City of Lights brings Lika full circle…

Published Apr 24, 2015

Share

HELPING to pack up her grandmother’s house, Lika Berning was astounded by what they discovered: “It’s incredible what you find out about the person and who you are,” said Berning about rooting through Bettie Cilliers-Barnard’s belongings.

At the time Berning and her mother, Jana Cilliers, were working on a documentary about the South African painter who died in 2010 during the editing process. She knew her grandmother had spent time in a Paris printmaking studio, but discovered she had a history with the city, “and a lot of it was unlocked when we looked at the diaries and pictures.

“It’s amazing that the two correlated, my trip to Paris and hers, it made me slightly nostalgic. I would have loved for my grandmother to be young enough for us to experience Paris together. That must have been what it felt like for my character, picking up all these textures that were so familiar to her,” said Berning.

She was referring to her Lise le Roux character, the lead in French Toast. In the film Le Roux travels to Paris and discovers the city through the eyes of a local as she finds out about her mother’s sojourn in the city, years before she was born.

They spent 10 days shooting in Paris, in spring: “It was something else, hell of a busy. It’s a tourist Mecca,” said Berning.

Acting opposite her, Thierry Ballarin is really French. He came to director Paul Krüger’s attention in South Africa when he was visiting a mutual friend.

Though Berning now lives in Cape Town with actor husband Clyde Berning and baby Hugo, she is originally from Gauteng, as was most of the crew.

She originally studied documentary film-making, but has made a name for herself as a tv (Known Gods, Binneland Sub Judice, Feast of the Uninvited) and film (Bang Bang Club, Die Wonderwerker, Liefling) actress, working steadily since she graduated from UCT in 2003.

Berning knows, thanks to her mom’s example, how difficult it is to balance acting work and raising a family, but that doesn’t stop her from wanting to try and get back into the film-making side of things, perhaps on the writing side. The 35-year-old recently served as associate producer on Uitvlucht, directed by her father, Regardt van den Bergh. The drama, slated for release later this year, is set on a farm school in the Eastern Cape and is about a teacher undergoing a huge personal drama .

She hopes that French Toast will push the boundary: “French Toast takes us to Paris and opens us up to the European way, for the character to see another way of living.”

Related Topics: