Interview with Mikhaël Hers, director of ’Amanda«.»

Le Regard Libre N° 45 - Loris S. Musumeci

This is Mikhaël Hers' third feature film. Already highly acclaimed, his career in the seventh art continues to flourish. Today, the filmmaker presents us with Amanda, is set in a Paris that has been the victim of a horrific terrorist attack in recent years. Twenty-four-year-old David loses his sister, and suddenly finds himself the impromptu father of his niece, little Amanda. The situation is far from easy, yet the two learn to live together as father and daughter. All in all, the film is simply beautiful and moving. Meet the director.

Loris S. Musumeci: How did you get into filmmaking?

Mikhaël Hers: It's a desire I've had since childhood. My parents used to take me to the movies, and I always knew I wanted to be a film-maker, but I'd never actually done anything. As the years went by, I turned to studies that had nothing to do with art, namely economics, and I no longer had any desire to work in the film industry. I did, however, take the competitive examination for La Fémis. (editor's note: école nationale supérieure des métiers de l'image et du son), And now I've been able to recuperate the time I spent doing other things, to get down to the nitty-gritty of filmmaking as a director.

What's your favourite film?

I'd like to make it clear that I'm more passionate about music than films. In fact, I'm not necessarily a great cinephile. However, it's obvious that I love a lot of films, especially those I saw as a teenager. I'm thinking of Coppola's work in the eighties, or De Palma's, or the film E.T. the alien which made a big impression on me. I also love the films of French director Eric Rohmer, William Friedkin and Sidney Lumet.

So it wasn't your favorite films that led you to the cinema.

Completely. Strange as it may seem, I'm happy to say that it wasn't cinema that led me to cinema. It was something else.

Now that we've got to know each other, a question arises about your new film: why did you choose an attack in Paris as the subject?

I've been asked this question several times, and I tend to answer that it's not what the film is about. There's an attack, of course, but there are lots of other things too. I think it's important for a film not to be dominated by just one aspect. Amanda is not a film about a terrorist attack, but rather a story that attempts to look at post-attack Paris. I wanted to film this city in all its fragility, and to tackle other themes such as fatherhood, particularly fatherhood by inheritance and accident. What's more, for a long time I'd wanted to follow the journey of an older child accompanying a younger child around a tragedy.

You mention the figure of the grown-up child, and it's true that Vincent Lacoste has a real adolescent look about him.

Yes, he carries within him a youthful grace, a beauty that is not necessarily ordinary. It's through his talent that you see him as a teenager, because he knows how to convey depth while remaining light and carefree. His ambivalence creates an empathy that is essential to the film.

Coming back to the film's attack, we can see that you rely on suggestion. Is this an artistic choice or a technical constraint?

It really is a choice. I find that you get closer to the truth of things by going underground, through the periphery rather than through the eye of the storm. But it's a question of personal taste: my sensibility leads me more towards that approach.

I felt a great deal of modesty about the attack.

Thank you, and that's how I hope the attack will be received. We arrive after the attack. At the same time, I wanted the film to take charge of the images of the carnage, without overdoing it; that's why I show the wounded bodies and corpses through the eye of the character, which has a somewhat derealizing effect. At the same time, we're dealing with something very raw and more distant, insofar as the images pass through the eyes of the character arriving on the scene.

When David's character arrives at the scene of the attack, he's on his bike. I don't think this is insignificant, as bicycles and their wanderings around Paris are very present in the film.

David is a character who works a lot of odd jobs, is always in a hurry and is constantly on the move in Paris, so in a very pragmatic way, the bicycle makes sense from a script point of view. But it's true that the bicycle is very present in the film, and that's not at all insignificant: for me, it's a way of adding a kind of musicality by integrating moments of floating, which give the images an airy dimension. The bike's lightness also helps to make the film palatable.

The bicycle also seems to me to be part of the everyday life that the film aims to convey.

Yes, you're right. I love filming outdoors, in the city, and the bike allows me to show these places from different angles in the protagonists' daily lives.

