“I didn’t want to make movies anymore”: this revelation around this painful film by Alexandra Lamm

What is it about? Tlma’s life takes a tragic turn when her 12-year-old son Louis falls into a coma as a result of an accident. Determined to wake her up, he makes a crazy bet to carry out one by one the “10 things to do before the end of the world” that he wrote down in his diary to show her all that life has to offer. So much to offer. But this journey into a teenager’s dreams takes him much further than he could have imagined… until he relives his own taste of life.

Need to upgrade

Lisa Azuelos has always used her personal life for movies. The Chamber of Wonders arrived on time: “I didn’t want to make films anymore, I didn’t want to stop such personal themes as I had since the director’s debut. My child I had a feeling that I had done this trick: my last child had left home, I felt that I had nothing more to say, I was getting old, in short, I was going through a kind of cinematic menopause!” It was the producer Philippe Rousselle who suggested him to shoot Room of Wonders.

The need for renewal is all the stronger because the director lost his parents in a very short time: his mother died before filming, and his father shortly after. “I actually believe that I had to work on this idea after my dreams because I had the feeling that I was at the end of my life. This movie gave me a lot of freedom to think about my life and reality. The simultaneous disappearance of my parents left many questions unanswered…”

adaptation

Chamber of Wonders is based on Julien Sandrille’s novel of the same name, which sold 320,000 copies in France. Lisa Azuelos hadn’t read it when it came out and didn’t want to read it before filming, preferring to rely on the script by Juliet Sayles and Fabien Suarez. It is also his first film that he is not the screenwriter of.

Worldwide during the pandemic

Lisa Azuelos was drawn to the “elsewhere” this story promised. Chamber of Wonders takes viewers to Portugal, Great Britain and Japan. The team had to adapt to the restrictions associated with confinement, especially for Japan. The team wasn’t sure they could go there until the last moment, and it was difficult to recreate that country in the studio.

The film was also edited and completed when Japan reopened its borders in the summer of 2022. A reduced team of four took the opportunity to go there: “We had very little time to prepare for the shoot, the Japanese told us that it was too difficult on location anyway, unless you had a big budget and a lot of preparation beforehand. So it was kind of a commando operation!”

actors

Lisa Azuelos has long wanted to shoot with Alexandra Lammy, whom she knows well: “We’ve been very good friends for over 10 years and we’ve wanted to work together for a long time. I knew I was going to have fun with him, even if the subject of the film is quite serious…”

As for Muriel Robin, it was when she came across one of his books with friends that he considered giving her the role of Louis’ grandmother: “So I called her, we met and it happened very naturally, obviously. I know she’s very happy to be able to play this role. Muriel has a strong personality, but it’s never a fear for me. Quite the opposite.”