Les yeux remplis de nuit is a loose adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novella The Mark on the Wall. How did this film originate and where does this new title comes from ?
Nothing more than the encounter with this short story, which resonated for many years. Fixing a form and shifting into a state of reverie is a common experience that everyone, in their own way, has lived. It seems to me that this reverie, this time that is ours, is incredibly rich. What takes place is fundamental if we attend to it a bit, and it then perhaps remains an escape route available to everyone to extract ourselves from reality. I attempted to make a film that would have that shape. Les yeux remplis de nuit is a verse by Góngora.
On the soundtrack, Woolf’s text is interpreted by the actress Laure-Lucile Simon – en off, en direct, ou enregistré – alternating with a surgeon’s voice describing the actions of a surgical operation. How did you conceive of this parallel between two voices, two narratives ?
I created a narrative space around the operation that doesn’t exist in the short story, in order to create an opening towards a state of latency, to get as close as possible to the fabrication of images by our gaze.
You shot in 16 mm, in the 4:3 format, and all movements are almost exclusively side-ways travelling shots. Why this set-up ?
The travelling shots are a continuation of the act of writing, cut short by forms of breaking forth. The slow forward-moving travelling shots on fragments of objects offer a dilation of time granted to observation, and I hope even lead us to hear their silent voices. 4:3 seemed to me a pictural choice close to the framing of a painting.
At one point, we hear Michael Lonsdale’s voice, speaking of painting. Why include this extract ?
Maybe because for me, painting is the place of greatest consolation. Some voices also produce this effect on me, notably Michael Lonsdale’s voice.
At the end of the film, a transition takes places, from colour to white, from artificial lighting to natural light, from film setting to the urban setting. Could you comment on this transition ?
This movement is an unveiling, opening up your eyelids.
Interview by Louise Martin Papasian
