Charlotte Le Bon becomes Niki [bande-annonce]

In addition to looking alike, they are both artists at heart.

Immense, world-renowned, emancipatory visual artist, Niki de Saint-Phalle is known in particular for her Nanas, her large women all in curves and color – a celebration of the feminine – and her series of Tirs, paintings in which the paint is projected by a rifle shot. It is in this way, holding the rifle pointed at the viewer, that the Franco-American artist embodied by Charlotte the Good stands on the poster of Niki – first feature film by Celine Salette.

Presented this year at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard selection, the film revisits an episode in the artist's life, when she moved to Paris in 1952 with her husband and daughter, far from her family who remained in the United States. Memories of her childhood come back to her and art becomes her escape.

From this first trailer, the works of art do not show the tip of their nose. At the center, we find the creative process leading the artist to dig deep into his inner self and bring out his past to create. By extension, the character and the actress are highlighted, whose range of acting, already visible in these first images, is varied, convincing and appreciated by Firstwho was able to discover the film at the Cabourg Festival.

The two women look alike, which is why Céline Salette chose Charlotte Le Bon to play Niki de Saint-Phalle, struck by the commitment of the artist she discovered via Juliette Binoche's Instagram.

Visible in these images sometimes as a model, and sometimes as an inmate in a psychiatric hospital, where Niki discovers how to use art as a path to healing, the film reveals all the facets of the artist, her relationships, and her difficult life. We also see a doctor ask her if she remembers what'he did – he, certainly being her father, who, when she was only eleven, touched her. The suffering and violence resulting from this act are transcribed in some of his works such as that of the Venus de Milo, a canon of beauty bled by scarlet paint.

“I wanted the film to tell the story before the story. How does a young mother from the aristocracy become one of the most powerful artists of her century? I wanted to tell the story of domination, how she frees herself from it and at what price: a fear that grows on a corpse.”

This is how the director presents this feature film. Niki, also starring John Robinson, Judith Chemla and Damien Bonnard will be released in theaters on October 9.