Last year’s it-girl, Bérénice Bejo of “The Artist” fame, has been out of the spotlight for some time, but now returns with her first starring role since her Oscar-nominated success in “Au Bonheurs Des Ogres,” or “The Scapegoat,” an adaptation of the classic French novel by Daniel Pennac. A new trailer has just arrived advertising the film’s April release in France.
And while we wait to see if U.S. moviegoers will see “The Scapegoat” in theatres, they should take a minute to watch the French-language trailer, which comes complete with all of the characteristic delight of French cinema. Directed by Nicholas Bary, the film tells the story of a quality controller named Benjamin (Raphaël Personnaz) working in a Paris department store who finds himself the prime suspect after a series of bombings claim the lives of shoppers. Bejo plays an investigative journalist who starts seeing Benjamin, while director Emir Kusturica plays his Serbian-Croatian petty criminal uncle. Visually and tonally, it looks to skirt an intriguing line between fantasy and reality, all while dealing with some somewhat decontextualized terrorist acts. Life feels like a game in this trailer, not unlike in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s works — though he never went so far as to employ a CGI giraffe.
Though she certainly helped to cause a sensation back in the days of “The Artist,” Bejo may not be making another real splash with mainstream English-speaking viewers until she takes the plunge into an English-language film, as her former co-star Jean Dujardin will in the upcoming “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “The Monuments Men.” But that said, she does have the main role in the hotly-anticipated "The Past" from "A Separation" director Asghar Farhadi, and that's one of our most anticipated films of the year. Have a look at the trailer, plus posters and stills below.
Actually Raphaël Personnaz is just famous and hot as one my favorite French actors.