Catherine Breillat’s interview about the film A MA SOEUR !
For some years, I had had a news item in mind. What had struck me as much as the crime itself was the way in which the press had related it. They were clearly attempting to give it a moral meaning to understand and accept it. I felt that such stories should be told differently. Then, one day, by a hotel swimming pool, I observed the following scene: a chubby adolescent girl was moving back and forth across the pool, talking to herself as if speaking words of love to imaginary boys. Her family and her older sister were there too. I started imaging a little girl like her in my news item. Strangely, I had never made a film dealing with the bond that can exist between two sisters, something that I myself have known through my own sister. I wanted to explore the total complicity that can co-exist alongside genuine ferocity. It became the fundamental subject of the film. The two sisters share their lives; the rest of the world barely exists and doesn’t enter into their relationship. The holiday affair is an obstacle to this demanding relationship that they have.
In this film, you have also attempted to tell a story of the "first time". How does A ma sœur ! fit in with your reflection on sexuality and its apprenticeship ?
The film also deals with the betrayal of romantic seduction. Elena is more romantic than her sister. She is seeking romantic love, which is normal at her age. Moreover, while Anaïs pretends not to be jealous, she’d nonetheless like to be in her shoes. There again, I don’t think there’s an apprenticeship. Experience proves that we make the same mistakes time and again, even if we occasionally do it with full knowledge of the facts. Elena doesn’t believe what the boy tells her simply because she is fifteen and naïve but because all she can do is believe it! The words that Elena takes to be promises only have their truth at that moment, in order to serve the boy’s opportunistic attitude. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are lies and that’s why it’s so easy to believe them. He himself is sincere, even if his behaviour disproves what he says.
Isn’t it hard to make young actors perform situations that they are likely to experience in real life? How to you manage to retain the fictional aspect ?
The film is inevitably affected by the human situations on the set. The most surprising thing is that Roxane and Anaïs really acted like sisters. The scene of their helpless laughter on the bed reflects what was really happening between them off camera: they truly had that kind of relationship without necessarily being sisters and despite their age difference. There again, films always generate odd behaviour… At first, I was worried that they wouldn’t get on, that they would be jealous of each other. But I think that they developed this amazing complicity in order to find some protection for themselves in relation to the film. It was a little like a refuge for them. There again, if Anaïs had been left out of it more, her character would have been entirely different.
For some scenes, the shooting conditions weren’t easy. For example, they had to perform in swimsuits when the temperature was 4 degrees, bathe in very cold water: things that you can only do for a film! But, in my opinion, that’s peculiar to the cinema: you do things for a film that you’d never do in real life. And, even though this is painful and hard at times, I believe it is also exalting. Moreover, I have noticed that when an actor is confronted with something difficult to do, it’s the thing he does with the most ease! That’s what’s so exciting in this business.
As Elena discovers the male body, Anaïs withdraws into herself, into her plumpness, in a form of self eroticism…
Yes, because deep down, Anaïs is convinced that she is the better of the two. There’s always a rivalry between sisters and Anaïs fights back with the weapons at her disposal. But, deep down, she exists more than her sister does. Elena’s personality has already been slightly distorted by the idea of being a young girl of her age and her time. Because of her desire to please, she isn’t completely herself. She is beautiful, she is loved, she is fulfilled: but, deep down, this psychological comfort prevents her from finding herself. She simply has to conform to the norm that she corresponds to.
Anaïs resists better. She absorbs the world while her sister, on the contrary, is absorbed. Moreover, Anaïs is very comfortable with her body, feels at ease. Hers is not an autistic, self-destructive form of obesity but an obesity that is made to conquer the world. I find her body very beautiful; it’s a baby’s body yet, at the same time, it is very erotic. The problem was that her body had changed between casting and the end of the shoot. I didn’t want her to be too developed with too much of a bosom: but, in the end, when I saw her in her swimsuit, I realised that she truly had a "forbidden body", a blend of a little girl’s body and, at the same time, an incredible sexual opulence.
At some points in the film, the two sisters seem to act like a single character…
I viewed them as a "soul with two bodies". This is the syndrome of sisters who have trouble finding their own identity. The one feels what the other does. In a way, she lives it just as much and it becomes part of her experience. They are not separated, even if the older sister tries to break away; she is always dependent on the way the other sees her. It’s a "fusional" and almost "confusional" relationship: moreover, in the real world, adults often mix up the first names of brothers and sisters. It’s a cursed love because one takes the place of the other, as when the mother slaps Anaïs instead of Elena.
Moreover, the worlds of the parents and the children never communicate.
