Venus and Lulu (1991)

Interesting facts

Venus and Lulu is a 1991 French comedy television film written and directed by Daniel Losset, and produced by Canal+, France 3, and Les Productions Dussart. It stars Caroline Laurence as a sleepwalking Finnish woman who is stranded without clothes while traveling in rural Provence in France, and Maxime Boidron as Lulu, a mischievous boy who tries to help her find clothes without drawing attention, while the bustling village prepares for a wedding and Bastille Day.

Production

The movie's director and writer, Daniel Losset, first pitched Venus and Lulu to the French television network TF1, who was looking to commission a comedy movie, but it was rejected as the network executives thought it would be "impossible" to produce a film in which the female lead is naked for the entire 90-minute runtime. Losset characterized them as unexpectedly prudish, saying that his intent was to create soft sexual comedy, not pornography.

Still believing in his idea, Losset then pitched it to Canal+ and France 3; he learned that they had agreed to co-produce the movie while he was working as assistant director of fiction for France 2, a position he immediately resigned from to write and direct Venus and Lulu at Les Productions Dussart.

Losset found the production hectic: the schedule allowed for 30 days of pre-production, and 26 for filming. Casting, directed by Charlotte Dautcourt and Max Morel, was done in the middle of August; Losset described it as difficult to find an intelligent and skilled actress capable of performing nude, an actor who could convincingly portray a Finnish man eccentric enough to lose his wife, and child actors who could give a natural performance.

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