Sophie Marceau faces

The actress has dazzled China with her grace. Yet, 2016 was the year of all sorrows

No one would have suspected it. Especially not her 222,000 followers on Instagram, who have the impression of knowing everything about her: her favorites, her adopted little dog, a Maltese bichon collected at the SPA and she baptized Lee-Tchi, her photos without His photos lying on his bed in his room, his glamorous photos in evening dress all more dazzling than the others, his video making tai chi in China, a joyous presentation of his film in Angoulême where She bursts out laughing ... Not to mention those with Vincent, his beloved son, or his legitimate indignation over facts of society. Nobody could have imagined the distress Sophie was going through in recent months. And yet, she lived what destroys us all one day or the other: the death of our mother. His has endured five months of chemo in the hospital of Brive-la-Gaillarde. Sophie found her as often as possible, sometimes on her hospital bed, sometimes in the family home of Segonzac.

But Simone Maupu, carried away by a cancer of the lungs, then of the brain, sank into a coma and died before Christmas. At 78 years old. She was the soul, the lighthouse of the family. She was so young! Bravely, without revealing her pain, Sophie has assumed her obligations: a tour in Asia for Chaumet, Citroën, with whom she is under contract, a tribute to Belmondo in Venice, launching "La taularde" A true story and nothing joyous ... She could have asked for a respite. It has just, for months, decreased the rate of its shoots. In March 2016, she told a South China Morning Post reporter she was planning to retire! A cataclysm. The journalist remained speechless, he insisted: really really? In Asia, in China where she is an adored icon, the earth trembled. Good girl, Sophie reassured her. "Well, no, not right now. But I will be very selective about my projects. She repeated: "Very selective. "

Read also: Sophie Marceau, 50 years of love  

Behind the quiet and radiant smile, it was a year of trials and roller coaster that the star had to face. In February, she lost her greatest love of woman, Andrzej Zulawski, the man who shaped it. She was 17 years old, he 44, they stayed seventeen years together, had a son. A brilliant philosopher, a complex writer and an original filmmaker, he nourished her intellectually, steered her style and femininity, pushed her within her limits as an interpreter, opened her to literature, painting, writing. An implacable judge and a tortured creator, he was a possessive being. Violent sometimes, always uncompromising. He criticized almost all the films she shot outside of him. And of course his James Bond, "The World Is Not Sufficient", in 1999, and "Braveheart", with Mel Gibson, in 1995, who nevertheless gave him his international stature. She left in 2001, she was 35 years old. The girl had become a refined, voluntary, cultivated and versatile woman, able to shoot "her" film about their story, "Tell Me Love," a year after the breakup. Despite the conflicts, the aggressiveness of Andrzej who did not recover from the separation, when he died, Sophie lost a part of his youth: Andrzej was his initiator, his artistic father.

Sophie with her parents in 1984.© Elsa Trillat

She needed to strengthen ties. As she often repeats it with a disconcerting sincerity: "I love traveling, but I realize more and more that what fills me is to stay at home, surrounded by mine. I do not like to feel alone. "Only Sophie? Her daughter, Juliette, 14 years old, is slowly taking off; She has her life, her friends. His son, Vincent, went to study cinema in New York. A welcome freedom but a bit dizzy too. At the age of 50, Sophie took the opportunity to create an invigorating idyll with chef Cyril Lignac, eleven years younger. "The body must exult," said Brel in his song. But finding his son and being with him is worth all the lemon tarts: his son who publishes on Instagram his photo with "the most wonderful human being in the world". His mother. This is the first time she sees her child cross the ocean far from her for so long. At first, she made gallstones. "Six months after his departure, I had to remove the vesicle! She confessed, ironically. "Yes, what do you want, I have my anguish. It appears that his daughter threw him, half-droll, half worried: "And when I go, will you take away what organ? " 
When on January 11, the C8 channel broadcast in prime time a biographical document Sophie Marceau, several newspapers headlined" The happiness of Sophie ", unaware that the material the star was away from swimming in the fullness . To see her mother suffering from a mortal illness, she who always displayed a fierce energy, was to confront brutally the tragedy of loss. The next one is us. From then on, we are reviewing our priorities. We no longer miss out on important things. For Sophie, it may be to clarify her relationship. And engage on its own credo.

Is this the reason why she fought alongside Julie Gayet, the producer, to succeed in mounting this hard film, "La taularde", of the young Audrey Estrougo, in which Sophie shows tumefied, poorly lit, Naked during the immodest body search, brutalized by the other inmates ... She was no longer in the comedy. A style she mastered yet to perfection and which her audience loves. No, in this year 2015, Sophie Marceau no longer had to have a heart to laugh.

"The taularde" was shot in a disused prison, leaden by an icy cold and currents of air that pierced you. Sophie took the opportunity to denounce with accuracy "the absurdity of the prison that cuts you of everything, of all. The world, yours, and yourself. " And to explain the insidious influence of incarceration: "We turned twelve hours a day, but in the evening I knew that I could go back to the hotel. Yet, amorphous or exaggerated, one carries within oneself the confinement. "This is also what gave her all legitimacy to defend Jacqueline Sauvage, the woman sentenced to ten years in prison for killing her husband who beat her for forty-seven years and who abused her three daughters . Francois Hollande, respectful of the judgment of the tribunal, at first only "partially" pardoned him. Tweet Sophie's rage: "Since when has the prison become a place conducive to" reflection "? [And] to arrive at what conclusion? That she deserved what her husband inflicted on her? [...] The day is far when our society will respect the right of women as much as that of men. It has been said that Julie, the President's fiancée, had not tasted these critical positions. Questioned, Sophie evacuated the question: "We crossed little on the filming, and anyway we did not talk about Jacqueline Sauvage. Did Gayet straighten the straps? It is frankly unlikely, because his film about the prison is already an overwhelming indictment on the state's prison policy.

Sophie does not disarm. In March 2016, she also split another Tweet Assassin on the Legion of Honor given to the Saudi prince: "That's why I [refused]. And pan! This must have earned him thousands of astonished followers. And this other phrase about weaponry in the United States after the Orlando shooting: "When you have a weapon, you use it, when you do not have it, you do not use it ! Some claimed they did not understand. It was clear, though? Obama could have said the same.

Slowly but surely, Sophie Marceau, through social networks, is in the process to purify its image. Live and uncompromising. Neither tepid nor spoiled child, she kept the lessons of her parents who had to fight during their whole life, in silence, teeth clenched: "In France, one spends one's time to grumble without ever being grateful for this State which takes the People in charge, who does not let them down. If we could remember it, it might give us a smile. Well seen, comrade.

In August, at the festival of Angoulême where she presents "La taularde", a film by Audrey Estrougo.© Franck CASTEL / NEWS PICTURES

Today, she starts what is called a mourning work. It is a long process paved with "first times without it". Even an adult and responsible for his life, there is no age to feel orphaned. Sophie will never be as similar to her fans as during this year. Like them, like us, she will experience this terrible feeling of emptiness and abandonment. Vaillant soldier, she made a good face, beautiful and laughing when it was necessary. But in filigree, we understood that his life changes, and his desires too. She wrote on Twitter: "I am not too present at the moment, I write ..." She warned: "I need to gather, not to be in the eyes of the other, Express more personal things. She said she was imagining "a solar comedy, I want to laugh". 

His vitality, the family heritage, his children, his brother, his father now widowed, devastated, and somewhat his job: so many pillars to start a second life. Full and autonomous. Combative when needed.