François Ozon opens the BCN Film Fest this Thursday with My Crime, an intriguing comedy based on a play and set in Paris in the thirties starring young French actresses Nadia Tereszkiewicz and Rebecca Marder. The first plays Madeleine Verdier, a poor actress accused of murdering a film producer and the second is her friend and lawyer Pauline Mauléon, who sees the delicate situation as a way to escape misery.
The cast is completed with fetish actors of the director of En la casa, such as Fabrice Luchini or Isabelle Huppert, who gives life to a silent film actress who is looking for a comeback in style. The film, which will be released in theaters on May 5th, is part of a trilogy on the female condition that the French director began with 8 women, "a renunciation of the patriarchy", and continued with Potiche, mujeres al poder, "the launch of the matriarchy". My crime, according to Ozon, deals with the "triumph of sisterhood." The director, who has arrived in Barcelona with a sore throat, talks to La Vanguardia at the Casa Fuster hotel.
After directing several dramas, what led you to accept this project?
The idea came to me during confinement when we were all wondering if we were going to make movies again one day. So I thought I should do a comedy because everything around us was so dramatic, the covid, the war... and I found the play by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil a fluke. I hadn't done comedy for ten years since Potiche, twenty years had passed since 8 women and I thought it was time that through comedy we could talk about other things.
Do you think that comedy can help you reflect more than any other genre?
I really do not know. When I shot Gracias a Dios, a dramatic theme, it was very successful. My crime is a comedy in which I talk about the issue of women. I don't think there is a written rule. All you have to do is make a good movie.
My crime is having a great success in France, but at least in Spain it is costing more to attract the public to the theaters after the pandemic. Do you see a solution to this crisis?
The film has surpassed one million viewers in a few weeks and I'm very happy. Avatar brought people back to the movies, but the good thing about all of this is that audiences in France have not limited themselves to Hollywood movies, they have gone to see French movies. Mostly people of a certain age have returned to the cinema. My film has had a lot of audiences in their 50s and 60s because there are many actors like Huppert and Luchini who are very popular. I think we are very lucky in France. I know that in Spain it happens like in Italy, people have not returned to the cinema yet. I hope they do it to see My crime!
Why did you choose Nadia Tereszkiewicz and Rebecca Marder for the lead roles?
Now they are well-known actresses. Nadia has won the César for Best New Actress for La gran juventud. But when I picked them up they weren't that popular yet. I have signed the two best actresses of their generation. We did many castings, but with them I immediately noticed that there was a complicity, something necessary in the film because they had to have that thing of friendship, a sisterhood.
What has it been like to recreate the Paris of the 30s?
It has not been easy. There is very little left of the Paris of that time and we wanted Art Deco type buildings. The scene where the crime occurs was shot in Brussels, many of the streets we shot in Bordeaux, which still has cobbled streets. And then we have made sets in the studio. I think it turned out very nice.
The film addresses several issues, but the main one is the women's rights that Madeleine defends during the trial. At what point does she think those rights are now?
In the 1930s in France, women did not have the right to vote or have a bank account. She couldn't get married without having a dowry, the patriarchy was terrible. If we look back, we have improved a lot, but equality with men is an issue that has not yet been achieved. What I do with this film, and through comedy, I intend to raise questions so that we all realize the road that still remains to be traveled. Women should not stop fighting for their rights.
Do you see Madeleine and Pauline as two manipulators or heroines fighting for a cause?
For me they are two heroines who use their intelligence to get out of trouble. In those days, if you wanted to achieve something and you were a woman, you had no choice but to jump through hoops. In fact, when Madeleine goes to see Dany Boon's character, she thinks that she has to sacrifice herself. It would never have occurred to her that there might be another way. But, in addition to their intelligence, the two of them use their complicity. Even with Huppert's character, they end up fighting together.
The film opens the door to a Metoo in the thirties and shows us a type of abusive producer like Harvey Weinstein. Have you met many men like him in the industry?
It was a typical power of the patriarchy and if you didn't play that game you didn't work. Unfortunately, there are still guys like Weinstein. But in France there is a very strong awareness. The world is changing and the hierarchy is less powerful.
It also reflects society's obsession with curiosity, scandal. It's something that hasn't changed at all over time...
Absolutely. We are in a spectacle society. Before, the press was a very important medium and today it is occupied by social networks. You can condemn someone by saying nonsense and nobody notices. That is why we must be very careful with what we say and write.
The director of the festival, Conxita Casanovas, says that both you and Wim Wenders have never allowed themselves to be tamed. Have you always had a free hand when creating?
Yes, I have always enjoyed the freedom to create and I owe that to the success I have had with my films. And the same thing happened to Wenders, which is why we have never had to give up on television or accept a commission. We've been lucky to have producers who understood that and were willing to let us create.
Would you be interested in working in Hollywood if you were given a blank check?
There they have another way of working. Here in Europe it is the director who has the last word, while in Hollywood it is the producer. To work there you would have to be a producer. And for me it is very difficult to go to Hollywood to practice as such. I don't feel like it.
