"Portrait de la jeune fille en feu" : rencontre au Méliès de Montreuil

[@prosoponmind9761]

The translation! Sorry for the grammar/syntax mistakes. (Céline=C, Adele=A, Stéphane (interviewer)=S) 0: 58 Thank you for being there, it's a great pleasure to meet you both, you came on each film or almost. C: it's true S: you are the two most faithful of Méliès. That alone can be applauded. (applause) 1:13 S: For me Céline is the one who speaks the best of her films. I invented a strange rule, I will tell her key words and she will have to answer it ... C: I'm super playful, I'm ready. S: And I'm going to ask more traditional questions to Adèle 1:34 C: She's super strong in keywords too! Look: Bamboo! A: Kung Fu Panda, direct. (laugh) S: I'm impressed, well I'm starting ... Keywords: interchangeability, the question of the veil, temporality and literality. 2:12 C: Oh F*ck ... go, Shoot Me. S: We don't do debate like elsewhere. I will start with the last one: Literality. Normally we start by asking the question: why make a film in costume when all your other films are very contemporary, in particular « Bande de filles » (Girlhood). I have a hypothesis. In a way, it's about going back to a rocking time. After the first view of the film, it’s a time to switch between the classical age and romanticism. There is the idea of going back to the "first time". Coming back to a new look, we're going into the water but we don't know if we can swim…. For me, the white surface of the beginning is a metaphor for starting from scratch. This white canvas from the beginning is the portrait of the Lady because Adele (Héloïse) is much defined as a blank surface that will take shape. 3:49 A: We are a little admiring. S: On the 3rd view of the film, I noticed how the film takes the question of language very seriously, without being condescending, very literal in the sense of words, double meaning. Metaphors are taken literally, from the title: Portrait of a lady on fire. Fire is real fire and the fire of love. Who will also be represented literally with the flaming heart on the first portrait. The film works on the exchange of glances and in a certain way there can be a change of glance of Heloise. Her eyes become black and dark like those of Marianne. No? Don't you agree Adele? 5:12 A: No, but it doesn't matter. (laugh) 5:23 (Adele and Céline want to let each other speak …) A: the answer is a bit basic, dilated eyes because of… the drug. C: we are literal in our response because there was a scene (which is cut, this is the only one in the film) which followed where Noémie also had black eyes and had a hallucination. So this metaphor was born from a choice of writing: editing. I never said that to anyone ... secret ...

[@prosoponmind9761]

