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French actor Daniel Auteuil is set to direct his new feature film, after the commercial success of his debut The Well Digger's Daughter. He will adapt Marcel Pagnol's Marius - Fanny - Cesar trilogy: the actor-turned-director is actually shooting the first two chapters of the novel in the studios of Bry-sur Marne, Paris. Cineuropa reports that rising star Raphaël Personnaz (who most recently was at the Cannes Film Festival with Catherine Corsini's Trois mondes) will lead the cast along with Auteuil, Victoire Belezy, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Marie-Anne Chazel, Ariane Ascaride, Daniel Russo, and Nicolas Vaude.

In the movie, Marius works in the waterfront bar of Cesar, his father, and his good friend since childhood, Fanny, is a vendor who works outside the bar. Marius has a hidden desire to travel to exotic places with the ship crews that part from the docks of Marseilles. This desire becomes exposed when the rich older Panisse proposes to Fanny and Marius gets jealous. Marius' jealousy of Panisse is the first textual indication of the secret feelings that he has for her, but much to his surprise, the feelings are reciprocated by Fanny. Fanny soon discovers she is pregnant of Marius, a shameful position in their community since she's a single mother with a father unable to secure the future of her and her child. She agrees with her mother and father's advice to marry a more prosperous salesman in the harbor, Honoré Panisse, who is 30 years older than she is. A few months after the marriage and the birth of the baby Marius returns and tries to win back Fanny...

Alessandro Zoppo