[INTERVIEW] Anne-Gaëlle Daval – the most beautiful

Initially costume designer, Anne-Gaëlle Daval has long worked on the series Kaamelott before embarking in the realization. For his first feature film, the more beautiful, it offers a casting is prestigious and tells us, in an original and poignant, the journey of a woman who learns to love and accepting herself as she is. Affected by the accuracy of the whole, we had want to know more about her motivations and her journey of writing.

Our critique of the most beautiful, Anne-Gaëlle Daval

That is what motivated you to move from costume designer to director ?

The desire to create costumes from cabaret. Rather than waiting for a command, I preferred to write my film.

Was there a link with the dance classes and effeuillage burlesque, now often used as indicative of femininity ?

Not at all, I was leaving ten years of knighthood with Kaamelott, to make skins and weapons, I want my glitter !

What message do you want conveyed through the most beautiful ?

“Don’t worry, it will go ! “. I wanted to say it to women in general who are subject to the dictates that we don’t : necessarily it is necessary to be beautiful, it is necessary to be competitive, it is necessary to succeed… I wanted to tell them not to worry because it is all there : we don’t know how to do. Does anyone know how to do, at any stage of life, regardless of his or her physical, regardless of age, even those who give the impression of know-how.

Did you have a particular need to talk about the disease and more specifically breast cancer ?

No, in reality it is rather a pretext and storyline to address the femininity and give a dramatic dimension to the character and its evolution. If I had wanted to make a film about breast cancer, I would not have made this film here, I have taken the topic to arm the body. However, I found it interesting to talk about after the disease. When we had a lot of things to make, it has been a struggle, that it has been very surrounded, what are we doing after, when I get back home and that one is healed ? The hospital is in the place where one is completely self-centred, which is rare in daily life. Health care aides are great, one is in an environment hyper “cocoonant ” we can be nostalgic to the output, according to my personal experience.

Through the character ambivalent of the mother of Lucia, who loves her daughter while the bousillant blows remarks asesinas want to alert you to the mothers toxic ?

I think it is toxic from the moment it is a mother, no more than any other.

Being a mother of two girls has he pushed you to question your own femininity and what you were going to or not convey ?

Yes clearly. When one begins to write a screenplay it is a true period of research, one is more attentive to what surrounds us, everything is a matter of reflection. My daughters were pre-teens, I looked to become of the young girls, and I said to myself for the first time that I needed them to learn how to put on makeup. I wondered what was the place of the mother. One becomes a woman by mimicry in relation to her mother, as a result, I am often asked how does one become a woman at the touch of a mother who does not herself aware of her femininity ?

You have found the answer ?

Yes, falling on the women, such as Delilah who we learn (reference to the character in the film played by Nicole Garcia), or on other people, friends, articles in magazines… But we must remain aware that the make-up and all the paraphernalia that is for to laugh ! Once they had reached the steps of the femininity we can play, have fun or fuck, as Dalila.

You wrote the role of Lucy for Florence Foresti, which appears to go against the job in relation to his image of a comic sure of it. Is it the fragility that you perceive behind the facade that led you to this choice or, on the contrary, the insurance of the discourse feminist enough that she defends ?

For what I could see of it. I just think the film works because I have no feminist discourse. If there’s one thing I hate the most is the claim, it makes me flee ! I do not recognize myself at all in all feminist movements.

However, your film is real messages for women…

Quite but without being vengeful. It is very important that we, women, stop being in the other hand. We will never win any battle like that. Our strength is not all in there, it is to be different from men’s. Our strength is not to be the equal of men, but “mounted” differently, we have forces that them have not. In no case will messages by the claim or in all cases by violence.

When Matthieu Kassovitz came to the casting, you have rewritten, with his competitions, his character. Was it because you had a different vision of the men compared to the seduction ?

Not at all, at the beginning the romance between Lucy and Clovis was not the central theme of the film, rather, it was the journey of Lucy, the stake lovers allowed just to get him to move forward. It was not a romantic comedy but is a journey of woman in relation to the acceptance of what it is, neither more nor less. I had already Florence Foresti, which was already a big challenge for a first film, I never imagined to have Mathieu Kassovitz or Nicole Garcia. When Mathieu has accepted the project, so I redesigned the structure of my screenplay to offer him a real role, and therefore more.