French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet announced that he will adapt a best-selling novel Change the flower water Written by Valérie Perrin, with Leila Bekhti in the lead role as a lovable cemetery guard with a tragic backstory.
Oscar nominee Emily The director revealed the details of the project in an exclusive interview with the French magazine Paris Match.
Italian company Palomar acquired the rights to adapt the novel in 2021 and is leading production with Paris-based 24 25 Films.Barbes, Petite Algeria and Visions), both of which are Mediawan companies.
Studiocanal is co-producing the film and will also distribute it in France and handle international sales, while Canal+ and Netflix are supporting the production.
Change the flower waterwhich translates as “change of rose water,” is about a woman named Violet Toussaint who works as a cemetery caretaker in a small town in Burgundy.
Violet is at the heart of this small world, inhabited by local gravediggers and a young priest as well as many visitors, who stop by her inn and confide in her about their lives and the lives of the missing.
As you listen to these stories, some tragic and some comic, and contemplate the questions of life and death, grief and the simple joys of life, their painful backstory is revealed through a tragicomic lens.
“She is a person full of light, even for me, who does not have a peaceful relationship with death,” Bakhti told Paris Match magazine. “It's timeless and resilient. I like these characters that are so unique and speak to you at the same time. There's nothing more beautiful and poetic than searching for life through death.”
The novel was first published in 2018 in France, where it sold 850,000 copies, and has since been translated into 28 languages.
It is the second literary work by novelist, screenwriter and photographer Perrin, who also co-wrote a number of screenplays with husband Claude Lelouch for his films, including We love you, you bastard (2014), On + On (2015) and The best years of life (2019).
Jeunet, who adapted the novel for the big screen, told Paris Match that although the novel has a poetic and imaginative edge, he did not plan to visualize it directly on the big screen as he did in Emily With scenes like her heartbeat.
“But there are elements that already excite me before I shoot them,” he said. “When Valerie writes that death is like a dog roaming between our legs, ready to bite us at any moment, I immediately imagine how I would put this in the pictures.”
However, he noted that his approach would be more simplistic for this film, saying that he was inspired by the style of Russian director Mikhail Kalatozov's Palme d'Or-winning 1958 film. Cranes are flying.
Changer L'Eau Des Fleurs Filming is scheduled to begin in May 2025.
