Noée Abita has joined the troupe of Christophe Honoré
Since January, Noée Abita has been filming “Mariage au goût d’orange”, the upcoming film by Christophe Honoré, inspired by his stage play “Le Ciel de Nantes”. A first for the actress, who joyfully joins the director of “Love Songs”. “I feel lucky. I love his cinema and this story touches me. All the characters existed in his family. I play Isabelle, one of the sisters,” said the 26-year-old actress. To approach this role, the Parisian asked herself many questions. “It’s not easy to find your place in an ensemble film. When you’re not at the center of a scene, how do you inhabit the shots in width? You wonder how to move,” she explains.
These concrete and theoretical questions were not asked by Noée Abita at the beginning of her career in 2017 when director Léa Mysius chose her to play the lead role in her film “Ava”, a teenage girl struggling with visual impairment who discovers love. “I had never done anything. I was completely carried away,” she recalls. Her work focused on body and posture. “As Ava was younger than me – I was 16, the character was 13 – Léa told me to take small steps, so that my teenage girl pelvis moved as little as possible. To prepare for the film, we walked, ate together. It wasn’t at all a text-based job.” The result, poignant, launched her career.
A rising star of French cinema, Noée Abita has a confirmed trajectory
Facing us, Noée Abita speaks with a blend of discretion and frankness as she takes on various roles. She was seen in productions by the Larrieu brothers, in the series “Merteuil”, but also in “Sink or Swim”, “Night Shift” and the comedy “Middle Class”. The 26-year-old actress is no longer a young newcomer. Her vocation became evident early on. “I wasn’t fulfilled at school. Meeting creative adults who listened to me, curious about what I thought, was a breath of fresh air,” she says. In her family, cinema held a central place, along with other arts. This opened up perspectives for the young woman, who quickly chose to dedicate herself to art-house cinema and its aesthetic acrobatics.
A critical look at the imaginary world of cinema
This ability to dream is not always found in mainstream cinema, even if she claims to love comedies. “In this field, it’s difficult to find good roles. The films that draw the most audiences often propose a misogynistic and violent imaginary world.” Entering the film industry at the same time as the MeToo movement, the actress does not hide her mixed feelings about changing mentalities, even if she acknowledges the power of the seventh art.
“When I shot ‘Slalom’ by Charlène Favier in 2020, about abuse in sports, people began to speak out in this field. But the film was difficult to finance. Cinema has the ability to circulate ideas in the air, images that can be positive, but also negative, like the male gaze and rape culture.
“A catastrophe, but anger is a noble feeling,” Noée Abita
Someone who loves fashion and participates in performances with artist Cham Lavant, Noée Abita advocates for a creative life outside of filming. “I’m always thinking about what I’m going to feel, what a character is going to feel, what we could do.” A fan of Kristen Stewart and her first film, “The Chronology of Water”, which caused a shock in her, Noée Abita embraces anger as fuel.
“I didn’t always know what to do with it. When you’re a girl, you’re not taught to be angry. Today, I put it in my roles. Hate is a disaster, but anger is a noble feeling. It leads to revolutions, changes in life, making choices. My anger kept me alive.”
“Mariage au goût d’orange” by Christophe Honoré, coming soon to cinemas.
