he is wildly attracted to one of his best friends, a man. Claiming he’s not gay, he upsets his friend and stirs the suspicions of his loving and loyal wife, who wonders what’s amiss. The others all have similar challenges and issues, as a veritable stew of raging hormones and frustrations bubbles to the surface. Some run into old lovers, while others pine for lovers who have no time for them anymore. Through a succession of incidents, the group is pulled apart and dragged together by their ties of loyalty and marriage.
The L.A. Times writes of Cotillard’s performance:
There is a mischievous playfulness to her performance here, with a deep undercurrent of sadness, that makes for a most remarkable turn. It’s tough not to wonder: If the performance were in English, would it immediately seem awards-ready? (She cries, she yells, she’s sexy, she’s funny; she ticks off all the boxes.) It should be noted that her Piaf role was in French as well.
To find out more about Marion in Little White Lies, visit this fansite.
