Sigourney Weaver is back on Arte with Working Girl

The romantic and feminist comedy will be broadcast this Sunday evening on the channel from 9 p.m.

After Gorillas in the MistArte puts in the spotlight Sigourney Weaver in a completely different genre. In Working Girlreleased in 1988, the actress moves from drama to comedy and plays Katherine Parker, the queen of finance, a formidable boss in a world of sharks.

She forms a legendary trio with Harrison Ford and Melanie Griffith, who plays her ambitious assistant. While Katherine is the victim of a skiing accident, Tess, her assistant, discovers that her boss is appropriating her ideas. Taking advantage of her absence, she decides to pretend to be her superior in order to climb the ladder and be recognized at her true worth. But this stratagem will show its limits…

At a time when more and more women are entering the workforce, Working Girl highlights the sexism they face in New York's financial district, where the top bosses are overwhelmingly self-centered men.

For her performance, the actress was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and won a Golden Globe.

The same year, she was nominated for her performance in Gorillas in the Mist. By the way, it is possible that the big stuffed gorilla visible in Working Girl as her character exits the plane is a nod to that drama. While Sigourney Weaver considers her role as Dian Fossey to be one of the most memorable of her career, that of Katherine Parker was “a constant amusement.”

Following the broadcast of Mike Nichols' comedy, a portrait of the actress is offered from 10:55 p.m.

The particularity of this documentary entitled Style heroine is that Sigourney speaks at length, overshadowing the comments of other speakers whose analysis is not as relevant as hers: for example, we would have preferred to see Weaver expand more on her experience. “made in France” In Ten percent rather than following the series producer, Dominique Besnehard…

Retracing the most significant films of her career and her extraordinary image in Hollywood, the actress obviously dwells at length on Ripley, the heroine ofAlienby Ridley Scott, which turned her life upside down. Thanks to her, Sigourney symbolized a new image of women, strong, determined, tall (she is 1m82 tall), then over the course of her other incarnations, she also revealed more maternal or tormented facets of her personality. To the point of sharing her hesitations about filming the 4th opus ofAlienby Jean-Pierre Jeunet, which earned her this collector's comment from her husband, the director Jim Simpson: “You think you can't do it? Ripley could do it, she…” That was all it took for Sigourney to overcome her fear of water and agree to film her own freediving stunts, alongside Winona Ryder!

Style heroine is a fairly comprehensive documentary, even if we can regret that the German director Bärbel Merseburger-Sill ignores several other key figures in her career: his dual role within the saga Avatarfor example, is barely mentioned, even though it allowed the actress to play a teenager in her 70s; her parody character of Galaxy Quest could also have been included in the discussion, as it allowed him to have fun with a lot of self-mockery of his status as a star of science fiction, victim of the gaze of his “fanboys”…

Halfway through, this portrait takes a turn, to focus more on the evolution of her looks or her humanitarian commitments. The film nevertheless illustrates the special place that Sigourney Weaver holds in the cinematic landscape of the last four decades. Revealed to the world in 1979, when she was already 30 years old, she has managed through her career choices to maintain an important place in the hearts of the public, and to continue to embody interesting heroines past the age of 40, 50 or 60, ignoring the youthfulness reigning in Hollywood.

Sigourney Weaver style heroine will be visible for free from today on Arte.tv, and for three years (until June 4, 2027, precisely).

Gorillas in the Mist/Style Heroine: Sigourney Weaver Special Evening on Arte