Interview: "After Love" addresses contemporary topics: Oscar-nominated Bejo

Berenice Bejo, French actress presenting the movie "After Love" at the ongoing 69th Cannes Film Festival in the Director's Fortnight selection, explained through her acting the travails of a modern couple.

Bejo won both Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for her role in The Artist, a movie written and directed by her husband, Michel Hazanavicius. Bejo also won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013 for her role in Le Passe.

"After Love" is a hard story about a couple obliged, for financial reasons, to live together in less than ideal circumstances. The film is a contemporary portrait of modern homes, their disputes and inevitable separation.

"The fact that women are more important in society has changed everything. Many men are uneasy when women earn more," Bejo said in an interview with Xinhua in Cannes.

According to her, this tough movie speaks about how we are completely turned upside down by all the changes in society.

"For my character in the movie, it is not a problem of money but the fact that all of a sudden her man does not appeal to her anymore," she explained.

The Argentine-born actress also agreed that the current economic crisis has impacted everybody.

"This movie is addressing contemporary topics that touch us all. We are living a very uncertain period. In every field and in different ways things are changing, even for cinema," Bejo said.

Asked about the evolution in her career after many successful movies, Bejo said: "There is a self-confidence that I developed. I don't have the impression of having changed, but things are getting clearer which pleases me."

"In any case, I'm an actress and I didn't want to cross my professional limits, even if director Joachim Lafosse gave us creative freedom. Sometimes I was writing with him and helping him on set construction," she said.

Bejo appreciated the confidence that Joachim, director of After Love, gave her, which allowed her a lot of space.

The most important thing for her is to enjoy what she does. Working with a lot of big movie directors has also been a great learning experience.

"Director Asghar Farhadi, for example, taught me something I inserted in this movie. He told me that because we are always in movement on set, we have to use these actions while shooting," she recalled.

Asked about her next projects, the actress disclosed that she will be shooting a German movie and a romantic comedy directed by her husband Hazanavicius. Endit