Josiane Balasko is an actress and director, screenwriter, novelist and dialogue writer. This jack-of-all-trades, also a member of the Splendid troupe or that of the Enfoirés, has been Caesarized three times. In 1996 for Cursed grass with the César for best screenplay and in 2000 and 2021 with two César d’honneur.
Currently, she is on stage with her play A chalet in Gstaad at the New Theater in Paris. She plays the role of Françoise, the wife of a very rich man, both tax exiles. Françoise fills her days with beauty treatments, drinking whiskey, multiplying one-on-one meetings with her lover and also receiving friends, sometimes whom she does not necessarily want to receive. This is the case for one couple in particular, Alicia and Grégoire. He, an industrial dad’s son, she, an aristocrat and stupid to eat hay. This couple decides to invite their spiritual coach to this dinner.
franceinfo: We will say that your play is a bit of a message of hope, but it is above all a need that you had to talk about the bourgeoisie and the discrepancy that there can be between the bourgeois and real life.
Josiane Balasko: They are very rich bourgeois who do not know what the RSA is. These are people that I don’t really know, or that I may have had a glimpse of, but without ever seeing them. So these are portraits that are imaginary, some are tax exiles. They receive each other, not necessarily because they like each other, but it’s because they don’t have much choice.
You have always had this sharp pen, this need also to say things and not to forget where you come from.
“All of a sudden, it became clear that I couldn’t do anything other than an actress because I had nothing else and I had a certain gift for making people laugh. For me, it was the theatre, not the cinema.”
Josiane Balaskoat franceinfo
Maybe now, for young people, fame is finding a role, getting on TV. Us was about performing on a stage and that’s how the Splendid troupe was born.
And the writing? It’s also what allows you to say things, to continue to be yourself, not to forget where you come from.
We wrote because we had to play and there was nothing for us. We weren’t in the boxes at all.
It is the imagination that brings you to this passion. You had health problems as a child, you drew a lot.
Yes, I had acute rheumatic fever. It is a disease that no longer exists, at least in France. This is the result of poorly treated angina. We found ourselves in bed long enough and it hurt like hell, I remember that. I started to read a lot because TV didn’t exist so we had to get away from it all. And to draw too because I thought… my mom thought I was awesome. Thank God I didn’t listen to her and thought I had to quit drawing and art real quick to do something else.
What did your mother pass on to you?
Work, the taste for work. I have always seen him work.
There was a lot of feminine in your life, in your childhood. Your father died when you were 14.
I have my grandmother, my mother. Working women. They took care of a small bistro. I always saw my mother sweat blood and water in the very small kitchen where she said to me: “I stink of fries!” because you had to make steak and fries, that’s what people ate, very quickly.
I have the impression that work has never scared you, but that you have always needed to learn a little more as if you had trouble trusting yourself.
When we work in a group, trust is shared so it gives strength. Afterwards, very quickly, I wanted to work alone because I had different things to say with a humor that was not necessarily the common humor of the troupe.
There is a person who trusted you, it was Bertrand Blier. It will offer you, finally, an opportunity to get out of the roles in which we knew you with the film Too beautiful for you in 1989.
I think he’s the only director to whom I’ve said: I want to work with you. We discovered his first films, we were in our twenties, France was from Giscard and all of a sudden, you had a film that reeked of freedom, iconoclast. And we were completely fascinated by that. So shooting in a Blier film was important.
Is it because you have always wanted to be free?
Free, yes. Free to do what I want to do. I say yes or no to something when sometimes it’s difficult because you have to live and you don’t always have the opportunity to say no.
“You are never free. Total freedom does not exist. But I am free in my work choices in any case.”
Josiane Balaskoat franceinfo
This freedom you have through your writing. In A chalet in Gstaad you say very strong things. You also dealt with male prostitution, mental handicap. Many say that Cursed grass changed mentalities. Does it affect you?
Yes, it affects me. There are girls who came to see me, but long after, when I was on tour to tell myself that thanks to this film, they had been able to talk about it. This is good.
Afterwards, there were the dramatic roles which marked a lot, in particular That woman by Guillaume Nicloux, in 2003. It also feels good to show something else, who we are?
It’s part of being an actress. And it’s true that after too beautiful for youit didn’t work out, the directors didn’t say to themselves: “But then, what happens? She can do anything other than comedies?” Nope.
Do you regret it?
No. At the time, I didn’t regret it because I knew it would turn out like this. I was in a landscape of very macho directors. Me, I really like the films of François Truffaut except that he could say huge bullshit. He said, for example:A good movie is making a pretty woman say pretty things“*. So I wasn’t pretty enough to say pretty things and I didn’t have room, but I knew that. So I would mentally give them the middle finger and say to myself: but I’ll make myself my place and I write my stuff.
Finally, who is Josiane Balasko?
That, I don’t know, I would have to ask him! Someone who tries as much as possible to be normal.
* The exact quote is : “Cinema is the art of making pretty women do pretty things.” [NDLR]