7:00 S: This literal feeling of love? C: I wanted to act and write in primitive. There is a reflection on cinema but not on cinephilia, it’s not the same thing. There was a desire not to be part of « the period piece » genre. I don’t care about that. But wanted to be candid but we are not, we are lucid. But be candid in the making of images, of characters, by going out of conventions by putting yourself in something more upright, more literal. In the device that it’s a story of a lesbian love, it’s already primitive because lit’s not often tell, or it’s made by people who are not concerned, they have the right but it’s different. There is something which is at the same time need to be repair, to repair as to fill, to console and instead of making palimpsests, we have the candor to invent. That at the level of the story, the characters, the writing, their dialogues which is never centered around a conflict. Never. They are deepening their conversation. No negotiation, as we are taught to do, in the US because in France we are taught nothing, writing is an inspiration, a divination… But to create dynamics and tensions that are interesting, new and exciting. So something straighter, straighter towards emotion. An autonomous will to go more straight to the emotions, to the goal. I learned this things by writing « ma vie de courgette ». 11: 23 S: Interchangeability: All the characters are in the place of the others. Adele is in place of her sister, the refusal of reproduction is at the heart of the film: you too will die?, abortion scene, reproduction/representation. Question of repetition, the mirror game, it also applies to the mother with the common point of Milan. Milan is linked to the three characters because the mother comes from Milan, the painter herself knows and Heloise must be married and live there. The main mirror game is between the relationship of the painter and the model. Building a relationship to ensure that there is full equivalence and that ultimately the creators are on both sides. How to have set up this idea of ​​placement, aesthetic point of view, takes my place, fields-against fields, what it creates in terms of re-visitation of the relationship between the painter and the model to create a kind of utopian equality new? 13:18 C: …Vote Stéphane Goudet! (laugh) C: There is a path in the film about these seating issues. The basic premise is to build a film, a love story and creation that takes place around the issue of equality, which promotes an absence of conflict. Because conflict is often a form of domination. It’s also a way of respecting the fate of these women because at that time, they were aware of being objects, destinies not chosen. Marianne was a painter's daughter, women were more or less lucky. Heloise was already in a place she had not chosen, the convent and now her sister's place. The mother is not in her place either, she’s at the same time in a reproduction project and at the same time we feel that she’s in a horizontality with the other characters. She herself suffers from having to reproduce this situation and justifies it without bad faith, to go to Milan to make a better life than here (Brittany). This is the basis of the circulation between the characters. After the film decides to make this something jubilant. This interchangeability which is a basic datum, a sociological datum even if it’s an anachronism to speak of sociology at that time, but it’s the system. After that, becomes fun, there is consent. It's like the question of the look, at the beginning she’s looked at by stealth, looks not exchanged clearly and then there is consent and suddenly we can switch places. As long as there is consent, when we decide to let ourselves be looked at and to watch too, there’s a musical chair game on social classes in the film. In particular the character of the servant (Sophie), who’s not even really in the job, because never seen carrying trays or listening to the doors … S: she lights the fire C: like johnny Halliday (nb: French singer, famous for his song « allumer le feu » "igniting fire") Sophie is never an accessory. There’s a jubilation of report, a political jubilation, a jubilation for the spectator. A jubilation that’s present both in the love dialogue and in the friendly dialogue, in the dialogue of creation = sorority. S: The film is a quartet of women, the men are almost absent. Right at the beginning, they row, the baby at the time of the abortion and at the end, the same rower who’s in the kitchen ... They are here! It’s the great return of men that we are announcing. 17:24 C: This is the principle of the horror film that I offer you! A very cheap budget! They have men who turn into flies, dead bodies that are devoured, viscera. Me, I have a man with a bad wig and that's it! Bonjour! But this is the principle of cinema tools, this is what we put in the frame. What’s excluded from the framework is not punitive but it’s to offer experiences, it defines the framework. So removing men from the frame tells that they’re on the fringes of the frame so it defines it. We know very well what isn’t in the frame, at one point we forget it and therefore it takes you by surprise. He's a guy with a bad wig, but it’s the patriarchy who comes back to the kitchen. And the patriarchy isn't often in the kitchen, he's in front of the TV in the living room, so this give a shock.

[@prosoponmind9761]

