Director Joachim Lafosse discusses his unique approach to filmmaking
Though our roundtable interview with Our Children director Joachim Lafosse actually took place last Autumn, when the Belgian was in London for the annual film festival; his words have stuck with us ever since, as a pragmatic filmmaker who is determined to approach cinema as an art form first, and an industry second.
Our Children – which is released nationwide on May 10th – tells the heartbreaking story of a mother overcome with severe depression, based on a true story that is bound to both compel and upset your in equal measure. Lafosse discusses his own unique approach to filmmaking, and how he manages to find sympathy to a mother who is capable of such horrific acts.
What first inspired you to make this movie our Children?
The first reason I did the movie, is because when people say ‘that’s a monster’ I refuse that. For me it’s horrible, it’s not possible. In fact, when I heard the real facts in my car, I heard the journalist say his wife was a monster. I discussed this with my scriptwriters, maybe we can do a movie which can think about the reason why a woman would do that. It’s important for me to say that cinema is never the truth. Today, the cinema sells the film as saying it’s the truth about a story. There’s the truth by law, you have the journalistic integrity, and you have the artist’s work. My job is not to say the truth; it’s very important to protect the people in that story, to say it’s not the truth. I changed her name, and I said all the time it’s my fiction. I refuse to answer the question, ‘what’s true in your movie?’ To be a good scriptwriter, sometimes it’s important to understand reality is often better fiction than fiction. Legally, we have to put the film is based on a true story but not trying to reproduce it, but I refused to put that at the beginning of the movie.?This story is the perfect tragic situation – people want love, Murielle and Mounir accept the gifts from the doctor. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that’s my obsession, with the movie before, and the movie after; the moral question of good and evil. If evil came only from bad intentions, everyone would be fine. This generosity, kindness, goodness, creates a perverse link. I like to propose a movie where the audience begins to be vigilant, because often cinema requires you to be a believer. For me, God is that. It’s not necessary to replace God with cinema. I’m trying to make films in which the spectator can be moved, but not moved in an emotional way by being totally invaded by the populist feeling.
It’s a very brave and bold move to foreground the tragedy – because it sets the movie on a downward course. Are you worried it might be too depressing, that you might put the viewer in too much of a bad space?
With this story it’s not possible to work just with suspense. If you work just with suspense it’s vulgar, which is disgusting. Which is why I prefer to give the end at the beginning – it’s honest. When you are honest, you give more for the audience than the characters. I like it when the spectator asks, what would I do? Would I accept this honeymoon, this job, this house, or would I refuse it? By giving the end at the beginning, I then provoke the question in the spectator, how could a mother end up doing this act? The other thing we decided the first day of the writing, not to see the process of this woman, the trial, and the jury see the scene of the crime in the courtroom. After, they decide to sentence this woman to life. Because it’s not possible to think when you see what they see. If I give you in my movie the killing of the children, it’s not possible to think poor woman. You’re manipulated. I decided we wouldn’t see this woman as a monster. It’s not the killing of the children that put me in this movie. I wanted to make this film as it’s essential to show today the importance of autonomy, independence and freedom. Mounir is not free, Murielle is not free, and neither is Andre actually, because he thinks he can only exist through giving. Nowadays, you can see in women’s magazines it’s so easy to become a mum while also a businesswoman and a rockstar or whatever. I say it’s very important to pay attention to the nature of the man and the nature of the woman.
Despite what occurs, the viewer does still feel empathetic towards Murielle. How much credit must go to Emilie Dequenne for her performance, to make that possible?
Firstly, it is a pleasure to hear your words, that is what I worked to achieve. At the beginning of the preparation I spoke to her about the script, and she spoke to me about her life. Quickly, I said to her, okay, I would like it if we don’t speak too much. Because when an actor speaks too much to a director about their lives, quickly the actors are afraid to be judged by the director. That’s why you sometimes don’t choose to speak with your best friends. I preferred to say to Emilie, let’s preserve this distance and modesty, and you go to a specialist psychiatrist, a specialist in post-natal depression. She went to the surgery for three weeks, and after the shooting, Emilie said I made a good decision. The day I heard this story and decided to do this movie, more than five years ago, I went to a psychoanalyst three times a week. Each session of analysis for five years, I spoke about this story. If you ask deeply about such a story, you get taken in. I’m really glad I became a father before making this film, because I wouldn’t have understood the long nights and the tiredness. It’s important also that the psychoanalyst helped Emilie. She was afraid to work with them, and Niels, who is very hard and impressive. We shot the sequence in the car when she sings, and when I see that, I realise we are good. For example, I work for the preparation with the child, but two weeks before I ask Emilie to stay on the set with the child as a real mother, so that’s the only woman to speak with the child on the set. We organise a lot of things really precise – I asked the crew never to speak to the child. Never.
