What interested you in the history of the Château de Saint-Alban in the Gévaudan?
In 1765, the Château de Saint-Alban served as a base for the peasants, who were despised and left to their fate by the king, who believed the Beast had been killed while the massacres continued. The people, given over to their fantasies, imagined the presence of a werewolf, madman, or demon, while in Versailles, where the Enlightenment was flourishing, they spoke of a man-eating wolf whose taxidermy was celebrated. Two eras coexisted: the time of the peasants, who had only their past to cling to, and the Court, believing they were writing a future of Enlightenment. By an “organic chance” (to use Jean Oury’s words), I discovered that two centuries later, when the château, now an insane asylum, hosted active resistance to the occupier, it became a place of refuge and thought (Paul Éluard, Tristan Tzara, and others found asylum there). Under the influence of the de-alienist psychiatrist François Tosquelles, a revolutionary concept of psychiatry was also developed there. Thus, the Beast and the birth of institutional psychotherapy collided. I was drawn into the path of fiction starting from bestiality and monstrosity, long associated with madness.
The film begins in 1765 with a theatrical representation that will be rejoined by another, contemporary one. What were the stakes of these plays in writing your story?
Firstly, there is the exhibition of Vaucanson’s duck, also known as the “defecating duck,” a symbol of the rationalism of the Enlightenment. I liked the idea of making digestion speak at the beginning of a film traversed by the story of a devouring beast. With the realism of this animal, it was also a way to blur the line between a mechanical animal and an organic animal, a way to blur the line between reason and madness. Alongside this film, I was a performer in a play by Philippe Quesne. Theater has always had its red armchair in my work. This time, it is not the story that enters in controversion with the theatre but the story’s setting, its “background.” Philippe Quesne is also the decorator and co-producer of the film. We had the idea that the sets would allow us to move from an artificial landscape to sequences in the forest without this hiatus being an issue or a shock. Just a jolt. With theater, there is the idea of repetition. The repetition of a play; the repetition of its subject (the Beast of Gévaudan, staged every year); the repetition of a theatrical device (between the luxurious theater of Louis XV and the rudimentary theater of the hospital). The theatrical repetition allows nothing to be finished, neither the texts, nor the costumes, much less the story. The meaning may escape from all sides in this hospital, but this little theater gives form to the fragmentation.
How to stage the madness of the patients in this open hospital and the birth of new psychiatry?
With hands! Staging madness with hands. In Saint-Alban, it was about “succeeding” in one’s madness. To become an actor of one’s madness by making it operational. That’s why artistic practices were at the heart of the institution. Tosquelles said that as long as man does not have things in hand, he has nothing in his head. The freedom of the hand is the basis of human development. That’s why Tosquelles considered the modern castrating injunction not to work with the hand but with the head to be very perverse. Playing madness was the ultimate trap. That’s what scared me the most before filming. The actors quickly found themselves with things in their hands (a tape recorder, a pen, a notebook, a lock of hair) to ward off this fear of failure. Even if it is primarily thanks to their brilliant interpretation that we avoided the pitfall.
How did you imagine the character of Bruno, “son of a witch and brother of a werewolf,” and his relationship with his sister Thérèse?
Bruno’s story refers to that of a former resident of Saint-Alban, Auguste Forestier, interned in 1915, creator of astonishing chimerical creatures. Bruno carves his sticks like totems, protective charms, and torches extended to childhood. He is also partly inspired by Jean Chastel, the hunter who supposedly killed the “real” beast in 1767. This Chastel was considered a hero as much as he was feared. One theory even suggests that he was the beast. Without Thérèse, there is no access to Bruno: he emerges more as a manifestation of her unconscious than as an “Eureka!” for us to latch onto. Indeed, the risk was to make Bruno exist as the key to a trauma. The film seeks, on the contrary, to thwart all psychology or determinism.
Two eras echo each other, with some actors playing characters from both the 18th and 20th centuries. How did you envision these collisions in the editing?
As always in my work, editing (I edit alone) is where writing happens. If I manage to confront the writing of a film’s script and its shooting, it’s because I know that editing will allow me to gather the broken pieces. Filming breaks the script, that’s its mission. For this film, it wasn’t about restoring the volume and distortions of thought through editing (another trap to avoid). I had to be cautious, ensuring that madness was not the pretext for arbitrariness but its safeguard. Indeed, one might be tempted to edit together shots that have no apparent narrative affinity with madness as the sole alibi. The unity of place that is the Château de Saint-Alban was my loom. The patterns could repeat themselves without getting lost.
How did you envision the music and songs in the film with Géry Petit?
My collaboration with Géry Petit, who composed the music and handled the sound editing, is what gives shape and meaning to each film I undertake. I share the mad solitude of editing with him. The sound editing and that of the image do not progress without each other. For The Wolves, there was a desire to continue working with songs, as in the previous film.
How did you work on the image with Jean Doroszczuk?
We filmed with two cameras, for reasons of saving time but also, I realize, to capture the reverse shot at the very moment it was not supposed to be recorded. Simultaneity was both a luxury and a deliberate choice. It seems to me that if madness fascinates and disturbs so much, it’s because it is the site of an invisible knowledge: the madman is enlightened, sometimes illuminated… And, during filming, it is all about light. Especially at the Ménagerie de verre (in Paris) where light and its changes pass through immense windows. We had to deal with the moods of the day, the movements of the clouds. Instability began to speak the same language as the mad.
The film is titled The Wolves (Les Loups). What are these beasts?
Today, there is little doubt about the true nature of the Beast: it was several man-eating wolves, not just one. This is what caught my attention during my research: the interpretations, both pagan and suggested by the Enlightenment, never considered the multitude—the pack. In both madness and the story of the Beast, the need for the one (the big bad wolf, the madman) rather than the multiple serves, in my opinion, to maintain a fear while making it manageable. Why didn’t we think of the horde? Probably because this reality would have been too disappointing: where we expected to have “something out of the ordinary” (a monster), we would have had the ordinary (wolves). The Wolves are the mad, those who are hunted and isolated, driven by fantasies and fears. The comparison is a bit quick, but it reinforced my choice of this title. A title that, when I hear it, makes me instantly think of the team of this film. The team was more or less volunteer. It’s a film made on a short film budget. It’s called a “shoestring” film, but I don’t know if there are more expensive films than those made with the investment and desire of such a team. Of such a pack…
Interviewed by Olivier Pierre
