I arrived early, in 2017. Half the script was written; As much as the screenwriter Jacques Davidts, the producer André Dupuy and Kim Thúy, we were looking for someone to give direction to the project. I don’t like films that tell the story of someone’s life from cradle to coffin. A few years ago, I saw Jackie, by Pablo Larrain, a biographical drama taking place over a week. We discovered the whole life of Jacqueline Kennedy, but in a contained way. That’s what I wanted to do, so when adapting Ru, I said we weren’t going to do everything in the book. At one point, we decided that we were going to spend the first two or three months of their lives in Quebec.
Beyond the war, what fascinated me most about it was going to create Quebec as an exotic land. Very quickly, Kim told me that we were talking about filming in Vietnam; I told him that I didn’t want to because for me, it was their daily life, they knew that. What they didn’t know was Quebec, the snow, the unusualness of Quebec. What I wanted was to highlight Quebec through the eyes of a little girl discovering the world. I love winter and I’ve shot a lot in winter; Snow and Ashes, Exile and Ru were filmed in winter. Finally, I film war and snow.
In the novel, the character shares his observations; it’s like a photo book without photos. Whether it’s the Girards, who welcomed his family to Granby, little Johanne who talks all the time, her cousin, the young Vietnamese soldiers: they are all part of the subconscious of Kim, who did not write her book at 11 years, but 30 years later. So I wanted to see what was inside her until she wrote her novel.
It was my idea, the portraits. In fact, it was a team process that lasted several years, but at a certain point, I had to take ownership of the script and tell what I wanted to tell. During the pandemic, I published a very personal book, Two Square Kilometers, with texts by Anna Mouglalis and Pascale Bussières whom I directed in Anna. It’s a series of portraits taken in my neighborhood, Plateau Mont-Royal, with an 8 x 10 wooden camera. I went into people’s homes and took photos of them in their world, like in Ru. By doing this project, I discovered in these people an intimacy, a closeness to humanity which is part of my creative process. I wanted to put that in the film for everyone who is part of Tinh’s spirit. The idea behind it is that we are all human, all equal; we are not only bad or good. »
The voice comes from the people she meets who will bring forth memories; it then becomes like a daydream. I have always made films where people are very silent. At the beginning of the book, she says that she was her cousin’s shadow, that she didn’t speak, that people spoke for her. I didn’t want to do Kim Thúy in 2023; When she was young, she was not at all like today. Beyond the immigration journey, for me, Ru was the birth of an artist. The art that is part of her, of her heart, had no choice but to explode because of the circumstances she experienced. If she had stayed in Vietnam, perhaps Kim would not have become a writer.
