The film
The unlikely encounter tells the history and present of a statue, the Balzac of Rodin.
For treatment and the script and see pictures DOCUMENTS
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Artist details:
The film is played by actress NINON BRETECHER
Rodin’s voice will be known by actor JACQUES BONNAFFE
The music is composed by JEAN-CHRISTOPHE DESNOUX
The costumes’ Ninon are by JUDITH HUSCH
Director of Photography: JEAN-MARC FABRE, A.F.C.
Production: KRALJ DENIS and JEAN-MARC FABRE
Script writing ELLENBERGER MICHEL
Screenplay, Editing and Director: LAURENT CANCHES
Update on the Filming ALL THE SHOOTINGS are over now
So we turned all the sequences at the Maison de Balzac in Paris, the Musée d’Orsay, the Writers’ Guild of France, in Touraine, at the Islette Castle (workplace and passion between Rodin and Camille Claudel ,unpublished images), the Musée de Tours, Musée Balzac (Saché Castle) and wood Saché at the House of Louis Daguerre in Bry-sur-Marne (the portrait of Balzac in daguerreotype), in Parisian cafes, and also images of monumental bronze of Balzac Japan, Melbourne, Australia, New York, Prague, the private collector-bronze 11/12, one of Antwerp (the first run with the number 2) and two bronzes in Paris. We shot three works by Camille Claudel, through partnership with the city hall of Nogent-sur-Seine, owner and creator of the future Museum Camille Claudel, (opening in two or three years Nogent).And at the Rodin Museum in Paris and Meudon and images of recent bronzes, including that of Caracas where we made a request for assistance through the Embassy of Venezuela in Paris, the Minister of Culture of Venezuela Mr. Hector Soto.
Resume
The UNLIKELY ENCOUNTER (the Thirteenth Bronze) relates the past and present story of a statue : the Monumental Balzac by Rodin. The film is set in the very same places where the statue’s story happened. It also shows the international circulation of an extraordinary work of art from Paris to New York, Australia, Japan, Caracas…
A young French woman discovers the monumental bronze statue in Japan. She is surprised to hear that until his death, Rodin never allowed for the statue to be cast in bronze, after the scandal caused by its first public display in Paris in 1898.
As soon as she is back in France, the young woman (Ninon BRETECHER), intrigued and moved, starts an investigation on that dramatic story, as eventful as a “soap opera”. Her quest starts with Balzac’s death in 1850, when the writer lays down a challenge to all sculptors to come.
From then on, it all seems as if Balzac, who never met Rodin, was chasing the sculptor around like an evil though, like a ghost, all through those seven years of obsessive labour.
We witness an imaginary dialogue between the two great French artists, as we travel throughout the places where the young woman is investigating.
Therefore, the film is a portrait of Rodin at work, as well as a complete evocation of Balzac.
After narrating all the obstacles Rodin had to struggle through and all the scandals caused by the statue, the young woman tells us the strange story of the thirteen bronze copies of this statue, of which only twelve can be seen today. Balzac himself could have chosen for that epilogue the same title he gave one of his books: The Thirteen (L’Histoire des Treize).
Image of the rushes – Sequence “MYSTERY OF A DAGUERREOTYPE” - Marc KEREUN (contemporary daguerreotypist) reveals the portrait of Balzac (1842) to the actriss Ninon BRETECHER at the Maison Daguerre in Bry-sur-marne.
