Aren’t you afraid to shock by telling this love story with a 17-year-old boy?
I notice that, as was the case for Licorice Pizza by Paul Thomas Anderson, people get scandalized more easily when it comes to an older woman and a younger boy. I have the impression that you hear less protests when it comes to the reverse or a story of a man like Call Me By Your Name. This topic was also not raised for The Life of Adele despite the age difference between the protagonists! When making the film, Gimi found that we had to have the courage to evoke our history by transforming it into fiction. Differences exist in all love stories and power relations too. What seems important to me is to be aware of them and to anticipate them so as not to abuse them. There’s something about love that you can’t control. On the other hand, we can control the space we leave to the other and not crush it. I believe that women are more attentive to this sort of thing and yet they are the ones who are attacked the most.
How do you explain this difference in treatment?
Good question ! Perhaps it still bothers unfortunately that a woman leaves the framework that has long been imposed on her. Whether a woman can be troublesome or take the initiative… They are expected to be perfect in everything. The men stick together and I find that there is still not enough solidarity between the women when that is what will take us forward. Patterns of female rivalry have been embedded in our heads for so long. Women have been separated, pitted against each other for millennia. They are expected to be perfect in everything. Even when they are victims, we scrutinize their past to unearth the slightest fault. There is still a lot of work to be done – including among women – for things to improve. Art is a powerful lever to shake up received ideas.
How can art change mentalities?
Stories have enormous power to change things, I am convinced of that! Culture is an extremely powerful weapon. This is why it is often censored. I like the idea that telling stories can open up debates. Talking is key to getting things moving. It’s okay to talk with people who don’t share your point of view. Sometimes they reinforce your ideas and sometimes they make you evolve and it is the same for them. Not everyone has the same rhythm, nor the same background. I can also sometimes understand the anger of people who have not had their word and who have suffered too much for too long. All this is very complex but the opening of the dialogue is what counts.
Your film was shot completely independently, without a producer and with friends. Was this freedom important to you?
It’s a choice we made as a group. Initially, we wanted a more classic production structure by fictionalising our story. Then, we said to ourselves that we preferred to stay between us so as not to lose the spontaneity of these first times, those of the actors, mine as a director, those of the technicians that I recruited on the Internet. We took a car, rented a camera and we went to shoot with the real family of Gimi Covaci, actor and co-screenwriter of the film. The film was a bit like a sketch: a cinematic form worked on but not refined. It was great to keep this raw side, to show these discussions at the edge of the water, with a touch of documentary in the improvisation. This film is a joyful bubble with blunders which, in my opinion, also make it charming.
If it’s charming, but far from perfect, why release it theatrically?
It’s a collective adventure and a story about sharing, so it’s important to share it in the best way possible: the cinema. Afterwards, I am well aware that my film does not have the potential for a big public success, but it is essential to show that other stories and other representations can exist. I hope my example will encourage other filmmakers to get started. What matters is that the film exists. The fact that I am a well-known actress has certainly helped me to be distributed in theaters at a time when the cinema is going badly.
Precisely, how do you explain the disaffection of the spectators for the cinemas?
Many factors come into play. But, in my opinion, the fact that we are constantly in contact with images if only with our mobile phones has a lot to do with it. We are always out of place thanks to our personal screens so we feel less need to move. I am the first to have to make an effort to go to the cinema. For me, it’s a militant act of going to see more confidential works in theaters and not confining myself to spectacular films like Elvis. There is diversity in what is offered. We have no right to complain about always seeing the same thing if we don’t support what is different.
Do you intend to persevere on this “different” path?
Sure. I am preparing a comedy called The women on the balcony. It will be a dark, bloody and explosive story that I will shoot with my usual band. Feminist because it seems that all films that talk about women are automatically feminist, although I hate being put in a box. I also have another project, a bit crazy: Gimi and I would like to work on an adaptation of Notre Dame of Paris according to Victor Hugo. He would embody Quasimodo and Gypsies would play the inhabitants of the Court of Miracles. The idea would also be to show another face of Esmeralda who is, in my opinion, a real feminist heroine! Condemned from birth because she is beautiful, a woman and a gypsy. And immediately considered a witch! She is tossed between men who want to lose her or save her. Even the lyrics of the songs in the musical are edifying: she is accused of sending men to hell with her beauty!
