 "Photo: Valerian Mazataud")
Marilou Berry is certainly not ugly.
She is on her first visit to Montreal, here to promote her new film Ugly Melanie (Vilaine in French) at Montreal’s first ever Romantic Film Festival.
Berry is understandably tired, perhaps jet-lagged from the trip over from France, but she waves all fatigue aside with a bright smile and bubbly attitude. She poses for a couple of quick snapshots with the movie poster, which was the object of vicious attacks by France’s Société Protectrice des Animaux when the film first came out. The poster illustrates Berry’s heroine, Ugly Melanie, preparing to throw a loveable kitten in the garbage. “The kitty is doing very, very well. They were two kitties, actually, I adopted them both, because I couldn’t resist them,” she said, laughing. Berry admits that the whole controversy actually gave Ugly Melanie an even bigger buzz in France, where the movie became a box-office hit and earned Berry a Cesar nomination for most promising actress.
Ugly Melanie is the story of the dog-walking, mother-obeying, boss-enduring Melanie, who has been bullied all her life. That is, until one day she realizes she has been the object of mockery of everyone around her.
“Ugly Melanie is what it would have looked like if Cinderella decided to avenge herself to her evil stepsisters,” explained Berry. “The pleasure is in seeing someone do what most of us would never dare.”
The movie is not a typical love story that Montreal audiences would be used to seeing this time of the year. Nevertheless, it was the opener of the week-long Romantic Film Festival at Cinéma du Parc, which ends Feb. 18.
“It’s not a romantic comedy in itself. It’s a comedy with a little bit of love in it,” Berry explained. Melanie is the kind of character with which we can all identify, in one way or another. “She’s a person who lets people step on her toes, who gives people the stick they can beat her with, quoi” said the lovable young actress.
The movie puts forward an important social issue, which is society’s obsession with beauty. Being bullied all her life for being fat, Melanie has had her share of feeling pas jolie. Berry says playing the role influenced her own ideas of what universal physical beauty is. “It seems that men don’t have to deal with the issue as much as women do. For instance, Robert DeNiro is beautiful, but he is not beautiful according to the official canon of beauty,” Berry said. “For a woman, if she is officially rounder, like Queen Latifah, it’s OK. But as soon as someone who didn’t build their image around their curves, like Lily Allen, gains trois grammes, she’s suddenly ugly.” Berry discusses society’s beauty standards heatedly, as she also is not pretty in the billboard commercial way and has a charm all her own. “The important thing is to be yourself, and then people can appreciate you. I’ve had my own share of working around that,” said Berry with a wry smile.
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