Valérie Donzelli he had a job, she was an actress. He didn’t abandon it, but took a second job, “in which I didn’t necessarily have to depend on the desires of others, but try to realize my own” and now she is above all a director.
So far he has told the women. His penultimate film, Blanche’s couragecame from a book and depicted a wife who is the victim of the abuse of her overly seductive husband. Also his latest film, I write in the morningcomes from a book (published in Italy by Playground), written by Franck Courtès, but this time it tells the story of a man, that of the author. Which is also a bit like Valérie Donzelli’s.
Franck Courtès was a photographer of some successbut the media machine had ended up disgusting him. He then decides to leave that life and – despised by his ex-wife (played by Donzelli herself), ignored by his teenage children – chooses to become something else. A writer. And if he only writes in the morning, as the Italian title states, it’s because he has to work the rest of the day.
Paul, the protagonist of the book and the film (the actor Bastien Bouillon, very good), it’s Franck – entangled in the hell of “jobs” as a man, despite himself, a handyman and it’s also Valérie who says she knowing well «the consequences of choosing to do everything to give yourself the freedom to create. Because doing so repairs the pain we feel, heals the pain of the no’s we experience and finally gives us an unparalleled exhilaration when we succeed. Franck’s book says it clearly: “writers do not contemplate discouragement”.
The austerity of creative works
Does this also apply to filmmakers?
That need to do that I know well cannot be stopped. When people ask me how I started making films, I always answer: “I just set out and did it.” For Paul it’s no different: what he does brings with it the choice of radical minimalism. We see him living on a few euros, taking everything into account, moving to an apartment below street level (in the book it is a ground floor, in the film it goes even lower, ed). When he realizes that he can’t live off his work as a writer he doesn’t go back. And he discovers something about the nature of success: that writing a book doesn’t mean getting published, that getting published doesn’t mean you will be read, that even if you are read this doesn’t guarantee success, and that being successful doesn’t necessarily give you economic independence. True for all artistic professions. I have very talented friends who live counting pennies because they don’t get paid enough. Theirs is an austerity of budget and lifestyle. But in the end many find a sort of balance in this.
Bastien Bouillon in In the Morning I Write.
For the first time he chose to put a male character at the centre.
I wondered if I should transform the character in the text into a woman, but in the end I said no. Because the spectators would have had a different empathy, and then we know women who are exhausted from work well, it would not have been new. It was a challenge for me to describe the fragility of a man, trying to generate empathy towards him, even if his choices are not fully understandable.
She chose cinema, but dedicated the film to her grandfather, Dante, who like her great-grandfather Duilio was a painter and sculptor.
I owe a lot to my grandfather. He lived without ever making compromises and was poor all his life. He had a small local fame, he lived in the provinces, he didn’t frequent the great Parisian galleries. But I always saw him happy: he was happy to wake up and go to his atelier every morning. My father grew up in absolute poverty due to my grandfather’s lifestyle choices. So when it came to deciding which path he should choose, my grandfather discouraged him from being an artist. He had experienced that harshness and imposed it on his family. So my father studied law. He prioritized economic security.
The screenplay award in Venice
And when she decided to be an artist…
He was very restless. He must have asked me a thousand times: “Are you sure?” When he left I was working on this film. And again he said to me: «But can’t you make a film that works for once?».
For this work he won the award for best screenplay at the last Venice Film Festival. His films work.
Cinema is an industry, it is an expensive art, every time you have to convince the financiers and making a successful work does not mean that you will find someone willing to invest in you for the next one. I know of directors who make a film, are successful and then disappear.
Bastien Bouillon in In the Morning I Write.
Is the prospect of disappearance scary?
A lot.
Grandpa wouldn’t have worried too much…
I spent all the summers of my childhood in his house. And as soon as we arrived, he gave us a blank sheet of paper and some colors and asked us to draw everything we saw. Thanks to him I learned to create with my hands, draw, sculpt, without asking too many questions. We were never judged, the result was not important. It took away my complexes and allowed me to choose action from an early age.
Watching the film, however, one thinks that, at a certain point, Paul crosses a limit, which he should stop to avoid falling even further down.
I didn’t think so. Instead, I feel like it needs to move forward, even if it’s crazy and somewhat self-destructive. I had other difficulties in life (his second film, War is declaredfrom 2011, told of her son’s illness and separation from her partner, and was starring her and her real family, ed), but when you embark on an adventure you never know where you will end up. I am self-taught, I did not study at Fémis (famous Parisian film school, ed), when I took the plunge there was no reason to believe in me. Until I came to the need to do, to the awareness that creating is vital. And then we can only move forward.
In the morning I write, the film by Valérie Donzelli.
His film isn’t just about this obsession. Paul, when it is finally published, says: «This is a book that speaks of our times».
This is what I found beautiful in the novel, the meticulous description of the process of precarization and surrender to slavery, the aberration of hypercapitalism, the perversion of the platforms where one applies to work downwards, the loss of ties with the world. I have children of different ages and through them I see the change. I don’t recognize anything that I remember about myself at their age, the transformation of work has been enormous, dehumanization, uberization are atrocious practices. I’m having a hard time understanding. I use the computer to send emails and write screenplays. But I see that for many it is the only tool to be in the world.
Does it bother you to be so unmodern?
It worries me that we do not oppose the ultraliberalism that has caused the human catastrophe that is before our eyes. We live in a world where there are those who think of going to the Moon to do tourism. It’s more than nonsense. It’s a crime.