Childhood plays a central role in Amanda. What's it like to shoot a film on such a serious subject and have a child - in this case, little Isore Multrier, who plays Amanda - on the set?

What's fundamentally different with a child is the shooting dynamic. Filming is obviously and fortunately regulated by law, which means that you're shooting three or four hours a day with a child. As a result, shooting days can sometimes be quite crazy when it comes to organization. For the rest, working with a child is pretty much the same as working with an adult actor. It's all based on discussions, which establish a relationship of trust and benevolence, so that the child understands what's at stake in the film and his or her role. In fact, Isore had read the script before shooting and understood exactly what was involved.

This child goes through all moods: from joyful tenderness to sadness, from grateful complicity to whimsy. Do these feelings come naturally?

Acting means starting from oneself. Isore, like all the other actors, experiences happiness and unhappiness in her life; she uses her day-to-day emotions to feed the character of Amanda. Insofar as Amanda is a fictional character, the actress was able to play her part naturally, integrating all the moods that were useful to the plot.

More generally, what was the atmosphere like during the shoot?

In fact, the atmosphere was very good, despite the seriousness of certain events in the film. You know, there are sometimes nightmarish atmospheres on comedy sets, and laughter and joy on drama sets. It's a good thing we don't have to be in the same mood as the story we're telling! Even so, it's certain that we were soaked in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, but that didn't stop us from shooting in a gentle, joyful spirit.

How did you come up with the dialogue? Particularly the ones delivered by Vincent Lacoste, who is exceptional in the way he interprets them?

I love writing dialogue: it comes quite naturally to me. Dialogue is my music. And I really think that Vincent understood this music, worked brilliantly on his role and simply blew us away. What's even more incredible is that he was right from the start.

The character of Lena, brilliantly played by Stacy Martin, says to her lover, David: «We've got all the time in the world.» I found this sentence deeply moving. Do they really have all the time, when he has become a father prematurely by adopting his niece Amanda, and she has gone to live elsewhere?

This sentence is a mystery! (laughs) It's even mysterious to me. Do they really have time? I don't know.

You question the family a lot in your film: what does it mean to be a father? what does it mean to be a mother? what does it mean to be a brother? what does it mean to be a sister? what does it mean to be a son? In your opinion, is it really possible to appropriate an unnatural paternity when necessary?

Amanda and David are two characters who help each other equally well. At certain moments, we even wonder who is better able to help the other. Of course, David's paternity of Amanda is not obvious, since he's not her biological father and he's very young, but it builds up, and the two gradually learn to live together and love each other. The film actually tells the story of the beginning of this journey, which is a journey of life. David makes a choice, and assumes it; in this way, he makes fatherhood his own.

Don't we live in a society where, at every moment, we want to master everything, to be prepared, re-prepared and ready, especially when it comes to fatherhood and motherhood? Aren't we ever ready?

I don't think we're ever ready. At some point, things have to be done. If you wait until you're ready, you don't do anything. If you wait until you're ready to make a film, you never shoot. If you wait until you're ready to be a father or mother, you never have children. This reminds me of the saying: if they'd known it was impossible, they'd never have done it. David isn't ready to be Amanda's father; Amanda isn't ready to be his daughter; and yet they accept each other as such, and that's the beauty of it.

The film as a whole shows both a glimmer of hope and an anguish that never lets go. Do you accept these two inseparable parts of the story you tell?

Yes, absolutely. Anguish is part of the picture, from start to finish. We have to be clear: we're living in turbulent times, when our points of reference are cracking and our dikes are breaking. I'm a worried person, but that doesn't stop me from believing in the future and having hope.

Finally, are you already working on a new film?

I'm working on it, but in an abstract way for the moment. It's true that when I start writing, I need everything to happen very quickly, and I need to store up a lot of things very quickly. I can't keep a script together for two years. As a result, it's better for me to take the time to feel out the groundwork for my next film beforehand, so that once I get down to writing, everything goes quickly.

Write to the author: loris.musumeci@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Indra Crittin for Le Regard Libre