What was the starting point for this first feature-length film, after several shorts primarily focused on childhood? Was it your meeting with Louise?
I met Louise at the La Clef cinema in Paris. I was presenting my previous film, Tendre, there one afternoon. At the time, the venue was buzzing with activity because it was facing imminent closure. So I ended up spending the whole day there, chatting and having drinks with people. I remember that evening there was a screening of an “ethical porno”. And in the queue, I noticed a young woman hidden under a hood who immediately intrigued me. Twenty minutes into the film, I was still outside the cinema, and I heard a deep voice behind me say: “Ethical porno, fair enough, but if the acting’s bad, it’s just bad!” I turned around, intrigued—and it was Louise!
Fantaisie presents itself as an intimate portrait of a young woman. Her diary plays a central role. What was the intention behind the project? How did you collaborate with Louise?
At the outset, Louise told me she wanted to make a film. So when we began scouting locations, I set out to support her in that desire to direct something, to film the story she wanted to tell. But gradually, I realised she didn’t want to tell a story as such. What she had was a desire for fabulation—even a tendency to fabricate. The only place where she truly felt like herself was in her notebook, of which she had let me read a few extracts. I was immediately struck by the sharp, morbid quality of her imagination. Then, as the days went by, I became more and more confronted with her way of being in the world –which was essentially flight in every direction. Faced with that state of mind in Louise, I asked myself where her vitality lay—where she vibrated in a way that would allow us to connect with her emotionally. I realised that this place was in her writing. Her texts had to become central to the narrative. So I began long-term, regular writing sessions with her, trying to accompany her so she could dig into and make something out of the pain that was paralysing her.
How did you develop the script with Mathias Bouffier?
We didn’t write a script. What we tried to do, above all, was to understand what makes Louise a character. Each time, it was about responding to the reality of the shoot: I alternated between shooting and phases of writing and editing with Mathias, who is also my editor. At each stage, we tried to identify the narrative potential in each situation and to develop that for the next shoot.
A second character, Thomas, appears in a forest when the film seems to open itself to the other, to nature, to light. How did you approach this narrative shift?
To me, this “shift” felt like a necessity—it was both narratively necessary and necessary for Louise herself. I wanted to displace her, to get her moving again, and to sketch out the possibility of a metamorphosis. But that meant something had to evolve within her too. The film was built mainly around two shoots, a year apart, over two summers. That time was also needed to think things through and to allow Louise the inner space to be open to an encounter. In the narrative, Thomas joins Louise in a shared dream.
Thomas Ducasse is a professional actor. What did he bring, and how did you direct him?
I met Thomas in a bar one evening, just around the corner from where I live. I had no idea he was an actor. I was really struck by his warmth and generosity. What interested me was Thomas as Thomas. I think it was the first time someone had offered him the chance to take part in a documentary process. What he brings is huge: he throws himself into the process completely, but he also knows how to play with the situations and help them evolve. He’s not afraid of his emotions or of expressing them. He talks a lot, but above all, he knows how to invite others to open up, because his presence and use of language are grounded in truth. He’s like a tightrope walker.
Fantaisie is often shot at night or in low light. What were your visual choices?
I’m very sensitive to light; I have a contemplative relationship with things. What I try to set up are conditions that can welcome the little epiphanies that happen during filming. But really, none of that makes sense unless the emotional state of the person I’m filming is right. There’s no point in having beautiful lighting if nothing alive is happening in the frame. What I film, first and foremost, is the emotional state of the person. Then, around that, I have to compose quite quickly—to find something that brings the figure to life, that highlights them.
The film creates a mental, imaginary, dreamlike space. How does the sequence with the anamorphosed images fit into the overall composition?
Actually, I see the meeting between Thomas and Louise—the whole second part of the film—as a kind of documentary dream. I had a strong desire to hold together two things that might seem contradictory: what happens in the moment, and what belongs to the realm of the uncanny, to the world of dreams. In a dream, you change location, time shifts, characters appear without warning… That’s exactly how I see the film. And like a dream, it is shaped by the unconscious as it gradually brings us closer to Louise’s inner world. The sequence in the cinema is like an emotional response from Louise to the encounter with Thomas—an encounter she can’t quite manage to live fully.
How should we interpret the title, Fantaisie?
The word “fantaisie” was with me from the very start of the project. An entire imaginary world unfolded around it and its many meanings. Beyond its old-fashioned sense as a synonym for “imagination”, it also contains the words phantom and fantasy. And I found that very fitting in relation to what Louise experiences in the film. In the first part, she’s haunted by an absent figure, Antoine. In the second, she gives herself over to the fantasy, the reverie, the fantaisie in the forest. Finally, the narrative arc of the film itself borrows something from the musical fantasia, which is always written in the moment, as if in a single breath.
Interview by Olivier Pierre
