Louis Garrel, long cast as a glamorous and disruptive presence in French cinema, has taken an unusually unflattering comic role in Just an Illusion. He plays Yves, an unemployed former executive who hides his job loss from his family and becomes anxious about his wife’s growing rapport with their building’s caretaker; the role matters because it lets Garrel work deliberately against his established screen image.

Garrel, 43, says he still wants to look beautiful on camera but believes actors are often better when they stop worrying about appearance. From an actor-film-maker family, he trained at Paris’s Conservatoire and has played figures including Alfred Dreyfus, Louis XIII, Robespierre and Jean-Luc Godard, while earlier films such as The Dreamers, Heartbeats and Saint Laurent cemented his romantic image. Set in suburban Paris in the 1980s, Just an Illusion was a hit in France on its release that spring.