Vanessa Paradis talks of her musical dreams and AI nightmares

Euronews Culture sits down with Vanessa Paradis, whose film career is celebrated at this year’s Lumière Film Festival.

Alongside Isabelle Huppert and Benicio del Toro, the iconic Vanessa Paradis is one of the Lumiere Film Festival’s guests of honour for this 16th edition.
The 51-year-old multidisciplinary artist has done it all.
From shooting to international fame at the age of 14 with her single ‘Joe Le Taxi’, sustaining a successful musical career with critically acclaimed albums like 1988’s ‘M et J’, 2000’s ‘Bliss’ and the stunning ‘Divinidylle’ in 2007, to modelling and a filmography that has seen her collaborating with some of the greatest modern filmmakers like Jean-Claude Brisseau (Noce Blanche), Patrice Leconte (Une Chance Sur Deux, La Fille Sur Le Pont), Jean-Marc Vallée (Café de Flore), and Yann Gonzalez (Knife + Heart), there isn’t much the French star hasn’t done.
Of course, she became known for a while in the world press as the wife of Johnny Depp, but her career trumps any tabloid gossip. She’s won countless prizes for her contributions to music and cinema, and the Lumière Film Festival is celebrating the latter with the screening this year of three of her most beloved films: the aforementioned La Fille Sur Le Pont (The Girl on the Bridge) and Café de Flore, as well as the hit romcom L’Arnacoeur (Heartbreaker) by Pascal Chaumeil.
Euronews Culture sat down with Vanessa Paradis to chat about the festival, her desire to one day star in a musical, her fears regarding artificial intelligence, and what the next few years have in store for one of France’s most beloved performers.
Euronews Culture: You’re one of the guests of honour at this year’s edition of the Lumière Film Festival – how does it feel to have your on-screen career celebrated in the birthplace of cinema?
Vanessa Paradis: It’s obviously very flattering and moving. Before I came to the festival, I knew there was going to be a masterclass I’d have to attend, and I was wondering whether I was going to have anything interesting to say! But it’s a wonderful festival that celebrates cinema and the heritage of cinema. There are so many people – sublime cinephiles! I mean, I can be a cinephile, but I’m often missing references and half the information, and so it can be less exciting to talk about cinema. In this case, we happened to be talking about the films I’ve made and shot. And I didn’t know that there was going to be a five-minute montage with lots of extracts from films I’ve been in. It made me dizzy, and very emotional. I was afraid I was going to answer questions with tears in my eyes… It was a lot!
It’s true that it’s a festival that provokes a lot of emotions…
Yes, because guests come to talk about their films and the films of others, but there’s no competition at the Lumière Festival. There’s nothing at stake, so everyone’s much more relaxed. It’s so rare in fact… How can I put it? In our lives, in our jobs, it’s always one thing for another. We use each other. But here, it’s a celebration and more of a gift. It’s something free. That’s an ugly way to describe it, but do you see what I mean? It’s something natural. And then to go and see films – old films you wouldn’t get to see on the big screen… I think of parents who come with their children to see these films and that for me is very, very moving.
It’s both intimate and quite grandiose…
That’s exactly it.
We had the opportunity to ask you prior to the opening ceremony what your “Rosebud film” was – the film that makes you love cinema and which you go back to the most. You told us that it was Singin’ In The Rain – which seems perfect for you, as both a singer and an actress. Which leads me to the question – when are we getting a musical?
It’s my dream to star in one! I’ve been offered musicals, but they’re not completely musicals – they are musical from time to time. I did get the chance to be in the Poiraud brothers’ film Atomik Circus, in which I got to sing a few songs and dance a few numbers… But it wasn’t fully a musical. The musical I dream of starring in is the kind for which I have to train for a whole year – to learn how to dance numbers I don’t know, to sing incredible songs while telling a sumptuous story. That’s my dream! I can kick myself for not getting there after all these years of working. Maybe I haven’t provoked it enough or looked for it hard enough. But it’s never too late!
I ended up rewatching your 1998 film Une Chance Sur Deux the other day, in which you star opposite two titans of French cinema, who are sadly no longer with us: Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon, who died a few months ago…
I’m incredibly lucky to have been the one who was on that set, between Delon and Belmondo, and to have been filmed by Patrice Leconte. Who wouldn’t want to act with these two, who were reuniting on screen after all these years? And I got to be the young woman for whom these two potential fathers are fighting for. I can say that I was lucky enough to shoot with these two, and also to shoot with Jeanne Moreau, with Depardieu, Bruno Crémer, Daniel Auteuil… I’m forgetting to mention many others, but it’s crazy how lucky I’ve been and how emotional it makes me.
Your taste for comedy stands out in your filmography, as well as a kind of anti-conformism in your choice of roles.
It’s a desire for adventure. A desire to experience things that you don’t get to in real life. To play strong roles, to play colourful roles and to express yourself.  That’s what’s so exciting about playing strong, playing crazy, playing poetic. I’ve had the pleasure of working with people who have had a lot of humour and a lot of poetry. And, of course, a lot of love too. So, when I’m playing a difficult or gentle role, there’s always that in my heart – because at the end of the day, we’re all people who want to be loved and to love.
To come back to the Lumière Festival, it feels like the ideal festival for cinephiles, with its restorations of older films, some of which you can see on screen for the first time in decades. This seems to clash with the rampant use of AI in both cinema and music, as artificial intelligence seems to be in contradiction to what this festival represents in terms of cultural heritage. What do you make of these technological advances? Are you intrigued or scared that it could represent the beginning of the end for creatives like yourself?
Yes, it scares me. After that, however, I don’t know. I don’t know enough about artificial intelligence to know exactly what it can and can’t do, but I do know that for medicine, for example, it’s something extraordinary and that it can save lives. In this case, I think it’s fabulous. On the other hand, in art, I find the use of AI totally horrible. What’s more, there are a lot of people who hijack our images, our lyrics, our songs, who fool the public…  I find this ugly. And it shows once again that human beings always go a bit too far with things that have the potential to be good. There’s always a moment when we go too far.
As a species, we’re not particularly subtle…
True. But I don’t believe that AI can kill the creative profession. I mean, I don’t want to believe it. Already, artificial intelligence can’t endanger live shows. We’ll always have that. As for cinema… Well, look at this year’s Prix Lumière winner – Isabelle Huppert. Let’s see AI try to create a fake Isabelle Huppert! AI will never be able to do on screen what she is able to make us feel with her acting, with her powerful emotions. I can’t believe that an artificial intelligence could match her.
You’re a shape-shifting and versatile artist. What does the future hold for you? Whether it’s music, cinema, and also theatre, after your Molière nomination with the play ‘Maman’… What do the next few years look like?
I can see the next few years going quite well, because I’m actually going to start shooting a film next week. It’s Jérôme Commandeur’s next film, with François Damiens and Laurent Lafitte. I can’t wait to get started. And then I’m also in the process of preparing my new album, so when it’s done, I’ll have to release it and tour it… So the next few years are going to be pretty busy! And I almost forgot, there’s also the Anne Le Ny film which I shot last year (Histoire d’un mariage) and will be released this coming February. So as you can see, very busy!
And soon hopefully, that musical you’re dreaming of…
Yes, hopefully… Fingers crossed!
The Lumière Film Festival runs until 20 October.
Video editor • Pierre Assémat