Louise Chevillotte

Garrel's initiation rite

Philippe Garrel walked into one of the classrooms of the Paris Conservatory in 2017, looking for a face not yet tainted by advertising or television. There he found Louise Chevillotte. He chose her to star in L'Amant d'un jour, and the result was a performance that avoided every tic of a beginner actress.

And the gamble paid off.

In that black-and-white film, she played a young woman who returns to her father's home to discover that his new girlfriend is her own age. There was no trace of discomfort in her nude scenes or in the emotional tension. She got international critics to focus on her restrained physicality before her obvious photogenic appeal.

That debut at the Cannes Directors' Fortnight opened the doors to a kind of cinema that seeks truth over spectacle. But Chevillotte decided not to get stuck in the role of the French intellectual muse. In 2019, she worked with Nadav Lapid on Synonymes, where she explored a far more physical and chaotic register.

There's no trace of shyness in her method.

In this Israeli production shot in Paris, she had to deal with a script that demanded an almost violent energy. But she balanced the scales with a presence that filled the frame without needing explanatory dialogue. That year she won the Golden Bear in Berlin as part of the film's main cast.

Breaking the French mold

Paul Verhoeven called her in 2021 to join the cast of Benedetta. Playing a nun in a story of lesbian passion and dubious miracles would have scared anyone off. But she took on the challenge of shooting under the direction of the Dutch filmmaker because she was drawn to the technical challenge of his staging.

French cinema could no longer ignore her.

Her role in L'évènement in 2021 confirmed that her place was in stories that make audiences uncomfortable. Audrey Diwan's film about clandestine abortion in the 1960s required actresses capable of holding the viewer's gaze in very tight shots. Chevillotte brought the necessary toughness to a story that allowed no sentimental concessions.

In 2023, she worked with the Garrel family again on Le Grand Chariot. This time the director surrounded her with his own children to tell the story of the decline of a puppet theater company. It was an exercise in metafiction in which she showed that she has mastered the language of classic auteur cinema without seeming like an old-fashioned actress.

Moving into genre film and maturity

Before turning 2023, she appeared in La Bête by Bertrand Bonello. It's an ambitious science fiction film that moves across different eras, and in it she shares the screen with Léa Seydoux. In this production, sound design and digital post-production played as big a role as her physical performance in front of the green screen.

But her interest in realism drew her back to the countryside. In 2024, she shot Vingt Dieux under the direction of Louise Courvoisier on location in the French Jura.