The images associated with Marcel Pagnol's Marius are powerful. Marseille, the old port, the card game, You break my heart
, Marius himself, Fanny, César, and the others. Images so powerful that few directors have truly captured the play, which retains its Pagnolesque imagery from the Marseille trilogy. Except for the Belgians of the Marius Company, whom we saw about fifteen years ago, who use their Flemish accents to find a liberating distance.
So, it was with curiosity that we were going to see what Joël Pommerat would do with the play. Without a second doubt that he would succeed in making it speak, as he did with fairy tales, from Cinderella to Little Red Riding Hood. And we were right. With this Marius, Pommerat gives us all the Epinal images of Pagnol's play. The characters, the atmosphere, the setting that sets the scene in César's bakery, the card game. Everything is there, and yet the resemblance ends there. It's a much more tortured Marius that Pommerat delivers. Everything was already in Marius, but he pulled the thread of Pagnol's play to Corneille's to put at the center of the play the impossibility of making a choice between Fanny and the great adventure, like Rodrigue torn between love for Chimène and his father's honor. A look at Marius that gives him a new body, more universal and which resonates more with the public. At least outside of Marseille.
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