Our columnist Matthias has had the pleasure of being able to meet Rachel Lang around his film Baden Baden. It has answered many questions ! Find this interview in its entirety below !
When you realize “For you I will do battle”, did you know already that you would make a trilogy ?
Yes, absolutely, it was designed as a triptych. There were three components, the three axes that were written from the start, and after the writing, the production and the financing are spread out from 2009 to 2015, but the three were conceived as a triptych.
In the film we see the relationship quAna has with his grandmother, his mother, his best friend, his ex, employee of a diy store. Have you hesitated in writing to you focus more on one or another of these relationships ?
Then the red wire was the grand-mother, with the reconstruction of the bathroom, and after I feel like there is a galaxy of characters that revolve around dAna to show it built by these characters and that there is a multitude of characters who are not secondary but are also the main how. Suddenly it was the aim to have a lot of characters around delle, not to focus on one in particular, but that all these characters do become a Man with a big H and they make it grow and become what it is.
Why this title – “Baden Baden” – as the spa town is mentioned only once ?
Then there is the metaphor spun out of the bathtub and bathroom in the entire film. There is also the idea of a place in which no one ever goes, so it is a little, the idea of a false trail and a false promise that we gave at the outset. We go into the film thinking we are going to Baden Baden and ny will not, and we come out of the film by going to Aubagne, and it is not known if it will go, but it is kind of the sum of the possible that fact of the different paths in which we are not going to necessarily.
For the shoot which Ana arrives late, you are you inspired by your own experience ?
Yes, yes, the world of cinema it can be a little extreme, it can be of big productions and financial stakes are such that we cannot afford not to be hyper square, because every minute is worth so much money, so actually jai worked on film shoots and, in this case, I am inspired by what I have been able to observe there.
For you what is the prime topic of the film ? The disorientation, the search for the self, the sonship ?
Yes, this is quite subjects. This is how to become free, how to grow taller, how to win in joy, how to become active and to stop suffering, stop being passive, it is a little bit of all of it, and the link between generations is also in the centre, a link that allows the transmission and understanding silent. Between a grandmother and a granddaughter there is a generation of beat that makes the issue of generational is not the same as parents and children, where parents want their children to succeed, be happy, etc, Here is a relationship, the more light, the more silent and can be stronger too.
At the level of the staging, why did you prefer the clips to field – counter-field ?
Because for me, this is who I am this is the time and find an internal rhythm of each sequence, which is organic and which exists by itself, that is to say that what I am is to seek with the actors, the good spacing of time between each reply, the good movement’s true in life that one has as that of the blocks which are moments of life taken like that and finishes like that. It is this research that I am more than create the editing rhythm is more artificial perhaps. I prefer to find them at the time.
Have you given it worked in close collaboration with your chief op-Fiona Braillon ? Have you given much dindications ?
With Fiona we were together at school and we made the two short films the previous set, so has completely cut out the film upstream and thought about with this idea of architecture as well, which is one of the themes of the film. We really designed the film upstream by cutting out in all the decorations together.
What is it that you like about your actress Salome Richard ?
What I like about it is what does not play. This is an actress who never shows. She saw the things she hears the directions and it don’t show it not, it is up to me to see, and it is quite nice. It is quite rare actresses of that age-who accept that one go rather than show. It is quite nice to work with her, because she is never in the demo of something, it is very simple, and almost lazy in fact or in appearance, whereas this is not the case, quon asked him to live, and after me I can look at what I am in there.
What is it that prompted you to engage Claude Gensac ?
The base I wanted to Bernadette Chirac, but it didnt wanted to. There are very few actresses of that age who are not Alzheimer’s or redone, and it is part of these people ; and it is true that I fancy a grand-mother a little earth, with character, with a voice that is broken, who smokes fags and is a little punk, and Claude Gensac was totally the grand-mother he had. I have a casting director who is called Kris Portier de Bellair, who is the casting director dHaneke me the proposed, and here. And then also the next popular, in fact, as it is associated with De Funès.
Why have you chosen the song “If one day” The Woman quAna sings a moment in his car ?
The Woman is a group that jaime well. There had already, in one of my short films, and one of their songs – “On the board” – and jécoutais this new album at the time jécrivais the scenario and I need for this sequence dune music a little punchy, which gives him the potato, which makes him want support on the head and a large excess of speed, and it was this song, with the rating of unisex, which is also one of the themes of the film, because I wanted a character who was an individual before being a girl to a boy, before being the representative of a genre.
Why have you chosen to turn to Strasbourg ?
There are a number of reasons. Strasbourg is a european capital, such as Brussels. It is a border city between germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland. The Alsace region mavait supported for my previous runs, I knew they I would argue to the suite, so I wrote to turn in Alsace, and it is true that it is a region to which I am attached, that I find beautiful and that I want to shoot.
Have you supervised the editing of nearly ?
Ah well, yes, it is not supervising, I’m not an entrepreneur. Well, yes, threw with my editor every day continuously. It was a superb meeting, it is a film full of qualities, we had some stuff a bit dizzying in the assembly, to ask questions about a frame, two frames, when can we stop the plan, when that one starts.
What are your sources of inspiration main, theatrical, or other ?
I am not too much of the movie, then I haven’t so many references to cinema. But there are still Pialat, A nos amours ; Lucian Pintilie, a director Romanian’t very well known who has done The oak and the Terminus paradise, and it was How I played (my sex life) Desplechin, there’s a lot of stuff quite different in cinema. But my reference is mainly to Spinoza, “LEthique”, the movement of transition from a state to another, the relationship between the body and the spirit, the relationship to people, the relationship to the world and the idea of becoming active to gain joy, to gain freedom, and to cease to suffer and to have inadequate ideas. After there are a lot of levels of reading, it was the base of what I want to build the film. On sen fout if no one understands that there is of Spinoza in, and that suits me very well.
Do you have projects ?
I have a film in writing about the foreign legion.
Ah yes, this is a bit of a continuation of “Baden” then…
There is a gateway at the end of the “Baden” that leads to it, but as it is it the end of a triptych it changes the characters.
Matthias Turcaud