Christophe Honoré's latest film features actors playing themselves. It's funny, poetic, intelligent and moving. Questioning their identity, Marcello Mio is universal: who hasn't dreamed of disguising themselves as someone else?
Cross-dressing as a man, or more precisely as her late father, Marcello Mastroianni, is what Chiara Mastroianni decides to do after being compared to him and her mother, Catherine Deneuve, for the umpteenth time. People think she's crazy and laugh. And yet, this is the reality of cinema. The film makes this clear right from its opening, with an absolutely brilliant absurd scene directly referencing La Dolce Vita by Fellini.
For a shooting photo - which turns into a disaster - Chiara Mastroianni is asked to wade into a fountain, blonde wig and black dress, disguised as Anita Ekberg, Marcello Mastroianni's partner in this 1960 film. She plays her father's lover, and everyone thinks it's normal.
Io sono Marcello
Chiara Mastroianni doesn't really seem to understand why she decides one day to dress up as her father. It's insidious and finely crafted by Christophe Honoré. It's as if it were vital. She puts on her friend Benjamin Biolay's costume, a hat, a wig, glasses and that's it! People who knew her father immediately recognize the uncanny resemblance. Like an actress, she imitates him, but in her own way.
Chiara wants to be called Marcello, because it makes her happy, that's all. Thanks to this incarnation, she becomes a little girl again, delving into her memories with her father and mother. Her mother plays along, even though she seems worried. Catherine Deneuve understands that this is no mere masquerade: her daughter needs her father.
Chiara Mastroianni speaks Italian, smokes a lot of cigarettes, wanders the streets of Paris at night and takes in a stray dog. She meets a homosexual, an English soldier who cries on a bridge while waiting for his beloved, recalling White Nights in which Marcello Mastroianni starred. She ends up kissing him on a Paris rooftop. We don't know if this soldier knows that she's not really a man, but it doesn't matter, because as throughout the film, Christophe Honoré places Chiara, disguised as Marcello, as a unique, genderless being.
La verità
Fortunately for Chiara Mastroianni, she has a providential encounter with Fabrice Lucchini. He's always wanted to be Marcello's friend, so he'll be there for her as he would have been for himself. Lucchini is never better than when he's playing himself, when he can quote Nietzsche and be freely moved by a woman. You can see in his eyes his admiration both for Chiara and for the Marcello she plays.
Everything in this film is disturbing, but never grotesque or unreal. It's full of truth. A truth that touches the actors, when they have to play someone else for months on end. The truth of actors' children, constantly compared to their parents. The truth of what a daughter can feel in the absence of her father, loved and admired by all. Everyone misses him. But it is she who decides to embody him, and she alone can do so, for it is above all to her, her flesh, that this public figure of cinema belongs. Christophe Honoré places the actor in his family, and thus in his own existence.
The filmmaker doesn't revive Marcello. Like his daughter, this film is a delicious blend of France and Italy in the 1960s-70s. It's a little long, at times, but it's delightful and light-hearted. These actors don't really take themselves too seriously; they're themselves and full of lightness, despite the apparent heaviness of the theme.
If I were a man
And above all, there's the truth of a fantasy shared by many of us: disguising ourselves as someone else for a few days. To live anonymously. The peace of mind of not being recognized in the street as Chiara Mastroianni, or simply as a woman. To go unnoticed. Just disappear for a while. Without verging on insanity, but purely letting go, stepping outside our Cartesian worldview, as Fabrice Lucchini puts it. Why not pretend to believe it, if it feels good?
Until, that is, it no longer does any good. Catherine Deneuve ends up stealthily kissing her daughter, mistaking her for her former love. A terribly embarrassing scene, but one that takes the concept to its logical conclusion. Her daughter can't really play her father, since he's her mother's lover. Oedipus catches up with them. The time has come to return to her life, to her identity as daughter and wife.
Chiara Mastroianni undresses on an Italian beach. She rediscovers her shape, and her nudity brings her back to her condition. She swims away, followed by her loved ones. The scene is touching, poetic and funny all at once, given the inanity of Catherine Deneuve finding herself fully clothed in the sea. The image freezes on Chiara's magnificent smile, with her long, wet hair. She is reborn, and at last seems fully happy.
Write to the author: aude.robert-tissot@leregardlibre.com
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Christophe Honoré
Marcello Mio
With Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Fabrice Luchini, Nicole Garcia, Benjamin Biolay, Melvil Poupaud and Hugh Skinner
May 2024
121 minutes
French 
German 
English