The opening credits of Défaillance critique resemble a queer music video, blithely mixing genders, bodies and languages. Does it act as a trailer for the film or for the artistic project?
The credits play the role of anticipation of the film’s purpose. It’s the place where there’s the most freedom to mix formats as a radical version of the project. It’s also a scene that was conceived last because it was missing. It’s about introducing our directorial characters, presenting ourselves as a couple who feel an urgency to express themselves cinematically. It’s the “tool-scene”, the first application of a technique, devised in advance, that consists of filling in the gaps and holes in the script with bits of 3D, found photos, unused rushes and voice-over. Queer bricolage.
Défaillance critique telescopes an SF film and the making of a film by two artists. Why did you choose this mise en abyme?
First and foremost, the mise en abyme has an important narrative role, serving to thwart all the possible ambiguities of the SF narrative: Ekko, an artist in residence at the الخوارزمی art center, discovers himself to be a robot, and attempts to hack his own code by means of a choreography from the android resistancexs milieu, in order to free himself from the link to the I.C.A.C. (Institution Centrale d’Art Contemporain), take control of his body and become autonomous. The “meta” part serves to make it clear that this is a queer film, and that the robot that hacks itself while sailing is a metaphor for the discovery of one’s trans-identity and awakening to decolonial issues. But it also serves to openly discuss cinematic conventions and the quest for a new mode of expression, freed from certain norms, which tint all the films with a watermark message. The two narratives evolve in parallel and follow strictly the same arc. The artist discovers himself to be a robot, and hacks away to make his body his own. And Youssef and Désiré.e realize that they can’t shoot their film with a conventional production company and, despite their doubts, appropriate their mode of expression. These are two mirror images of emancipation.
How did you approach the editing?
The editing process was truly experimental. One scene served as a test and was reedited over twenty times, and it also served as a test for the creation of the soundtrack. For example, I was looking for places where it would fall short of expectations (false connections, desynchronization, cuts in the middle of a line, sudden changes in image quality). The aim was to find the right balance between the search for a new format and the fluidity of the story. The editing technique echoes the research of the film’s directors: how to find a different way of expressing oneself that corresponds to a different way of being. Structurally, it follows the script fairly closely, but it was also designed to be modular, with each scene edited independently. It can also function in a certain disorder.
Rap plays a real narrative role in Défaillance critique. Why this choice?
That’s an answer that could lead to an edition, or even an EP! But all in all, the voice-over was a necessary complement so that the scenario could unfold fully, despite the fact that we hadn’t shot all the scenes, or had the sound for all the lines. I had the idea of a voice-over that could tell a story, then break into song and return to a more classical narrative. Rap makes this possible, but it also brings with it the story of the brilliant invention of a mode of expression that resonates with a culture, a community, a way of perceiving, saying, singing and setting a rhythm that is not European-centric. It’s a perfect storytelling system, which also consists in giving oneself importance in spaces where one has been sidelined. Speaking to a rhythm that’s not completely regular or syncopated, speaking to a rhythm that has swing, to samples of Moroccan music, summons up a less straightforward temporality that seemed appropriate to me.
How did you go about putting together the cast and crew for this film, which is also a crucial part of this collective effort, as the end credits confirm?
This is a political project which, in all its dimensions, contains the question of the representation of marginalized communities. We took great care in the casting and recruitment of the technical and administrative team, to ensure that invisibilized minorities (LGBTQIA+, racialized people, disabled people…) were included in the majority and in key roles at every stage of the production. The result was a team whose members had to meet and talk to each other. As a result, Défaillance critique is a symphony, a choral project, in which each member is in tune, not with the diapason of know-how, but with a disharmony of talents (palpable in the film’s craftsmanship, acting, shooting qualities, etc.) and a harmony of preoccupations. This harmony/disharmony dynamic is the energy that generates the form of this film.
The film adopts a humorous tone on these “questions of queerness, decolonization and trans-identity”.
The film has a comic component, a choice that was made as soon as the script was written. What’s interesting about this choice is that making people laugh is very technical, and you have to be very clear about who’s speaking, and especially who’s receiving, for the comic tension to work. We had to make a choice about who we wanted to make laugh, and that choice was made precisely on the basis of the community represented, i.e. us. It’s a very FUBU (“For Us By Us”) film. Which doesn’t mean that others can’t see it, appreciate it and laugh, but it does require a step to the side, a shift in perspective. On the other hand, this positioning brings nuance to the discourse, a little complexity, because the project has generated a multi-generational conversation about autonomy, about a relationship to our own representation, and this conversation with all its jokes is made public in the film.
Défaillance critique breaks away from many traditional film rules. Did you want to create a new cinematic language to suit the queer and racialized artists who make it?
Exactly! The project’s gamble is to start from the observation that the experience of being queer, of being racialized, is a different experience from that of the norm or the center. A different experience, a perception of the world from another place, implies a different structure of thought and, as a result, different modes of narration. For Défaillance critique, the game is to find, in fits and starts, the non-normative, non-mainstream format best suited to its narrative, its stories, its voices.
The question of emancipation is central to the journey of the film’s characters. Does it represent a gesture of political cinema?
I think all cinematic gestures are political, but not all on the same side. In this case, both narratives turn out to be fictions. This principle is a borrowing from Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, which says that you have to make up your own stories, wherever you fit in. It’s a speculation of a world, of two worlds, where heroines are active, in control and self-destructive. I also think that witnessing the doubts and determination of Youssef and Désiré.e, seeing them struggle and cobble together the film they want, and getting selected for a major festival, makes Défaillance critique a film about emancipation and empowerment through and for cinema.
Interview by Olivier Pierre
