"Parler Pointu" recounts the gradual abandonment of regional dialects and accents, and what this loss means both on a personal and political level.
Benjamin Tholozan grew up in a village in the south of France, the birthplace of Alphonse Daudet. A Provençal land, Latin, violent, earthy. A land of bullfighting. The trivial and the sacred are constantly intertwined there. His whole family still lives there, and they all speak with a southern accent. Except him.
It is impossible to detect the slightest southern intonation in his speech, or the slightest word inherited from the Roman dialect of his ancestors. To become an actor, he erased his accent. He speaks pointu. That is to say, with the accent of power. ‘Parler pointu’ is an expression used by southerners to refer to the Parisian accent, which is actually the standard French spoken in the media and on the theatre stage.
In this historical and family epic, Benjamin Tholozan embodies with passion, joy and precision the characters who made French and the Touraine accent the only legitimate way of speaking today.
It is impossible to detect the slightest southern intonation in his speech, or the slightest word inherited from the Roman dialect of his ancestors. To become an actor, he erased his accent. He speaks pointu. That is to say, with the accent of power. ‘Parler pointu’ is an expression used by southerners to refer to the Parisian accent, which is actually the standard French spoken in the media and on the theatre stage.
In this historical and family epic, Benjamin Tholozan embodies with passion, joy and precision the characters who made French and the Touraine accent the only legitimate way of speaking today.
