00:26This is Tim Wasper from Fast Track on CERC TV.
00:29I'm here in Austin, Texas, for Fantastic Fest.
00:45If the hell exists, it can't be Perkish.
00:50That's the great thing about Fantastic Fest, because it's a genre, like Sitges and like others, you know, in Fantasia,
00:55you know, it's about these multiple ideas and how to bring them to life.
01:00And I mean, the ones who grieve, it's very specific because of your approach,
01:05specifically of these two characters, Jacob, you know, and their behavior and the way you can look at behavior.
01:12Can you talk about that? Because it's almost an abstract painting in a way, but it's also very expressionistic.
01:17Well, you know, inspiration is always a complicated process where you don't really know where it comes from.
01:24But I really wanted to make a harsh, strong, dark film.
01:29And I wanted to create a real villain, a villain that you can, that is totally bleak,
01:36that has only darkness inside him, that a villain that you would enjoy hating him.
01:43And the thing is Thierry, Thierry Fremont, who plays the role of Jacob, and Zélie Rixson, who plays the role
01:50of Zélie.
01:53I worked with them before in my previous film, All the Gods in the Sky.
01:58I mean, they were already reunited together as Thierry was this weird character having this very unhealthy relationship with this
02:08little kid.
02:09Because at the time, Zélie, she was eight years old when she played in All the Gods in the Sky.
02:13So I thought it was really interesting to take them back again 10 years later when Zélie became an adult
02:21and bring them back together in another universe.
02:25And I think the chemistry between them worked really well.
02:29And it was sort of a meta kind of things, you know, to extract them from my previous film and
02:37bring them back on my newest one like that.
02:39So the role of Jacob was really custom made for Thierry.
02:44I wrote the role for him, thinking about him since the beginning of the writing process.
02:51And when I was done with that, after a few seconds, you know, the name of Zélie just came up
02:58to my mind.
02:59And it was obviously the right choice, the right thing to do.
03:03And so I really wanted to work with them again, reunited them in a totally different environment.
03:10But keeping this very unhealthy relationship that they had in All the Gods in the Sky and translated in the
03:17ones who grieve.
03:42With Jacob, with Thierry, there's such a brutalism to him, but also he's masking it as altruism, you know.
03:49And I think that's a really interesting dynamic because he thinks he's the hero of his own story.
03:56You know, could you talk about that dynamic?
03:58Of course. I wanted also to talk about certitude.
04:03I don't know if that's an English word.
04:04Yeah, yeah.
04:05When people are so sure about themselves, sure about his face, sure about his rights.
04:11And it's totally making loose his path toward the truth or what it should be.
04:17And he's using religion as a tool to express his sadism.
04:24I wanted to emphasize that my movie is really not a movie against religion or anything like that.
04:30I'm not even talking about religion.
04:32This is nothing to do with it.
04:33It's just a way or an excuse for this guy to accept his craziness and his madness.
04:46So it's really a film about control, patriarchy, madness, and also the resilience of Zelie to find a way of
04:58escaping.
04:59I think that she's not a weak character because even though she's enduring a lot of things throughout the movie,
05:05she's not passive towards this pain.
05:11You know, she always wants to confront her father.
05:14And I think she's a very strong character.
05:16And the more she feels that pain and the more she feels that all those problems that her father is
05:22putting on her,
05:23I mean, the stronger she gets, actually.
05:26And so I thought, yeah, that was also interesting to take it that way.
05:31But also take it into a physicality aspect, the mutilation, the actual, not the actual act of it,
05:38but actually the actual act of it with the eyes, with the mouth, with Zelie at one point.
05:42You know, could you talk about that idea of mutilation?
05:45It's not just mutilation of the physical, it's mutilation of the emotional.
05:49Yes, yes, yes, exactly.
05:51You're totally right.
05:52It's not enough for Jacob to only torture the people.
05:56They want to totally put them into domination.
06:00And for that, in order to do that, they also have to control their mind.
06:04So this is like a very vicious, very vicious character and a very vicious way of interacting with all those
06:13people.
06:14And because he's so sure about himself and he has also this feeling because he starts to feel desire for
06:22his own daughter.
06:23So this is in total contradiction also with what he used maybe to believe before,
06:28because we don't know his past to reach this point of craziness.
06:34You know, maybe he used to be someone sort of normal that just, you know, deviated from his course
06:41and become this crazy, this crazy madman.
07:00Well, when you were directing Terry, what did what were the discussions of him?
07:04Because, I mean, yeah, he's playing a brutally unlikable character.
07:07And yet he holds himself up with such esteem.
07:11Not him, the actor, but the character.
07:13Yes, we talked about the role a lot with Terry and with Zelie.
07:18And we also, we rehearsed so much.
07:22We prepared the movie nine months prior of the shooting.
07:27So this is really...
07:28So lots of workshopping.
07:29Lots of workshopping.
07:30Yes, yes, yes.
07:31That's really a long time, you know, nine months to prepare a film.
07:35And throughout the course of just nine months, I mean, we talk so much about the character.
07:40We rehearsed like nearly like all the time we have a rehearsal and communication with the actors
07:49because we were running on a pretty tight budget.
07:52And when that's the case, I think you don't have time to start asking yourself questions when you are actually
08:01shooting.
08:02You have to know exactly what's going on, where you want to put your camera, how you want to direct
08:07your actors.
08:08So you cannot improvise.
08:10Well, I'm not like that.
08:11And so in order to feel like it's a million dollar movie, but actually you only have like not that
08:22much of a budget,
08:23then you have to work a lot ahead of the shooting.
08:27And that's really what we did.
08:28And Terry prepared himself like very seriously for that role.
08:32He went on a diet and he started to gain, you know, some weight and some muscles.
08:37And he was going to the gym every day.
08:40So, I mean, he really loved, he was really happy to have this incredibly sadistic,
08:49innominious character to play because he said throughout his career,
08:53I think he said that this is really the worst, the worst despicable character I've ever had to play.
08:59And so for an actor, I think it's a real challenge.
09:03And it's very interesting to play those characters because you don't run into it so many often in your career.
09:12So he totally plunged into this Jacob, you know, this Jacob, the way he was thinking and everything.
09:22He became Jacob for a little bit, you know.
09:24And so that was a super, I was really blessed to be able to work with Thierry that got so
09:32involved in his character.
09:34And so our association were just perfect.
09:39And I really enjoyed working with him.
09:42And so I'll see you next time.
