On this autumn day, Charlotte Le Bon welcomes us to the Parisian studio where she has been creating for eight years.
Trained at the Beaux-Arts, the actress prepares lithographs and illustrations there for her
Falcon Lake Tales
(1) exhibition
,
inspired by the melancholic and phantasmagorical universe of her first film,
Falcon Lake.
In the script and behind the camera, she recounts the first love affair of Bastien, a 14-year-old boy, who, while vacationing with friends of his parents in Quebec, falls under the spell of 16-year-old Chloé.
But the tale of amorous apprenticeship is mixed here with a ghost story, influenced by the director's first cinematic shocks (
Scream
, Shining...
) as by those she will know later (
Take Shelter, A Ghost Story, Morse…
)
.
A hypnotic first film with a strong identity emerges.
To read alsoCharlotte Le Bon: “Adolescent, I could not find myself, there was no group in which I was good”
In video, Cannes 2022: the interview with Charlotte Le Bon
"Comedienne by accident"
Miss Figaro. – Has the desire for achievement always been present?
Charlotte LeBon.
–
Not at all.
I don't have the classic profile of a filmmaker who has dreamed of filming since childhood.
But I come from the visual arts, and the desire to tell stories in pictures has always been there.
After my art studies, I thought this would be my path: I became an actress by accident, and I rode this wave for ten years.
The twenty or so films I have shot have been my film school: I have observed the directors and the teams at work there, I immersed myself.
And when I shot my short film, it was a revelation.
I do not have the classic profile of the filmmaker who has dreamed of filming since childhood
Charlotte LeBon
How was the story of
Falcon Lake
born?
Jalil Lespert, who is a close friend (
he directed her in
Yves Saint Laurent
(2014) and
Iris
(2016), editor's note
), gave me
A Sister
, the comic strip by Bastien Vivès, telling me that there was material for a first feature and that he would produce me.
On reading it was obvious, but the implementation was more complex.
After two years of solitary work on the screenplay, where I didn't really find my pleasure, I couldn't get it financed.
I then asked myself the right questions: which cinema did I like, and what could I bring that was unique to the stories of adolescent learning?
The ghost story and the cloud of weirdness that inhabits the film then appeared.
A “terrifying” period
How does the horror applied to the learning story make it possible to summon other emotions?
Horror symbolizes this absolutely terrifying period of life that is adolescence: we seek our place in it, we feel our desire rising without knowing what to do with it, we don't know how to manage the looks that land on us... I also projected myself into my two characters.
I was in the position of the lover who no longer knows what to do to attract the attention of the other, and in that of the young girl who tests her limits and those of others.
In the comics, I found the girl a little too “offered”.
Me, when I was 16, sexuality seemed much scarier and more complex than it was portrayed in the
As a teenager, I carried the weight of my father's death, who died when I was 10
Charlotte LeBon
The strange also makes it possible to avoid the sentimentality sometimes inherent in the genre…
The initiatory stories are often a bit naive, which does not correspond to the memory I have of this solitary, somewhat dark period.
I carried the weight of the death of my father, who disappeared when I was 10, and I couldn't find myself.
It was a bit
dark
, without being trashy either.
Because, when they are not cutesy, learning stories are often very gloomy.
I'm looking for the happy medium between the
teen movie
con con and the girl who prostitutes herself at 13 years old.
The girl is older than the boy in your story…
That existed in the comics, and I wanted to keep it.
I found it interesting that she had the upper hand over him.
The young girl with the older boy, we know the song.
I also remembered how I had felt for a boy who was a year younger than me during adolescence.
It was unthinkable to be with him with this age difference, as it is for the girl and the boy in the film.
But I've always loved impossible love stories.
"I'm already working on the next film"
Do you still want to play?
Yes, but not at all costs, only roles that really inspire me, like the next one: I'm going to play Niki de Saint Phalle in the biopic that Céline Sallette is preparing.
It intimidates me a lot, but it also excites me to the highest degree.
What I like about this artist is the scale of her projects: at the time when women artists did not exist in the art world, she took her place, concretely, with her gigantic sculptures .
What I also like is the question of motherhood: one day she decided to abandon her family to give everything to her art, without which she could not survive.
In 2022, it is still taboo.
I felt little heard or valued on film sets
Charlotte LeBon
Has directing allowed you to accomplish yourself?
It's the first time that what I do is in total harmony with who I am.
I'm already working on the next film, by the way.
I like the idea of materializing what's on my mind, but what I cherish above all is the experience of the collective, finding artisans who nourish your vision and help you bring it to life.
I am looking for real collaborations, including with my young actors.
I wanted to spare them everything I suffered: being misdirected, not being listened to, having the feeling that I was not trusted.
To be just a puppet.
I felt little valued or heard on the sets, two or three times at best.
Your mother is an actress. Will you direct it one day?
I really want to.
She is an immense actress, unknown in France, but multi-awarded in Quebec.
Spinning it would put a lot of pressure on me.
(1)
Falcon Lake
, by Charlotte Le Bon, with Joseph Engel, Sara Montpetit.
“Falcon Lake Tales”, at Galerie Item, 51, rue du Montparnasse, 75014 Paris.
