Mauvais génie (Evil genie) is the written response given by young actress Marianne Denicourt to a certain Parisian film director, who is very much “en vogue” and whom the reader will easily recognize in the book as the so called Arnold Duplancher. “Duplancher” has used scene’s of Marianne’s live for his latest film, dramatic scenes like the agony of Marianne’s father, and the death of her son’s father, being only twenty. Deprived of some of her most intimate and painful secrets, Marianne felt that she had to react. With much talent and lots of irony, she paints a picture of the “real Arnold Duplancher”, shows us his weakness and his hypocrisy and discloses some “precious secrets” of the French cinema scene.

Marianne Denicourt is an actress. She has acted, for example, in La Vie des morts, La Sentinelle and Comment je me suis disputé... (ma vie sexuelle), by Arnaud Desplechin, or in La Belle Noiseuse and Haut bas fragile by Jacques Rivette. More recently, she participated in Monique, by Valérie Guignabodet, and Quelqu’un de bien by Patrick Timsit.

Judith Perrignon is a journalist at Libération.