It’s not just the Tapies who are furious with the arrival of a next biopic: Florence Arthaud’s relatives are up against the film put in a box by Géraldine Danon, scheduled for next November. Marie, the navigator’s only daughter, 29, has just brought an interim order – rejected by the courts – to obtain a copy of the script as soon as possible in order to get an idea of the upcoming feature film on her mother.
She disapproves of the project and harbors real concerns after reading Yann Queffélec’s fictionalized biography, La Mer et beyond (Calmann-Lévy, 2020) which looks back on the tumultuous life of Florence Arthaud and which inspired the film. Emmanuel Molina, Marie Arthaud’s lawyer, thus pointed to certain passages of the book where the navigator is “alcoholic, neglected or even lacking in notoriety”, thus giving her “a bad image”.
The newspaper L’Équipe, which had the famous 130-page script in hand, noted a few scenes that are likely to cause squealing, including her accident in a BMW after abusing rum, then when she abandoned her medical studies to follow a sailor, wiping out the anger of the father – the publisher Jacques Arthaud – before slapping him…
There would also be inaccuracies such as the nickname “salmon” given to him when he was called “little buffalo”, reports a relative in the sports daily. On France Inter, Hubert Arthaud, Florence’s brother, says he fears a film “à laici”. He acknowledges that his sister could be a character “a little bit no limit, both in the party and in a storm, but it’s not at all a character who is a basic alcoholic…”.
For her part, Géraldine Danon defends her film tooth and nail, arguing that she knew Florence Arthaud well for having been her friend to the end – she was her son’s godmother. From the start of the project, she contacted her daughter Marie. Initial exchanges took place but they did not get along.
Supported by producer Manuel Munz, the director went to film in Brittany, Étretat (Seine-Maritime), Guadeloupe and Cape Town (South Africa) to stage the life of “Flo” – which became the title of the biopic.
Can you imagine a film about the navigator without addressing her excesses, when her life was filled with drama, storms, anger, laughter and challenges? Florence Arthaud imposed her dream on her father, rejected the mold of her bourgeois education, cast off, followed the adventurers of the seas. A feminist before her time, a pirate among “the sailors”, she was dubbed by the greatest, such as Éric Tabarly and Olivier de Kersauson…
She was serious at sea and festive on land: evenings at Castel, cooked with the sailors, sleepless nights, drugs… Adrenaline has always been her driving force, the sea her great playground. She rubbed shoulders with death ten times before tragically perished in March 2015, aged 57, in a helicopter crash in Argentina while filming the television show Dropped.
“I escape from reality to better approach it, explained Géraldine Danon in the columns of L’Équipe. It’s a freely inspired story, with my artistic point of view, it’s cinema […] between a great popular film and an auteur film. »
Same opinion for producer Manuel Munz, who does not see how the family could ban the release of the biopic. “It’s a work of fiction, not a documentary about Florence Arthaud,” he told France Inter. You come out of this movie with a sense of respect and admiration for one hell of a good woman! »
But the family does not hear it that way. Marie Arthaud can appeal the court’s decision. And his lawyer suggests that other actions are being considered to obtain satisfaction, namely the banning of a film which exploits “the memory of a great sailor”. The storm warning is maintained.