For these two sisters, their father is their first disappointing male. He can only take care of his daughters on a material level. He has no opinion of them, he doesn’t even try to understand them and yet he believes that he takes care of them. No communication is possible with his children, or with his wife. For him, only the image counts, the signs of happiness: the house, the holidays, the family. The parents simply follow an idea of what they believe their duty to be. Although the mother may punish the girls by interrupting their holiday, she doesn’t know how to react, deep down. On a sexual level, I believe that one can’t wield any authority and that it’s stupid to make guilt so important. Moreover, the parents probably didn’t behave any better in their youth and even in their adulthood they have perhaps been just as irresponsible. I liked the idea that the film should descend towards crime and horror even, because of this error of judgement.
Were the songs that Anaïs sings written for the film ?
No, they’re songs that I wrote as an adolescent. I originally wanted her to sing a song by Laura Betti. As a girl, I had been marked by her extremely provocative positions as an actress and a singer. I didn’t find the song I wanted but I came across the INA interview that you see in the film. So, I thought that Anaïs could sing the crow song that I had written when I was twelve or thirteen. It had been inspired by François Villon’s La ballade des pendus which has something very childlike and naïve in its darkness, while remaining a outstanding piece of work.
I also needed a dash of tragedy. Originally, we were going to shoot in Sicily. The scene on the beach took place on Etna. The volcano provided a magical, dark, shadowy element. But the wild coastline that we shot on doesn’t leave such an intense impression as a volcano. I felt that these songs would bring in a tragic and sombre note through their obsession with death that I believe is inherent in adolescence. Anaïs is also trying to attract attention, for example, in the scene on the beach when Elena is behind a dune with the boy. At that point, Anaïs broods in a very romantic way; she has the attitude of a pre-suicidal child who says, "I may be dying because no one pays any attention to me." This romanticising of death is, I think, a certain idea of life. The idea you have during adolescence. Deep down, it’s a matter of destroying the child within you. The problem is that you can easily destroy the child within you without necessarily becoming an adult! (laughter)
Despite the subject matter, the film, although fairly explicit, is less "detailed" than Romance.
The truth doesn’t necessarily lie in what you see. The image is a false witness. It’s always the meaning and impression given off by the whole film that makes you believe in what you see and feel that it’s important. Moreover, I didn’t want to cut myself off from a younger audience. The film’s crudity is very relative and I believe that it can even be instructive in some ways. There’s also a lightness, a "sitcom" aspect that I was aiming for. Indeed, the dialogue is transparent and very easy to understand. The whole romantic dialogue is a sitcom dialogue. Moreover, when you’re in love, you always speak a little like this and the only difference is that you believe it and that what you say involves you body and soul. But there’s also a comic effect, such as when they kiss while talking about what their fathers do. When you’re young, you always ask this kind of question when in fact you mean something else. This also exists in adult relationships, even if it remains outrageously adolescent in the film. Girls who set off looking for boys like that exist. And often these adolescents don’t even realise that they’re seducing each other when they meet and that’s what’s funny!
The film abandons the portrait of adolescence to move towards the crime. How did you get the idea of this long sequence of the motorway journey ?
I have always been fascinated by these car journeys, on the road to the holidays, with the children in the back, lugged around like bodies who don’t have their word to say, with the parents smoking in the front. The scenery interested me too but only to the extent that it reflects a state of mind. This motorway is approached with anxiety and there is even a sort of "horizontal vertigo". I wanted to describe this hallucinogenic and possibly psychotic aspect of the road and, at the same time, its hostility. The inside of a car is a confined world where people are close and, at the same, a long distance from each other. The girls weep and the mother, in the front, wants to see nothing, hear nothing and simply grips her wheel. She is entirely caught up in driving and cannot communicate. She doesn’t even give the impression of driving; she is "driven" by the road.
Did you have a vision of the film’s whole structure from the outset ?
No, I needed to combine my sources of inspiration. But, in general, I discover my film in making it. That’s why I find it very hard to talk about the film’s screenplay before shooting. I refuse to bring to life just what I have written. If everything has been expressed, there’s no need to film it. The screenplay simply contains markers: I don’t understand what I want to say until I finish the film. That’s why I cannot censor myself. I’m afraid before shooting the scenes but I have to push that danger aside and ignore this fear, even if it is genuine. The fear of failure simply leads to failure. You think that you can cling to experience and skill but these are things that can play tricks on you. A film must be fuelled by desire. One must not lose sight of the fact that there’s something mysterious about film creation: you go from a craftsman-like technique – the camera, the set, the lights – and at times end up with something magical. Fundamentally, a film set is a sacred place where you enter into a relationship with something very metaphysical. Silence and concentration attain almost religious levels. A director isn’t someone who gives orders but who puts people under the influence. But there’s no method to it, there are no rules: you don’t know how you do it, you even wonder what immaterial power makes you the filmmaker. This mystery is what amazes me the most.