a monstrous talent
 

Posted on 14.10.2023

Between popular and auteur films, her career has been an uninterrupted series of judicious and often surprising choices.

© Arno Lam for Charlette Studio

Five films this year alone. But none of them suggest that she's trying too hard. She's perfect in all of them, startling most of the time, and funny of course, but that’s not all. And invariably, audiences follow her, because Karin Viard represents those who lock themselves in a cinema for two hours to discover a story that reflects their lives.

A real estate adviser in Bruno Podalydès's Wahou!, a midwife in Jennifer Devoldere's Sage-homme, or a wife left behind in Philippe Lefebvre's Nouveau départ, she has the gift of giving her roles a singular humanity, developing a total freedom of interpretation, probably because she is not "a very mental actress, more an emotional one. I'm always looking for that little vibrato in roles, whatever they may be", she explained in a recent interview with France Culture.

"I work around the text, one scene at a time. I try to immerse myself in it and understand a little of what the character is thinking. And then, in concrete terms, once you've learnt your lines perfectly, reflected on them and thought them through, you have to arrive on the set in a state of maximum receptiveness that makes you hyper-permeable to everything." Karin Viard explains that this freedom she claims and defends stems from "something having to do with my childhood. As soon as I was able to choose my life, I swore to myself that no one would ever dictate anything to me again".

If Karin Viard's life were to become a novel, the title would be The girl who didn't love herself. When her parents separated, she was five years old, and entrusted to her grandparents. As loving as they were, the little girl had to deal with a terrible feeling of abandonment. In retrospect, it was a blessing in disguise, freeing her from the obligation to live up to her role models. "I had the freedom to be who I was.”

The desire to act took her back to the age of nine. The Hunchback of Notre Dame was playing in Grandma's living room and it was a powerful visual and sensory shock. It wasn't Gina Lollobrigida as Esmeralda who overwhelmed her, but Anthony Quinn as Quasimodo, both ugly and endearing, "Suddenly, this guy has stirred up my imagination. He's the one who provokes emotion, he's the one I want to be", confesses the actress, still exalted when evoking Hugo’s monster to whom she owes her vocation.

At the age of fourteen, she entered the drama school in Rouen with a waiver, where other "starving actors" (Franck Dubosc, Valérie Lemercier) were pursuing the same dream as she was. At seventeen, with her A-levels with honours in her pocket, she headed for Paris, where she gave herself ten years to succeed. But no one was waiting for her, so she signed up for "stupid courses", repeatedly came up empty at castings and took on a series of odd jobs to keep the lights on: cashier at Burger King, demonstrator at Galeries Lafayette, pharmaceutical laboratory guinea pig, etc. Seven years went by…Until a rookie agent joined his destiny to hers. His name was Laurent Grégoire, and "he was still just a minion", soon to become the godfather of the profession. Viard’s first real roles came rolling in: Auntie Danielle and Delicatessen.  Her natural demeanour, straightforwardness and sexy curves did the rest. Karin Viard is here to stay, in a range of roles that will enable her to triumph in both pure comedy - Hikers, 1997 - and intimate drama: Haut les coeurs! by Solveig Anspach, which won her the César for Best Actress in 2000. Already nominated thirteen times, two more statuettes have since graced her shelves. Quasimodo would be proud of her.

Carlos Gomez

MASTER CLASS
Meet Karin Viard
Pathé Bellecour - Monday, 16 October at 3pm

SCREENINGS

Lulu femme nue by Sólveig Anspach (2013, 1h27)
Institut Lumière (Hangar) - Sunday, 15 October at 2.45pm
Cinéma Comœdia - Monday, 16 October at 7pm

Jealous by David and Stéphane Foenkinos (Jalouse, 2017, 1h47)
Pathé Bellecour - Monday, 16 October at 4.45pm

Dear Mother by Laurent Lafitte (L'Origine du monde, 2020, 1h38)
UGC Astoria - Sunday, 15 October at 8pm