First, I tried to adapt Christine Angot [author of the book Incest]. For me it took the form of fiction. What was certain was that I said to myself: OK, you’ve been through this thing, it’s painful, the after-effects, you carry them around all your life, but it’s important to do something with it.
Exactly. Not to let this kind of painful ball invade me. Then I told myself that my experience could allow me to meet other people. It was important to take the camera and provoke not only the words of the witnesses I was filming, but to be able to open a space for societal speech. There is a sort of chain of solidarity which is Angot, which is La familia grande [autobiographical novel by Camille Kouchner], which is Neige Sinno and Triste tigre [which has just won the Femina prize]…
It’s a wonderful novel. I said to myself that it would be great to succeed in being part of this movement. And I realized that it was not fiction that seemed to me to be the best way to achieve this, but documentary.
There is, yes, this common crossing. I knew what I wanted to talk about. We talk about emotional anesthesia, we talk about sexuality. I find that the documentary we made goes very far in honesty of speech.
And in real time in front of us first, the directors! Because we are faced with beings who are of absolute courage and who say things as they are. And so as a result, I myself identify things that I had never thought about in my case. Suddenly it affects me too. I speak up, I bounce back, without ever wanting to be the central character of the film.
I had never thought about it. Here too, it’s done when we’re filming. That is to say, all of a sudden, the camera is on me and he says something that shatters me, literally. Each experience is unique, and that is very important to say. We are not in a large group of incested people who are all the same. Of course not. But there are things that are deeply common in the aftereffects.
Yes, I think that indeed, the directors took something that came out of me. But why was it coming off of me? Because there was something that I certainly provoked, which was like a sort of reappropriation of her femininity, of her sexuality. Something that would not belong to him, but which would be my creation. But this creation is dangerous because it can take you outside of yourself. So what’s the active part, what’s the unconscious part? I don’t know all that. And what did the directors I performed with guess? At the same time, you were talking about Sautet. Sautet allowed me to rest because there was no such aspect of my sexuality at all. Afterwards, we know that cinema loves fresh flesh and that when there is a pretty girl, she is generally, yes, sexualized.
Yes maybe ! (She smiles)
You have to deal with it, but yes, of course. It’s obvious, especially when you’ve been very, very pretty, that there’s something that attracted directors to that place. What would be terrible for an actress is to want to retain this tone in order to continue to be desired. And yet, that’s how we experience it. At the same time, for me, it’s out of the question. And besides, that’s why instinctively, 13 years ago, I left the theater. Because I told myself that in the theater, there is a place, a creative space, where we have the right to grow old.
Not frozen at all! It’s almost a space of physical freedom. What’s crazy is that I had the instinct 13 years ago to say to myself: get out of the theater! There is of course the meeting with great theater directors. But still, there’s still a fucking survival instinct in me, actually. I know where to go when to turn the corner. And now, it’s the staging that interests me. That doesn’t mean I won’t play again, but I had a lot of fun directing, even if it was a documentary. I have a fiction project. A novel adaptation that I can’t talk about, but which goes completely elsewhere.
Yes, I had to leave. I needed to break away from this past, I needed to break away from my family, I needed to be somewhere else. And Montreal has been very, very, very important to me. The family I landed with, my studies at Marie-de-France. There is a kindness here, a hospitality. I am very moved every time I come back. It’s really a very special age, 15-18 years old. Great friendships, great loves. There is something that is fundamental in the structure of a human being. It’s the end of adolescence, just before adulthood. Because afterwards, I return to Paris and it’s very quickly Manon des sources…
No. No way. I prefer to have been confronted with reality. It probably helped me heal faster. I’ve often been asked what it meant to me to make this documentary, and I didn’t know. When the documentary was released in France [in September], it was a tsunami. It was on the front page of all the newspapers. It was completely crazy. Now I know. It’s over. It’s closed. That doesn’t mean I can’t help other people with this documentary, but for me, it’s over.
