At work, Estelle Vasseur (Diane Kruger) has no room for error. She applies the same principle when she is on dry land. “The iron discipline, the diet, the intensive sports session… Everything she imposes on herself is for the sake of self-control,” underlines Yann Gozlan, who also co-wrote Visions. Two objects symbolize this search for control: his heart rate watch and the home automation screen that manages all the devices in his house. They are reminiscent of a dashboard, but can also be seen as an extension of the character, who is almost a woman-machine. When Anna [Marta Nieto], who is his love from the past, resurfaces, the machine will begin to go wrong and become humanized in a certain way. Paradoxically, the emotion will derail her and she will no longer be able to control herself. »
“I think we all want stability, security and order in our lives, but at the same time we tend to want to escape it, have adventures and be destructive. It’s a duality that has always fascinated me,” confides Yann Gozlan. When Estelle meets Anna again at an airport, she initially tries to hide, but finally takes down her number after a brief conversation. She later invites her to eat at her luxurious house and introduces her to her husband (Mathieu Kassovitz). She tries to control the situation, but her tension only grows stronger. “She really loves her husband, but it’s something more powerful, something stronger; an impulse that she cannot control and which means that she is under Anna’s influence. It’s an irrepressible need in her life that she comes to fill,” underlines the man who also directed Black Box and Burn Out.
Visions is peppered with… visions. We wonder if these are dreams, projections of the future or representations of Estelle’s fears and desires. “I wanted to talk about the phenomenon of premonition,” says Yann Gozlan. Michel Fessler, one of the screenwriters, proposed to me the idea of a character haunted by a recurring dream, that of a house on a beach [Anna’s], and who falls on the house, as if the dream contaminated reality. » The specificity of Estelle’s profession allows us to explore not only the heavy responsibility that pilots carry, but also the effects on their bodies. “I spoke to pilots who fly long-haul and they told me that they are always a little jet-lagged, which causes loss of bearings and problems sleeping. » The director emphasizes that Estelle feels that she must perform twice as well since she operates in an environment dominated by men.
“Gradually, the environment and everyone seems suspicious to create a feeling of paranoia. Is her husband playing a double game? Does he know about her adultery? Does she see him as threatening or is he really? As for Anna, is she a femme fatale or just an adventure that Estelle is too invested in? I wanted us to take the heroine’s point of view and ask ourselves questions about whether or not the characters around her are dangerous. I wanted everything to be ambiguous, everything to be murky. » The two houses, the couple’s modern, almost all-glass one, then that of another era located on Anna beach, add to the anxiety-provoking climate, believes Yann Gozlan. “The film is quite claustrophobic even though there are a lot of scenes that take place outside. I wanted these two houses to exude something disturbing. One gives the impression of being in plain sight and of being locked in a glass prison, while the other is dark with this crack in the wall which is symbolic of the mental tear of the heroin. »
The synopsis presents Anna as the trigger that plunges Estelle into a horrible spiral. Yann Gozlan believes that people who try to exercise great control are often the most fragile. “We see Anna as the grain of sand that will seize the machine, but I think the worm was in the apple. The balance can be very precarious. Control helps hide gaping flaws. Like a colossus with feet of clay. Estelle’s balance was already very complicated to manage and I believe that Anna’s arrival is only a revealer of the trouble that was already inside her. »