18:37 S: How were you associated with the film Adele, because Céline wrote it for you. Without knowing who you were going to play with. It’s an intense, loving film. What’s your place in the writing and your interpretation of the character? A: I think Céline has been talking to me about the film for several years and with the possibility that it won't happen. We wanted to work together after « naissance des pieuvres ». Céline can speak better of how she wrote the character thinking of me because I was not there. (laugh) But, Céline and I share a passion for research in cinema, fiction, we both understand each other. Okay, well, the script finished, Céline sent it to me and it took me 3 days to read it because I was stress out. After, I said it's great. I have a great respect for Céline's work and that’s an understatement but I was apprehensive but the script pleased me. Voilà, we’re not talking about the past but we’re still writing the story and that’s the exciting thing. With Noémie, she has done the first audition with Céline and after with me. For Noémie's choice, Céline had all my trust and Noémie had all my passion too. She’s someone who has a mystery, it’s a basic word but she's not easy to grasp. This slightly dangerous thing that is behind the surface was very exciting as a working partner. Céline said it very clearly but me, I ... There is a dimension for the character from the passage of the object to the subject. It’s not just characters, it’s also a relation to art, relation to creation. They almost change in nature from one film to another. Artistic point of view by creating a notion of traveling but which would pass through an evolution of the game modes. Between a game mode which would be at the start of the film quite hieratic, a face which is used as a mask and very contained words. Marianne's eyes on Eloïse warming up, the character is transformed. Creating this traveling by sliding into a game mode that would be more spontaneous, more lively, more joyful, more emotions. It also works from a political point of view since it’s a question of talking about the transition of the object which is a kind of destiny, that’s to say of pre-written life (virginity for the convent then market value for marriage) in subject mode, as soon as there are interactions and where there is the exaltation of the romantic encounter and the exaltation of creation, art and etc… 24:34 C: She hadn't told me that before shooting. Now, I known it. When she opened her mouth for the first time, it was the third day of shooting. The first time she started talking I said to myself: OK! She has a plan, she has a plan, she has an idea and this idea is obviously the good one because it's so strong. (laugh) (nb: it's funny because in French an idea is feminine so Céline said « elle est forte » "she" is strong, so in French we can interpret it in two ways: Céline talks about the idea or about Adele) The idea. Adele too but I don't need to tell you that. I understood what she was doing and how she interacted with my ideas. And it was really joyful. And I trusted that right away. A: yes, and when we work in collaboration, we don't have to say everything. I trust the staging (mise en scene) of Céline which works from a rhythmic point of view, with significant gestures of the staging of Céline. And we (actors) have autonomy to create our own staging (mise en scène). 25:54 S: This travelling brings to mind the discovery of your character. First in the back shadow with a large cape. Figure of the shadow which is rather on the side of the dead, the film will replay with that later with the myth of Orpheus. The film plays a lot with the primitive elements: the sea, the fire, the expanses of land ... Expectation, desire to see the character, cinema method of the appearance of the "star". Staging in the speech of others until we see. Until the moment between life and death of dying/running in confrontation with the cliff. And suddenly in the assertion of a difference with the fate of his sister. All this plays in this travelling shot. C: of course. A: yes, yes, indeed. But I wanted to add that this delay, this frustration that Céline can create through the script, the appearance of my back ... I extended it a little bit, with my play. It’s not because we see my character that I’m really there (I don’t reveal myself). Frustration is part of desire. S: The temporality: The film works on two temporalities. The first which is a kind of absolute present, construction of love, of loving passion. The second temporality developed at the end, staging the power of love in the present in memory. C: well said. S: This double treatment of temporality also speaks to another register which is the way of working on the film in costume. At first, the film seems to respect the codes of the genre "period piece" and then we realize that we are at the same time in another temporality, which is the extremely present temporality (sexual freedom, female pleasure, right to abortion, refusing a marriage, smoking, drinking alcohol ...) Respect for the 18th century and classicism with Héloïse as with Rousseau? C: We hate Rousseau. He was a misogynist. Rousseau fucked us. Team Voltaire! No, Rousseau was a fetishist, he had a big sexual problem, the ribbons, the scissors… a fetishist who has bothered our (women) lives since then. When we say « Les Lumières », some of them must be sorted out. (laugh) (nb: Rousseau French philosopher/writer/musician (18th)… and Les Lumières is a cultural, philosophical, literary and intellectual movement that emerged in the second half of the 17th century) S: I like more Diderot C: Ah! Diderot brilliant, Diderot feminist. (nb: Diderot is a French « Lumières » writer, philosopher and encyclopedist, novelist, playwright, storyteller, essayist, dialogist, art critic, literary critic and translator) S: second temporality of the film which speaks of the present by its form, the fact of stripping the bodies to arrive at a greater intimacy. Suddenly when we film them it’s from the 20th century. The temporality of the narrative in taking into account the memory and the look of the poet against the lover and the question how to disregard the obligations of the film in costume.

