As her queer love story-cum-family drama hits UK cinemas, director Léa Mysius talks about the lack of diversity in the French film industry and the power of smell to trigger memories
, a visually striking drama about a young teenage girl losing her eyesight who embarks on a robbery spree with her older paramour. Her new film, which she says shares “a kind of primitive quality” with her first, was due to start shooting in the early months of 2020, but was pulled before a scene had been shot when cast and crew members started getting ill on set. “We weren’t even sure what Covid was at the time,” says Mysius. “Everyone was ill and coughing.
When production resumed in spring 2021, Mysius and her screenwriting partner – cinematographer Paul Guilhaume – had drastically revised the script, simplifying Julia’s character among other changes. To preserve a sense of mystery, Mysius took cues from, who, she learned, “writes [his screenplays] with a lot of explanatory information, which he then removes during the editing process.
And for Julia, it’s quite hard to find Black French actresses in France; they’re not just not that visible in the industry.” It’s a shocking reflection of where the French film industry is, which Mysius ascribes to a “lack of access” and a kind of negative feedback loop in which aspiring Black actors feel frozen out by a lack of diversity they see on screen.
Oddly, when race has been brought up as a subject in interviews, the number one question on people’s lips has been how ‘surprising’ it was to see a mixed-race family on screen. Happily, there are other, deeper mysteries to ponder in the film. There’s a circularity to the storytelling inthat muddies the line between cause and effect, suggesting that, as much as we humans are but poor clay to be moulded by time and circumstance, we might also be drawn as if by premonition towards our fate. Vicky’s story, in particular, has an Ouroboros quality that calls her very presence into doubt – an “existentialist question” that Mysius politely declines to elaborate on.
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