The cultural differences in this film are not emphasised in a negative way, and in fact, Murielle finds solace with Mounir’s mother in Morocco. Can you talk about that?
I liked to shoot this story, to watch the mix between two cultures, without prejudice. For example, for me the racist is the doctor. When he says it’s not possible to take the children to Morocco, to give education to your daughter – I know a lot of Moroccan women with freedom! I liked to shoot the happiness of Murielle in Morocco. The relationship between the women said a lot about the relationship Murielle has with her own mother. But I refuse to give the biography of the characters at the beginning. I began the writing with Mounir, as it’s the saddest situation. He was not able to choose, he was stuck. The conflict he has, he’s torn between his wife and his protector, it’s too huge to be able to choose. It’s this impossibility that leads to tragedy. She rebels. This movie is also a perfect way to speak about patriarchy and neocolonialism [laughs]. The doctor creates a perverse link – everybody receives a gift they would like to refuse, because we know it’s more expensive than we can imagine. That’s why it’s my passion to make the spectator become vigilant, and to take them out of their belief – you can love and remain vigilant, and love can become dangerous when you lose this vigilance and you fall into belief.
You did an earlier film when the father killed his son, so you’ve made two films about infanticide, which is a taboo subject. Why do you go back to this subject in particular?
In the first case, it’s a story about suicide, not a crime against children. In both sides it’s a story about people who can’t be separated from their children. I don’t film neurosis, I film psychosis. I can say that having worked on these subjects for so many years, it’s made me more attentive to the desire of the people who surround me. So if a father is just a father, a mother just a mother, it’s the drama of people who are just one thing now. But for the next, I’m happy as I’ve stopped filming families. I will make a movie about a group of fifteen people. But the subject stays the same – the road to hell is paved with good intentions, to tell a story of a group of people who help orphans in Africa, and lose the reason. It’s a case, not Noah’s Ark, Zoe’s Ark – a true story.
Is that how you like to work – to take real life tragedies and bring them to the big screen, and to humanise those involved?
My first full feature film was completely autobiographical, that is not completely true of my life, but still autobiographical. and when I heard the story of this movie, I think it’s incredible and it’s as if all of my subject matters and obsessions were in this story. But what interests me is not the true stories, but the subjectivity. So when the writer Flaubert says his character Madame Bovary is actually ‘me’ then that’s what I say about all of my characters. Murielle is me. Fiction is really an amazing space for freedom and that is why when you inspire yourself from news items, it remains essential to say that your film is fictionalised, it’s a lie, because it a way of protecting the people you’ve taken inspiration from. Nobody was actually there in that house to know what happened. Imagine if I came into this room now and said “my film is the true story of these people”. It’s disgusting. Problem is, a lot of people sell cinema saying such a thing. I had a talk with producer because he wanted to put the caption “this film is not trying to reproduce reality”. Legally we are obliged to put that, but I refused to put it at the beginning of the movie.
Can we talk about the look of the film – what discussions did you have with your cinematographer Jean-Francois Hensgens?
As the story of a young woman begins, we discover the young boy is a stronger couple with the man than his lover. We know that we are obliged to provoke a feeling for the audience, and you begin to see it’s not possible to have a private place, or intimacy. All the time, someone is watching. We decide to shoot often on the edges of doors and windows. We decided to do that, as in the great family tragedies, you’re always asked to choose between mum or dad – what I prefer is that the viewer is an observer, asking themselves how? By using frames and doors, this reminds you that you’re a spectator. Not a voyeur, because you’ve paid, you’re not hiding. That was very important. One thing that was important from the beginning of the writing was never to film the murder of the children. Two things that really scared me a lot before shooting were working with children under five, and succeeding in filming these children not as objects. I see too many films where children are like circus animals – in and out a frame quickly. These little girls should exist as much as the other actors. Time management scared me, how to tell a story about four pregnancies without getting boring!
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