The laureate of the Lumière Award has arrived in Lyon

POSTED ON OCTOBER 19, 2018

The American actress made a first appearance last night at the Hangar du Premier-Film. In flawless French, she introduced the screening of Coming Home by Hal Ashby, a committed film that earned her the first of her two Oscars. The laureate of the Lumière Award will deliver a master class this Friday afternoon at the Célestins Theater of Lyon. "It's been 50 years since I last visited Lyon, and I'm very happy to return," she told a theater of festivalgoers, transported by her presence.

An icon for generations of audiences, crowned with two Oscars, Jane Fonda returns to Lyon as the 10th recipient of the Lumière Award. An actress with a stupendous filmography, she has shone brightly in the Hollywood galaxy without ever giving up her convictions. Two years after Catherine Deneuve, Lumière has once again chosen to honor an exceptional woman. Fonda mentioned being "over the moon" upon learning she was to receive the Lumière Award. 

Copyright Institut Lumière / Bastien Sungauer

Her career has led her from Sydney Pollack to Arthur Penn, from René Clément to Roger Vadim, and her fearless temperament encouraged her to choose powerful, political, socially responsible, feminist roles, like in The China Syndrome by James Bridges, Klute by Alan J. Pakula, which earned her a first Oscar, or Coming Home by Hal Ashby, which gave her the second. This committed activist against the Vietnam War, carried the project Coming Home for six years, which graphically showed the harrowing distress of the soldiers back from the front, mutilated and suicidal, at a time when American public opinion was still staunchly against her.

Débuting in the cinema in 1960 with Tall Story by Joshua Logan, she embodied fierce independence from an early age, which led her to participate in Joseph Losey's A Doll’s House, based on Henrik Ibsen’s play, or Julia by Fred Zinnemann, winning numerous awards along the way: Golden Globes, Emmy, BAFTA... Her role in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? by Sydney Pollack, which showed the reverse side of the American dream - including the cruel dance marathons of the Great Depression - marked a turning point in her career.

Alternately fragile, strong, mischievous or haunting, but also funny and irreverent, Jane Fonda is an international star, an icon of several decades, immersed in the realities of the world. Resolute and ahead of her time, defending all democratic ideals and civil rights causes, she is a symbol of struggles for freedom, anti-racism and peace, remaining a person of integrity, still in search of herself, wondering about her own existence, weighing her successes and missteps. Screened at the festival, Susan Lacy's documentary, Jane Fonda in Five Acts, touches on these aspects of Fonda’s life. This same integrity has not left her co-stars indifferent; Jon Voight, also an Oscar-winner for Coming Home in 1979, honored her on stage, in tears, saluting her "great dignity as a human being, which overwhelms me.” At the 2017 Venice Film Festival, accomplice Robert Redford paid tribute to her, "Jane and I have a long history in cinema," he said. "Shooting with her has always been easy; things just come together naturally, without the need for much discussion or preparation."

 At the age of 80, Fonda is still in the fray; in May, she took part in an unprecedented 100% female ascension of the stairs at the Cannes Film Festival, with 81 other stars and women of the cinema, including the president of the jury, Cate Blanchett and director Agnès Varda, to demand equal pay in the cinema domain. And at the “United State of Women” conference in Los Angeles, she criticized the US government's drug control policy, unyielding on minor offenses by soft drug users. At the Oscars, she wore a Time's Up button, the association founded by 300 influential Hollywood women to defend sexual harassment victims. And at The Sundance Festival in Utah, she braved the snow to lead the second Women's March against Donald Trump. Her latest film, Book Club, a romantic comedy co-starring Diane Keaton, celebrates women of her generation who "still know how to enjoy life," she says. In recognizing Jane Fonda, the Lumière festival also celebrates her family, paying special tribute to her father, Henry Fonda.

Rébecca Frasquet