What are the advantages and challenges for you in being both in front of and behind the camera in this film?
Being the lead actor in your own film offers a privileged perspective on the direction. I’m at the centre of the set, everyone is around me, and I have a direct eye on what each person is doing. Then, when we shoot the scenes, I don’t need to ask myself whether I should act this way or that—I simply do it, and through my performance, I indicate how I want it to be played.
My co-actor (Serge Blazevic) doesn’t know his lines by heart—he half improvises (we did rehearse to mark out where each scene was heading). So, as I’m his interlocutor, I don’t need to direct his performance—I act with him and steer the scene through my own acting.
I think this can only work with a very small crew, where everyone hears and sees what the others are doing—there’s no need to raise one’s voice. I had great trust in the person handling the image, with whom I’d had many conversations. I never went to check a frame, nor did I listen to the sound. Absolute trust. Creative input from all involved.
The film never dramatises the characters’ difficulties—health, money, ageing. Would you say this is because the film is about two people and the bond between them, rather than about one isolated individual?
Yes, I don’t dramatise because I only film the surface of the world; I “materialise small sensations,” as Cézanne put it. I’m interested in the small things that happen in the present, in the mix of perspectives—something can be both dramatic and comic at the same time.
I think it would be the same even if the film focused on a single character: I don’t really like a film to show only one thing, to have only one tone. Except in the realm of absolute sublimity (Mizoguchi or Naruse), which I’m not attempting just yet!
The film’s dialogue is both very natural and very precise. Was any of it written? Did Serge at least receive guidance on the situations to develop in each scene?
There was a script with fully written dialogue. But once I’d decided it would be played by Serge Blazevic, I knew he would improvise. I know him very well, so I know he tends to go off on tangents. I wouldn’t have asked another actor to improvise—I trusted Serge to deliver the dialogue in his own words.
For the girls, there was nothing written, and they didn’t need to know anything in advance. For the ending, I had told them I would ask them to talk about their next film projects.
I find the narrative framework quite surprising—almost like a fable—with the story of the slug and the snail. How did the idea come about to include Pascale Bodet and Bojena Horackova in the film, and to have them speak about their respective upcoming film projects?
The idea of the filmmaker friends came about because I realised I wouldn’t be able to film inside the fire engine, nor in the hospital. So I decided I would tell all that to my friends, who I see regularly. We often talk about our upcoming films, we read each other’s projects.
The idea to include them three times in the film came from intuition, not theory. I took a chance that it would work that way. These scenes weren’t in the original script. I trust my intuitions—when they last for several days! I wanted to pass the baton to them at the end of the film.
Interview by Manuel Asín
