Romain Duris, an old friend of French cinema – El Universal (Venezuela)

PARIS Both stormed the French cinema at the same time, but Romain Duris and filmmaker François Ozon had never worked until the last film by the director, “Une nouvelle amie” exploration sexual identity, transvestism and Efe actor confesses the “drive being another.”

At 40, Duris is many things. Actor who declined to be actor, opaque sexual myth and one of the most sought after names in French industry, the protagonist of “Une nouvelle amie” also happens to be “the most feminine interpreter of contemporary cinema”.

This is defined François Ozon when asked Duris choice for the role of David, a widower who begins to incubate crossdressing as a loving fascination best friend to be his wife, Claire (Anaïs Demoustier).

“I’ve been impersonating men twenty years but until now had never played a female character; it was magical,” says the actor, convinced that “there is no greater challenge” to become a woman. “We all want to be another” sums.

Determined to it, studied stagecraft of Gena Rowlands, the unforgettable muse of John Cassavetes, spied “all women” and, she says, required equipment shoot that dealt him as an actress: “I began to be her instead of him”

By then, he had already made two decisions.. One is resigned to nail polish for a couple of months; and two, review Chantal Poupaud documentaries around the shifter community while Duris admits with a smile rescued a “great movie”. “Tootsie” (1982)

“Sometimes it’s better not know everything about a character to interpret it as it deserves “sentence.

The son of a dancer and an architect, her grandmother travesty of child and maybe then carved a late interpretative vocation which reneged again and time until, with just 19, Cédric Klapisch made him the naive face the new French cinema in “L’Auberge Espagnole”.

Then came the shootings with Christophe Honore, Tony Gatlif or Jacques Audiard and the young man chained Duris hits, founded his popularity and stopped being young and seem naive – “and vice versa,” he jokes. Ozon was just the next step.

“It is a restless filmmaker, is energetic, likes to go ahead of the rest”, assesses the actor, who said “Une nouvelle amie” oscillates between comedy and film militant, “although it is not any of those things.”

Because for Duris, movies are not. “anything or anyone” “Only on the set feel that the film belongs to me, but when projected separates me to approach the viewer,” rivets.

Ozon explores “Une nouvelle amie” one almodovariana path as hiciese with Buñuel in his previous work, “Jeune & amp; jolie”, and always following his particular reading of melodrama, halfway between the grotesque, the playful and now politics

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