“A child should be able to choose his life”

In Louise Violet, you play a teacher sent to a country village to open a primary school in 1889. When she arrives, the population is hostile. What does this fiction of the Third Republic tell us?

Through this woman’s journey, the film evokes the birth of the republican school. At the time, compulsory education was slowly being implemented in the countryside. If most of the villagers immediately reject the teacher, it is because the children then represent a labor force necessary for the subsistence of the families of which the school will deprive them. Faced with parental hostility, Louise will fight so that the children can “choose what they want to do with their lives,” she says.

What portrait would you paint of your character?

She is a strong and determined woman, held by a personal secret which is only revealed at the end of the film… She experiences her job as a teacher as a mission. When she arrives in the rural world, full of hope, Louise is not well received. She sleeps in a barn and makes the desks, benches and blackboard for the classroom herself. With the rhythm of the seasons, this literate city dweller nevertheless manages to be accepted. Nourished by the curiosity of her students which she opens to the world, Louise Violet begins to shine. Reformer, citizen, she is a committed woman. We could make it an allegory of the Republic.

How did you prepare for this role?

Being a very hard worker and a history buff, I did a lot of research before filming, thanks in particular to works on the Commune and the Third Republic. Tardi’s comic strip entitled The cry of the people (adapted from the novel by Jean Vautrin) was a magnificent, complete and, above all, very thick tool!

Did Louise Violet really exist?

No, but his journey echoes the trajectories of all these anonymous people who contributed to the creation of our education system. A great connoisseur of this period, director Éric Besnard invented this character who is an aggregate of figures. Louise is like a crowd of citizens present in one woman, fighting against adversity.

The only moment where your character allows herself to cry is in a church, in front of the priest to whom she tells her secret…

The village priest is one of the only men with whom Louise Violet does not enter into opposition but into dialogue. The director especially did not want to make a caricature of their relationship and wanted to go beyond the clichés. Because, even if the teacher defends secular, free and compulsory school, she does not make anticlerical speeches. The priest, for his part, is favorable to the arrival of education in the village. One takes care of her students, the other brings together her flock in her parish, with the same desire for elevation. The priest remains attentive to this woman, rejected because she is a stranger to the village. I know the French countryside well and I know that it is sometimes difficult to be accepted when you come from elsewhere…

You actually grew up in Gard where your parents still live. What relationship do you have with the rural world?

I stay very frequently in this department where I recharge my batteries. In my childhood, I walked a lot with my mother. Like in Claude Sautet’s films, we also went for a walk as a group, after big lunches with family and friends. When I was little, I sometimes looked after a herd of goats with my friend Valérie. She wanted to become an actress and I dreamed of being a goatherd… Today, Valérie is a nurse and married a goatherd from the Cévennes. And it was me who became an actress! (Laughs.) I still hike a lot, on the Stevenson path in particular. I love the landscapes of Aubrac, Hautes-Alpes and Auvergne. In the Cévennes, I’m going for a walk in the Bougès massif which stretches along the edge of Mont Lozère, a department that I love!

During this childhood surrounded by nature, what role did school play?

Without a French teacher, Michel Boisset, I would not be who I became. As he was our main teacher, I went to the theater class, forcing myself at first, to make myself look good, because I was not always a very good student. An extraordinary teacher, he gave me a taste for literature. Thanks to him, I devoured volumes of Fortune of France, by Robert Merle, and the famous school textbooks of Lagarde and Michard. Later, this same teacher advised me to take the Conservatory competition.

What about this did you pass on to your daughter (1)?

I taught him that school is, above all, a place of freedom allowing us to have choice in all areas of our lives, including spiritual ones. Because yes, the Republic school offers students the choice of believing or not believing. Without a religious practice myself, I wanted my daughter to study the history of the great spiritual traditions so that she could choose one. Or not. In his establishment, this type of teaching was possible and it gave him a great open-mindedness.

This week begins the trial of eight people suspected of having played a role in the assassination of Samuel Paty. How do the terrorist attacks against teachers affect you?

To respect a teacher is to respect what he has to transmit, beyond himself. Insulting a teacher while filming him, posting a video on social networks or going so far as to kill him… how did this become possible? Strong in their vocation, many teachers continue to think that their educational mission matters as much as their individual destiny. School is a place of knowledge where we delegate the mission of teaching our own children, with complete confidence. I find this moral contract with the teachers wonderful!

Are you involved in the educational field?

No, but like many French people, I “godmother” a child for his schooling, as part of an international charity association. My granddaughter lives in India. She writes to me regularly to tell me about her school results and recently sent me a photo of herself with her mother. I marvel at how much she knows that going to school is an opportunity. Today, 250 million young people are out of school around the world. The situation of girls in Afghanistan, in particular, is very worrying. This sponsorship is, it is true, a drop in the ocean, but we must maintain hope and continue to accomplish this type of gesture which makes sense.

Committed for years to the fight against violence against women, you carry out prevention actions thanks to the TV film Affected, that you achieved in 2022. Explain to us…

Victims of violence, the characters in my film rebuild themselves thanks to therapeutic fencing. Since its release, I have presented it in 40 French cities, during screenings open to all audiences and in the presence of local associations (2). Chatting with spectators after the screening of a work promotes freedom of speech. Because yes, we must go to the victims to help them, and this, in all departments. For this type of prevention, art saves time. Deeply optimistic, I prefer to work directly on the ground, rather than lamenting about what is going wrong.

1. Chloé Jouannet, 27, is also an actress.
2. Next dates for the film tour: November 25, three screenings in Les Sables-d’Olonne in the presence of Alexandra Lamy; on November 28 at the Ministry of Agriculture, in Paris; on November 29 in the Var.