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C: There are two temporalities that get contaminated since Marianne begins to see visions of this ghost, of this woman in a white dress. And with the idea that the love story is already haunted by the last image she will have of her. It’s an anticipation of any love story that is generally haunted by its beginning and its end. The way we play these two temporalities creates effects of vertigo but also a new sentimental imagination. Who would get us out of the satisfaction of the "happy end" which would be an eternal unverifiable situation create by cinema, or a tragic destiny but here propose something different, a politics of love which is dynamic, which is the vector of new emotions for someone that we always love or someone new, new passions of the arts, music. How the heart grows to have love and how it fills this space. So that’s other politics of love, other philosophy of love and it goes through other representations. But also in relation to the convention. The film will always be a film that will be told in 2019 but there is no anachronism. I didn’t seek to bring them back to the present but to bring their present back to the past. These feelings of anachronisms are in fact feelings of proximity. Approach this with great simplicity. Give these women their present, their hearts, and it happens in a place that we have to invent that is someone's loneliness. What is little documented especially the loneliness of women. Which is probably the greatest loneliness in the world and not told at all. There is some people who said that the film plays with anachronisms like a pair of Converse in Marie Antoinette (Coppola) which is a film that I love. I'm not playing rivalry with Sofia Coppola ... 34:58 we could! ... (Laugh) because it's too good that we are together on this stage: Good evening Sofia. A: Good evening C: There is a permanence of desires and feelings, if one has not transmitted my emotions in the name of the past maybe I can transmit my emotions to the past and that it will also be fair. As if it was the reverse that happened. We went through by the intimate. 35:28 S: I'm going to ask Adele the last question. This is normally a question for Céline but I know your answers (C / A) are absolutely equivalent. Does the film also really speak to the arts? There are three main arts: the book (the gift of the book provokes the reading of the myth of Orpheus/Eurydice), music, painting. Art is the culmination of feeling, that is to say that it will retain the heart of the relationship and that any new relationship to art will keep intact the note of emotion, of the relationship to the other. How did you talk about this with Céline: The ability of art to prolong the feeling of life. 36:48 A: But we didn't talk about it like that. C: But are we talking about something else? A: It’s true that this is our ongoing conversation. Céline talked about conflicts before, for me to stop at the conflict is to accept the vagueness. The three sources of knowledge of Spinoza. The conflict is the area where we are in complete shock and which prevents us from understanding, the relationships in which the other essence evolves. It’s a way of not really looking at the real problem, and it’s a first blur. And after the second zone, the one that you very rarely get to break through is when you manage to anticipate the relationships of the other and to coordinate with this. And this area there, it's already miraculous when you get there. But the question is, these reports testify to essences. And the third kind of knowledge is the intuitive understanding of essences. 38:19 I don’t know if there are specialist in the room who are shock but… C: Someone just left…lol (laugh) Impossible to speak of Spinoza like that… A: What I mean, it’s always a kind of vanishing point. Beauty and art and there is a place where you stop and you cannot perceive in a more piercing way. We are going to call it a love story that we are going to incarnate in a person and tell ourselves that if we are wrong we will try to own this person because we will say that it is this person the beauty and in fact it is through this person, it is always through ... and in that art is effectively a vanishing point and a climax because that’s in fact that, it's always through art, through love. Sorry, it's not clear? I have never been asked this question…so this is the draft. Voilà. (Applause) 40:10 Audience: She speak about paintings that she remember… 40:15 Why 28? C: it’s my child's first name, 28 Sciamma. Our child. A: yes it's true C: no, it's their ages. There is a scene I didn’t shoot when Héloïse says « 28 », Marianne asked why? And Heloise says: this is my age, Marianne: me too. But it was too much. A: During the shooting I really take that as a treasure box, it was a way to inflate the text. 41:28 C:And this is collaboration. When we ask what is collaboration? As if the actor takes power and does anything, like walking on the hands … We take the decision together to remove this part and suddenly, when Adele says "28", it's as if she’s putting a secret. It’s the first take in the film. 42:20 Audience: the woman talks about painting references, Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Artemisia Gentileschi… C: Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun was the star of the painters at the time. She was the painter of Marie Antoinette and the only one who wrote her memories. She had her first retrospective in 2000. Great, it's as if I had an Oscar in 2122. It makes me a beautiful leg, of wood… (nb: it's an expression « ça me fait une belle jambe, de bois » which means: it’s useless … It won't help me) And Artemisia Gentileschi is the same, it’s the Italian star. There are several quotes from Elisabeth, when she described that she’s written in the margins of her notebooks in the convent, the description of the ear (the staircase scene). But I didn't want to be inspired by her because she is the star. I wanted to take these 100+ women painters to create one. To represent them all. 45:10 Audience: your relationship to painting. C: my relation with paintings has changed with the film, now I am fired from museums because I go beyond the safety zone by looking at the paintings. I thought the creation of the painting by Helene Delmaire was crazy, when I saw the layers of paint and how it works, how it came to life. 47:30 Audience: scarves? What is the story behind? C: I wanted to make a new scene of first kiss and not the scene of the mustard in the corner of the mouth ... So, I made lists of first kiss ... and there was the idea of ​​revealing our mouth as we reveal our gaze, there will be a choreography that will be breathless, we will see the lips, the breath. There will be this decision to go down and the other one going down and there will be without a word, a kiss in total consent. How do we create this? How do we create this reciprocity? Reciprocity is sexy. So I veiled their mouths. The problem is that I didn't want them to have hats, the models of the time didn't please me. So to justify this scarf because I'm not going to put it on just before they kiss, you're going to tell me: what is that, what’s going on? So I have to put it before, put it 3 times, because it’s the rule of 3. And it will solve my hat problem, doing something like in Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun's paintings, something in the hair. But I had to fight (figuratively) with the costume designer to get them because we didn't want an anachronism. They can be found at "Pimkie", spring / summer collection…(laugh) 53:00 S: the song in Latin meaning: I can't fly C: « They don't know how to fly » It’s a masculine plural. I know, it’s ambiguous and I’m very angry at Google translate Latin. It’s what you get by not paying people. We speak of "they" (male) because they (female), they know how to fly. Audience: talks about the film, it's like a painting and she likes Céline's work. C: Thank you 54:20: why the man who paddles at the beginning is the one who takes the painting at the end? C: because we are on an island so the portrait must leave the island. And you have to live this lid which is like a coffin. But I don't think we want to see him, because overall we don't want him to be there. It’s true. There was another end. Marianne was on the boat with the painting, and the box started to move again (like in the beginning) and could fall. We were in this suspense « please, made this box falls ». But I said to myself: no it's too long, there are already 3 endings after. That's enough. And I was seasick on the boat.

