Why was it necessary to address the subject of incest, which affected Olivier and Patrick Séror’s family, in Only the Snake Knows, today?
Olivier Séror: Patrick has been haunted by this story for years and had been trying to write a book developing his sociological and anthropological theories, but he had reached a dead end. I found his research fascinating and felt powerless to help him. I talked about it with Martin because I was thinking of writing a fiction inspired by it.
Martin Verdet: I told Olivier that there was a film to be made with t: two men facing each other, filming one another as they talked about this subject in a large empty house.
O: I thought of My Dinner with André by Louis Malle, that really resonated with me. Martin’s sense of urgency matched Patrick’s.
M: The two brothers worked extensively before shooting to structure what would later be improvised in the film.
Why did you choose this particular place, your childhood home, as the filming location?
O: It’s something of a haunted house. A return to the crime scene. But it’s also a place where childhood can be replayed, reinvented.
What was the initial setup for the film?
M: First, we needed to feel reality itself, the desire and above all the possibility of a dialogue between the two brothers. Shooting began as an experiment. We were walking on eggshells. Writing the film in advance would have been far too hypothetical for such a precarious subject.
O: We waited until our mother went away for the weekend before taking over the house without telling her. We had three days, so we just jumped in. That first evening, we all felt rather discouraged, it was going in every direction.
M: I suggested we start again, this time shooting in every room of the house. We listed all twenty-three spaces (including hallways and closets) on a flip chart, and within an hour everything the brothers wanted to say had been assigned to a particular room.
O: That became our screenplay, the large sheet of paper you see in the film. Each of those twenty-three stations was meant to last no more than four minutes, in order to organise the geyser. Maybe we should have stopped there and spent at least a year looking for funding. But urgency won.
Was the duration of the shoot an important factor?
O: The story appears to unfold over a single day or perhaps a weekend, but that’s actually an editing illusion!
M: We first shot over those initial three days. We then edited the footage before returning twice for half-day shoots, wearing the same costumes…In total, we filmed for four days spread over three months.
O: Cédric Venail, our first outside viewer, gave us invaluable guidance on what was missing, especially the intimate dimension. We had initially focused on myths, and once trust had developed between the three of us, we were able to confront the dizzying responsibilities each of us carries within the family.
M: For the additional shoots, we had an extremely detailed shot list, complete with framing sketches for every room and the specific question to be explored there. We knew where to pull the pin on the grenades, we just didn’t know how, or even whether they would explode.
The three of you wrote the film together. How did you develop a structure that moves between intimate questions and mythology?
M: From the beginning, I wanted to create the impression that they were completely alone together. That’s the film’s slightly fictional dimension. But this is truly a film made by three people.
O: Once we began to see what the film was becoming, this balance between the intimate and the universal, the founding myths of our civilisation as well as the architecture of the house and even the more burlesque aspects of the film, I realised it reflected each of our personalities.
Martin Verdet, behind the camera, shoots carefully composed static shots. How did you determine the right distance and stage the movement of the protagonists?
M: I like precise framing, you should feel that every frame has been chosen, but Patrick’s urgent need to speak set the rhythm and we had to work very quickly! Since the brothers were supposed to be alone, we had a simple visual rule: they switch on the camera and position themselves in front of it. But they move, emotions are vivid, and they forget about the frame. That’s when the film’s visual language really found its shape.
O: I watched Martin’s framing, which helped me decide how to move. Throughout the shoot, I was searching for the right distance. Not only physically, but also in relation to my brother, emotionally. It shifts constantly, sometimes I’m detached, sometimes empathetic, sometimes I act naive, sometimes I act a clown…
M: I very rarely interrupted them. Sometimes I even moved the camera while continuing to shoot. I also occasionally kept the camera rolling during what was supposed to be a break. In the editing room, we worked extensively with those “off-camera” moments, those genuine-false “off-camera” moments to shape the narrative.
Could you tell us more about your collaboration during the editing process?
O: Martin and I are very different in what concerns us, yet very similar in our energy. I focused mainly on meaning, while Martin concentrated on form, that’s how we found our balance.
M: We listened to each other carefully and showed no mercy toward each other’s weak points. We argued, but every evening something emerged that we both liked. We also went through a lot of trial and error, many staging and editing ideas were ultimately discarded. Our producer, Raphaël Pillosio, encouraged us in that direction.
O: At one point, we’d drifted away from our original idea of assembling raw blocks of time with very little embellishment. Eventually, we returned to it.
Could you talk about the music Patrick Séror performs live in the film and its role?
O: Patrick wanted to perform this variation on a Chopin prelude because our father used to play it. Music has always occupied a special place in our family. Our father had an almost demiurgic ambition to turn his children into his own orchestra, which discouraged more than one of us. Paradoxically it also became part of our artistic education.
Has this film had a therapeutic effect?
O: Patrick has gone back to writing his book, he’s also started speaking to our sister again after years of silence.
M: Patrick, like many of us, has a tendency to confuse his inner state with the state of the world. For a long time, I felt he couldn’t get better unless society itself got better. What Patrick suffers from is not being heard. Now, there is this film. What I also like is imagining other people feeling inspired to make films about the subjects that are choking them, to shift their own boundaries because it might seem simple enough to do.
O: But it isn’t! In the end, the film is probably therapeutic for Patrick, but also for me, and perhaps for Martin as well. Above all, it remains an open reflection, something to be shared.
Interviewed by Olivier Pierre
