3 Days in Quiberon

One year before her death at age 43, actress Romy Schneider posed for photographs and gave an intimate interview to a German journalist while staying at a spa hotel in Quiberon, Brittany. Over time, the three-day interview became a site of unvarnished, emotional self-appraisal for the French-German actress. Schneider, the biggest female star in Europe at the time, was at an emotional low point. Still processing the suicide of her first husband and newly separated from her second, she was also battling for custody of her 14-year-old son David.

 

This is the setting of Emily Atef’s fictionalized treatment inspired by those interview sessions. Going beyond Schneider’s stardom, 3 Days in Quiberon reveals a fragile and generous human being, a portrayal anchored by Marie Bäumer’s knockout central performance. Elegantly lensed in black and white by cinematographer Thomas Kiennast, the film takes the viewer to a moment in what turned out the be the final stages of Schneider’s life, and to what was perhaps her final attempt to control it.