Liking to explore new territories and paint portraits of women in worlds dominated by men, Chloé Robichaud turned, after sport and politics, to classical music. In Happy Days, 10 years later Sarah prefers running, she directs Sophie Desmarais as conductor.
On the big screen, conductors are popular. Recently Cate Blanchett shone wand in hand in Tár, by Todd Field; Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar chronicled the career of maestra Zahia Ziouani in Divertimento; while Pierre Arditi and Yvan Attal shared the top billing of Maestro(s), by Bruno Chiche. Maestro, a biographical film by Bradley Cooper in which he plays Leonard Bernstein, will be released in theaters in December. Closer to home, Aisling Walsh is preparing a film about Ethel Stark, conductor and founder of the first women’s orchestra in Montreal in 1940.
“When I started writing Happy Days, and even when I shot it, I didn’t know that these films were going to come out. We’re talking about a coincidence,” says Chloé Robichaud, who believes that we owe this phenomenon to conductors like Yannick Nézet-Séguin who democratized classical music with their charisma and rockstar aura.
The director reveals, however, that it was not films featuring conductors that inspired hers. Thanks to her experience in the cinema industry, where women had to fight to approach parity, Chloé Robichaud had no difficulty putting herself in the shoes of Emma, the ambitious conductor incarnated by Sophie Desmarais, who benefited from the teachings of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, artistic and technical advisor to Les Joursheureux.
“I especially went to watch films from a directing point of view, including several by Cassavetes, where the actor and emotion are at the center of everything, where there is a search for truth in emotion. For my visual research, I watched a lot of Woman Under the Influence, one of my favorite films. »
As soon as she had the idea of a film set in the world of classical music, Chloé Robichaud was interested in the image of a conductor: “The conductor has a position on the podium which I find very vulnerable, very dizzying. Perhaps that’s why, as filmmakers, we were all interested in it. That said, I think Happy Days holds its own; what we are offering seems different to me from other films. I am very proud of the realism that we brought to it in relation to the orchestral scenes. »
In this film, for which she gave free rein to her emotions and allowed herself more freedom in the movements, in particular thanks to the director of photography Ariel Méthot whom she nicknamed “the man who dances”, Chloé Robichaud wanted the Classical music serves the emotional journey of Emma, who is experiencing a difficult relationship with Naëlle (Nour Belkhiria), her lover and cellist in the orchestra, as well as with Patrick (Sylvain Marcel), her father and agent.
“All my research was always thought about in relation to Emma, how I could transpose her emotions through music. With Sophie and Yannick, we thought so much about gestures in relation to an emotional curve, about the way in which the body would speak of its liberation. I wanted to offer a film that was more generous, more intuitive, more connected to my feelings. »
Through works by Mozart, Schoenberg and Mahler, which respectively express Emma’s perfectionism, anger and suffering, we follow her evolution. However, the filmmaker also wanted to give pride of place to the members of the orchestra in rehearsal and in concert.
“These are people that I respect enormously, that I have gotten to know, who devote themselves entirely to their passion. I wanted to show the relationship between the conductor and the musicians. If we, the spectators, feel the music, it is because the conductor succeeds in transposing his intention to the musicians and they bring it to life for us. There is a phrase from Naëlle that I like; when she tells Emma that she is facing the musicians, and that is where it all begins. We must never forget the musicians. »
To play Emma, Sophie Desmarais had the privilege of working for nearly two years with conductors Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Nicolas Ellis and Kensho Watanabe, as well as with the musicians of the Orchester Métropolitain.
“I had to learn to separate the two hands,” explains the actress. The right hand marks the time, like a metronome, and the left hand gives the intentions. I had to develop my ear, listen, work on the right tempos with a metronome, not move ahead or slow down, find as much accuracy as possible in my hands. »
Sophie Desmarais even did tai chi to match the slowness and complexity of Mahler: “I had to dissociate my fingers from the wrist, my elbow from the shoulder, because as soon as there is too stiff an intention in the hands , the music becomes stiff. The body of the conductor is as if in reflection with the music, in resonance with the sound. »
She also says that to show her how to interpret the nervousness and academic side of her character when she conducts the Mozart, Yannick Nézet-Séguin put himself in Emma’s shoes by adopting a more accelerated tempo than in the accustomed.
“I directed Yannick on the game’s intentions and he translated them into his body. With Kensho and Nicolas, we worked on Zoom to make interpretation choices by translating them into musical choices and gesture choices. At one point, we decided on videos of each measure, of each segment that I repeated to the point of obsession. There is no improvisation, everything is calculated like clockwork. Yannick was even editing with Chloé to ensure that there were no technical errors on screen and that it was as authentic as possible. »
