‘Cinema Bastard’: Virgin airs thriller centered on domestic violence

What is it about? When Blanche meets Grégoire, she thinks she’s met the one she’s been looking for. The bond that binds them together is woven quickly and their story is built on anger. The couple moves in, Blanche leaves her family, her twin sister, opens up to a new life. But following the wire, she finds herself under the influence of a possessive and dangerous man.

A new genre for Valerie Donzel

Love and the Woods is adapted from the novel of the same name by Eric Reinhardt, which Valerie Donzelli read during the filming of Margherita and Julien (2015). The director found immediate personal resonances there, such as the sentiment of not fully expressing one’s feelings for fear of being unloved. He confides:

“But what made me decide to adapt it was the scene where Grégoire Lamoureux makes his mea culpa after hearing on the radio a portrait of a man abusing his wife. How he turns the situation around to question himself as a victim and how a perverse trick is in your eyes He understands because the real victim of his actions does not know how to resist him.

“But I found it difficult to adapt this novel and rejected the idea so I wouldn’t forget it. Then I did Notre Dame, a light film that was very restorative. And Nona and Her Daughters, my series on which I learned a lot. Director. A series with so many characters in record time acting It was a real baptism of fire.”

“After that, nothing scared me. I wanted to return to cinema with a film where I would only be a director and also with the desire to explore another genre.”

Great actors

Virgin Efira is surrounded by actors we rarely see today, such as Virginie Ledoyen, Romané Boehringer, Laurence Cote, Natalie Richard or even Dominique Raymond… while Blanche’s interpreter is on tour a lot: “I absolutely wanted Virgin, who is a star today, to play with actors of her caliber. I wanted Blanche to be surrounded only by actors who have been in big movies, actors who comfort her, who give her protection.”– says Valery Donzel.

New cinematography

This is the first time Valerie Donzel has worked with cinematographer Laurent Tangi. For this film, he felt he needed to revamp the team: “Laurent made films that are quite far from me, but also Event By Audrey Divan, who is amazingly framed, all over the shoulder. We hit it off right away, he’s very talented, very instinctive and we understand each other very quickly.”, recalls the director. He continues:

“We have a lot of tools at our disposal that we immediately use when an idea comes up or we find a visual solution to a staging issue. We dare to try one and then another, sometimes the scene doesn’t work, so we try the filter. , mirror, reflection and then we click, we find… It’s risky to do everything live because you can’t undo anything in post-production. It allows you to capture the truth of the moment, in its freshness.”

Blanche is played by Virgin Efira

Blanche’s interpretation of Virgin Ephira began to evacuate any preconceived idea of ​​the “victim” and attempted to give the character a unique identity. The actor explains: “So we rely on our own lives, but without realizing it, without shaping it, and without trying at all costs to model our interpretation on our personal experience.”

“It would be terrible if we were punished only to repeat what we experienced! The biographies of each of them, the actors and the characters, do not matter much. Our emotions, our memories, the memory of the body, it may be a small part of the interpretation of our role, but it is always good to take it, They are as many entrances.

“cinema scum”

For Grégoire Lamoureux, Melville Poupaud tried to bring out a sternness in this character, a “little gentleman”. In this way, the actor thought of the characters of Claude Chabrol and Jean Yan, and especially of Michel Bouquet in “The Traitorous Woman”. He says: “I wanted to create a movie bastard. Clean, dry, intense. A man with a calm exterior, but deep black inside. Someone who thinks he can control everything, own everything. That his wife is his wife, his car his car, his children his children. It was in line with What Valerie had in mind, so we quickly understood each other.”

“He wanted Lamoureux to be elegant, not neutral, because his film also has a fairy-tale side that spoils it: she marries Prince Charming, and then Prince Charming turns out to be a wolf in disguise. The atmosphere, the chiaroscuro, the tracking shots, this haunted house: all of this also lends itself to a slightly surreal aspect. We, Virginie and I, got rid of the naturalism of acting, to be in osmosis with the production of Valerie, who also tried to get rid of naturalism. Style and genre mix: romantic drama, Hitchcockian suspense, narrative, behind closed doors.