«NOn I wanted to cheat ». Louise Courvoisier often repeats it during the interview. The profession of honesty starts from the title: Vingt dieux (with us the film comes out how Everything in a summer! June 26th), is a typical exclamation of the jury’s campaigns, the region in which the director grew. In the securities of the tail does not appear only one leading actor, “I shot the film in a ray of 20 kilometers, with my neighbors and with my family” explains Courvoisier who, After the passage of the film to Cannes 2024, he took home two César: the one for the best debutant actress went to Maïwène Bartélemy, a breeder profession.
Shot in broom, The western format, Everything in a summer! Totone, an eighteen -year -old Scapestrato (Clément Faveau) that the sudden death of his father promotes the role of head of the family, has as its protagonist. If up to that moment they were evenings with friends and Stock-Car races, modern rodei where modified cars replaced the horses, Totone improvised then independent producer of Comté, typical cheese and juror pride. “The story is marked by the” four hundred shots “of the band” wrote Mondi“Between the thefts on the farm (the milk to make the Comté is stolen with little dexterity) and sex education”.
How did it come to the decision to want to make a movie under the house?
I was born in Geneva in a multicultural family, my mother is Canadian and German, my father is Swiss. My parents lived a little everywhere until they settled in the juror when I was 6 months old. With my brothers and sisters, we are 4, we grew up on a farm without water and electricity, our neighbors were one kilometer. I have beautiful memories of this rustic childhood that has contributed to creating a very strong family bond that still exists now. My parents are musicians, then they have become farmers, they have always kept a foot in art one foot in the earth. When I was 15 years old I brewed, I wanted to leave, and a little by chance I chose to study cinema, even without knowing much, Cinema in my area were not there. I wanted to make my first film on a territory that I know well, also because having lived outside, I realized how many clichés and ghosts there are rural life. I wanted to talk about that little -known and poorly represented youth, Make a movie from the inside, non -miserablethat he would not judge, bright but that did not hide the hardest aspects of life in the countryside. Hence the choice of cheese, because the Comté really tells that territory.
Totone and his little sister in a summer!
The faces of its protagonists, very true in words, in gestures.
To find them I did a Wild casting, to fairs, to stock car races, at parties. Clément, who works in a poultry company, had just graduated from the agricultural school, I asked him six wanted to make a audition, he told me no: this was already in the character. Then he changed his mind, he made the audition, but “just to make the appearance”. I insisted because we saw again, and slowly it became more possible, when I proposed the main role in the end he said to me: “I see no impediments”.
In recent months, two other films set in the Jura have come out in France (The Roman de Jim And And the children after themfrom Nicolas Mathieu’s best seller who will also be seen in Italy). And other “rural films” have arrived in theaters. Has Paris lost its centrality?
The campaign has so far been seen as the place to set thrillers, stories with murders mostly, with forests that host secrets. The landscapes on the screen have always been there, the inhabitants of those landscapes were missing, so far they were in the state of ghost.
Louise Courvoisier, the bet of the second film
How do you see the future for itself? Always in the area, always with his family? The Boukherma brothers, the directors of And the children after themafter the success of the film will leave for America.
I don’t want to prevent me anything. The second film is dangerous. If the first worked everything is possible, you have to keep the same depth, without betraying yourself, but without rediscovering the same film. The best way seems to me to be infiscake from expectations. If I had taken it into account I would never have made my first movie like this. Wanting to please is a trap. I’m not afraid to change register. And then I continue to live in the jury, I am protected, I have time to write. Of course today everyone looks at me, I am a local celebrity, but soon I will find my bubble.
All in a summer!: The first love.
The monthly cinema Positif The comparison to Piatlat. Libération He writes that his characters “seem to have come out of a fairy tale of the Grimm brothers” and that “he wink at Mark Twain”.
Actually for me The strongest influence was the westernin aesthetics above all, grainy, wrinkled, in the desire to give dignity even to what has broken down, ugly, to give him a sensuality. And I wanted to find The balance between humor and drama, Ken Loach was a reference in this. When I was looking for funding they said to me: “Nobody will become attached to your character, he is a brute, he is unpleasant.” I didn’t see it like that, the defects move me. In France we do not have this culture, we give too much importance to empathy and kindnesswe are afraid of border characters. But my desire does not come from cinephilia, comes from life.
The pure cinema of Louise Courvoisier
The film begins with a long sequence floor that is pure cinema though.
Requested weeks of preparation, 300 extras and a hundred cows. Clément had broken the femur making an accident on the scooter. I could not pretend that he behaved like the professional actors who during the shooting put everything on pause, and in the evening they take a herbal tea to be in shape the next day. Filming stopped for six weeks: at that time we prepared the scene.
Totone and its form of Comté.
Why the choice of Comté? Not easy to operate the processing of cheese.
It is an omnipresent fundamental industry in the region. The problem was to film its manufacture in a sexy way. And me I wanted there to be a religious coté in the scene where Totone makes the cheese with his sister. Without music, without words, very concentrated, the subject of cheese had to be the protagonist. We really did it and this allowed us to look for small details with the camera. If we had pretended we would not have obtained that carnality. At the end of the scene we were happy and the edge immediately found the road. The scene we were most afraid in the end came very naturally.
Was there a plan B?
We had no plans B at all! In the film there is also the birth of a calf. A CIAK only for that. Naturally.
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