Le Chantier is looking into building a home for your daughter Pénélope and other young adults with autism. Could you tell us more about this place and its design?
When Penelope came of age, I spent four years trying to find her a place in a residential care home for adults. All my attempts failed, either because there were no places available or because Penelope wasn’t independent enough. Eventually, she was accepted into a medical care home for adults. This was during lockdown. Everyone was still wearing masks. We were allowed to accompany her right up to her room, but then we had to leave; we weren’t allowed to visit for a month because of the health regulations. When I found myself in the lift leading up to her room, I nearly broke down. Everything was reminiscent of a hospital: the smell, the empty corridors, the shouts coming from the rooms, the overwhelmed care staff. I pulled myself together because, at the time, I had no choice. The idea for this place was born out of that overwhelming feeling I had in the lift, out of my refusal to accept that these places are often merely places to die. It couldn’t be his new home.
Penelope does, of course, appear at regular intervals, but she takes more of a back seat than in your previous films. Why did you make that choice?
I have the feeling that, for Pénélope and me, the camera is our board game. This strange object allows us to step outside everyday life and enter another plane—one that isn’t clouded by society’s expectations and opens up a space for imagination and possibility. While making this film, I kept asking myself: What if I’m imagining all of this? What does Pénélope think about it? Every weekend, I walk with her in the Bois de Vincennes. For several months, I filmed the exact same wide shot without paying attention to where Pénélope was. I thought, if she wants to enter the frame, she can. If she doesn’t, she’ll remain outside it. What struck me was how much humor Pénélope has, how cleverly she plays with the frame, slipping in and out with a rhythm that is entirely her own.
Pénélope is the film’s anchor. Without her, the construction site would look like any other, with its compromises and delays.
Lingering on the construction site allows you to introduce a whole gallery of different characters, each with their own personality and sometimes their own conflicts. How did you approach filming these other characters?
During the construction of this place, the camera became a way for me to keep going. Building a place to live is simply too difficult if it isn’t accompanied by the act of filming. It’s when I’m filming that I feel truly alive. I filmed in a very episodic way, without having a clearly defined film in mind. Some mornings I would tell myself, “Alright, today I’ll give myself ten minutes to film.” I would take out the camera and simply wander around the construction site.
Can you tell us about the editing process? How did you approach the construction of the narrative, the opening with archival footage of Pénélope, and the selection of the images from the construction that would remain in the film?
The biggest challenge during editing was the voice-over. We needed a way to situate the images so that they could carry meaning. At first, I tried writing a voice-over that simply commented on what we were seeing, but it didn’t work at all. Little by little, together with Raphaël Lefèvre, we came to understand what the film itself was asking for. We had to remain in the present tense of the image.
I imagined recreating a voice as if I were speaking while filming. That’s when the film really found its form. Recording the voice-over during the editing process became quite funny. I would go outside the post-production studio, tape the text I’d written onto the windshield of a parked car, and record the narration as if I were standing next to the construction site, filming in the moment. Then I’d go back into the editing room and we’d place the voice over the images as though it had been recorded live.
Just like with my previous film, Pénélope, My Love, nothing worked on the first try. The film found its way gradually—through trial and error, through stumbling, and by feeling our way forward.
Interviewed by Nathan Letoré
