[INTERVIEW] MAÏWENN

We met with the director MAÏWENN in Bordeaux, on the occasion of the presentation of his latest film My King (scheduled for release on October 21, 2015 – Critical : ★★★☆). Recognizing that it was probably not the best person to analyze her work, she spoke with sincerity about his intentions about this passion stifling and destructive between Tony/Emmanuelle Bercot and Georgio/Vincent Cassel , which is in many ways a right of way psychological-structured.

The inspiration

What interested me, it was to speak of the passion of love, video the state of love, to see where is the happiness. It’s always three in a love story, the couple takes the third place and I wanted to evoke the way in which the love installs the couple over time, especially when you don’t have the same interests, or when you come from a different environment.

I also believe sincerely that people don’t change, and it is a replica of my film, that it leaves the people for the same reasons they are chosen. Georgio the is also said to Tony: “you had all the cards in your hand, the person isn’t forced!”

I wanted to show also that the fact that Tony has become a mom after having waited so long to start a family, strengthens the desire to fight for this man and rightly so. There is in women a maternal instinct that makes us forget to harm our personal. My obsession, it was that makes it true, we see the time passing by shadows, other hairstyles, that you feel the characters worn out by their love.

I didn’t really want to make a film about the grip or the perverse narcissistic, everyone will see what he wants. I have not conducted investigations, neither met the people concerned, but I was inspired by two books, “The pleasure of suffering” of Alain de Botton and “Full lives” of John Fante. If the movie had continued, Georgio could very well say to Tony that she, too, was a perverse narcissistic.

The characters

I defend my character from Georgio that I tried to film without judgment.I installed it immediately as a seductive, but it is not completely black, nor disrespectful. He wakes to something else in the spectators : often love, moreover, because women love the rogue, are attracted to the danger, there’s no boredom with this type of men.

I tell the story of a woman who does not understand why she is in the arms of this man. I wanted to discover the faults of Georgio by the look of Tony. I wanted it to be very different from the type of women with which was Georgio before, and I wanted a lawyer. First of all, because I am fascinated by this profession, and the fact that lawyers recognize love, not justice, but to defend, I sometimes go to speech contests. And then I found it interesting to show someone as logical get caught in his own trap.

“I defend my character from Georgio that I tried to film without judgment.”

Working with his co-screenwriter Etienne Comar

I brought him a first version and I was especially helped to the back-and-forth between the story line and the rehabilitation Centre, to cut, to structure the right places and sometimes to censor…but during the filming we realized that we had gone too far in the censorship and in the end I turned the cut scenes in the scenario.

I had the same thought about the title “there is no point of running” but I had not had the same stroke of lightning, when I had found Polisse (poliss); “My King” came on while listening to the song of Elie Medeiros “Toi my toi”

The choice of actors

It was a no brainer to write the character of Tony for Emmanuelle Bercot since the end of Polisse (NB: co-screenwriter). She was also very anxious, and told me that I should have chosen a younger girl, most pretty: I found his reserve charming at the beginning, and then it made me bloated and I told him that it was my film and my vision, and that he had to let me do!

Even Vincent Cassel did not understand that a guy so seductive to amouracher a girl like her, and that she was not Marilyn Monroe ! And then they met and it was immediately worked. He had even a kind of grip on it!

I wanted to experiment with changes, and not part of the distribution was a: I would not have been able to play this role of victim, that little thing that will let her eat little by little and at the same time to direct the film!

I thought of Vincent while I was writing the character of Georgio, I wanted to show its share of humor, you never see him as a husband or as a dad in his roles, it is often hidden, and even blackface. I think the new one is very close to his character, and I believe that the movie happened at the right time in his life, we talked a lot about our lives during the film.

I absolutely wanted to work with Louis Garrel/Solal ; for me, it is a against Georgio, even if it does not prevent Tony to see it; I liked the idea of a stable couple that l shape with Babette/Isild Le Besco : Tony and Georgio have the money, the life seat, a business and they have every chance to succeed as a couple but the one from Solal -which was not true situation – and Babette works because they share precisely the same interests: it is them the true couple of the film !

Humor

My characters laugh a lot, even in the dramatic moments, but it is my character that wants it: I want it to my grandfather who laughed and made people laugh all the time. The lightness is something that interests me, especially when we don’t come from the same social or cultural environment (NB : the case of the meetings that made Tony at the rehabilitation Centre).

Cannes

I was not at Cannes as a little girl in a fairy tale, because I had already lived with Polisse. I more felt that it was waiting for me with a kalashnikov loaded, especially on the part of some French journalists who had been rather kind in my regard. Yet, I feel I have really progressed since Polisse (poliss) and have realized for the first time a cinema movie. What comforted me is to see that the movie was already sold to the whole world before the Charts (NB: Emmanuelle Bercot won the Prix d’interprétation féminine). It is already so incredible to be in Cannes, and to be chosen among 2000 films and being able to defend a film you love the Top, it is the little icing on the cake!