Héroïnes

Two girls, Jeanne and Johanna, live in a small town, where the mine is about to be closed down and mass unemployment looms. Jeanne is an introverted, romantic girl who dreams of love, while Johanna's enticing sensuality makes all the guys fall for her.
They both play in a useless girls band, and enter a song contest in Toulouse. Only soloists are allowed to take part, but with the help of sound technicians, Johanna lip-sincs to Jeanne's voice, and takes the audience by storm. Johanna becomes the new shooting star that the audience can't get enough of, and for the two friends this means the start of a joint career...
Gérard Krawczyck has created a film about searching for identity, love and friendship. His heroines are each other's opposite and each stands for her own way of dealing with reality. Their friendship is put to a rigorous test, not simply because of their differences, but as a result of the external pressures resulting from their new career.
It is also very much a film about the creation of stars in today's media machinery. Krawczyck claims he wanted to do a film about ''realness'', about that which is beneath the surface, about the difference between talent and the demands of the market. ''Usually, you film one girl's face, the hands of another, and the body of a third. You create a model of a woman who doesn't exist. We live in a representational society.''
For this reason it was important to Krawczyck that the lead actor should really sing, and not be dubbed as is usually the case. Maidi Roth has composed the music for the film and performs it as well. She claims that composing music that wasn't really hers but belonged to a character in a film made the job almost schizophrenic.
The girls' success is enormous, and we get to see the heroines in grandiose concert scenes all over France. It is clear from the cinematography that the director learned his trade within advertising, but behind all that success and glamour are those incorruptible values: love and friendship.'' One is always afraid of appearing a little maudlin when expressing emotions, whereas, with a gun in your hand...'' Perhaps that is why he has chosen actors for the male leads that we recognize from ”La Haine”. The hate has transformed into love, and we can spot the France of despair only as a backdrop. It is not the suburbs, but the good old France that the young stars leave behind.
Rolf Markelius

Premiärstatus
Nordisk premiär: Medverkande
Virginie Ledoyen, Maidi Roth, Marc Duret: Producent
Alain Terzian: Manus
Gérard Krawczyck, Alain Layrac fritt efter Play Back en roman av Didier Daeninckx: Foto
Laurent Dialland: Musik
Laurent Dialland: Talat språk
French