[@vikingstad2690]

@@prosoponmind9761 Thank you so much for translating! Great job :)

[@Ayrline89]

Thank you for taking the time to help us the clueless yet delighted enough just watching how they move and talk 😆

[@loupsauvage12]

Celine est géniale! Merci pour cette conference très intéressante

[@enolaholmes3309]

29:00 CAN YOU IMAGINE LEAVING A Q&A with THEM?? AND THEN GETTING A NOD FROM ADELE...

[@damislisboalisboa702]

E impressionante a naturalidade dessas meninas! Agem sem o menor estrelismo e são muito simpáticas...estou espantada com elas. Bem diferente das estrelas brasileiras.

[@tandep6876]

So nobody is going to add subtitles to this? Fine, I'll just keep looking at Adele until I learn French decent enough to understand something.

[@prosoponmind9761]

You can keep looking at Adele or read my comment... ^^

[@woolf28]

Merci 🎬

[@Elva263]

1:36 the only word i undesrtand "Kung Fu Panda"

[@3ver4fter53]

Le thon académique et théorique de Stéphane Goudet tranche tellement avec la chaleur de ce film... Je ressens le malaise d'Adèle devant cette analyse tellement froide et éloignée de l'univers dans lequel la salle a été plongée pendant 2 heures.

[@catherinefiant]

Un Thon Breton.... ? Oui, le propos est très cérébral mais Céline est dans son élément, comme un poisson dans l'eau. Concernant Adèle, il lui donne peu d'espace d'expression. Mais l'échange est fort intéressant, en particuliers l'évocation de la seule scène coupée du film et la rencontre d'adèle avec Noémie lors du casting

[@dfsks9051]

2:35 미친 아델이언니 개귀여워

[@zhene91]

아델❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@iratherbeanonymous6894]

*English Subtitles Please!!.*

[@MyStory-gq4uy]

Can someone provide transcript please! Current auto translation is 100% inaccurate.

[@prosoponmind9761]

Check my comment, maybe not the perfect translation but...voilà

[@MyStory-gq4uy]

@@prosoponmind9761

[@lea6912]

49:00!😂