Breakfast with Anna Vernor II
Interview with Eduardo Carretié, director of Anna Vernor II
Tells us a little bit about how your film, Anna Vernor II, came to be.
Margaux Lorier, the producer (Envie de Tempête Productions), had gotten in touch with me in 2016 after she saw my first film, La fille du bunker [The Girl from the Bunker]. She asked me if I was working on any other projects and I sent her a first draft of the script. At that time, the film was called The Madmen’s Walk and it was a really weird script, the type of script that a reasonable producer would immediately throw in the trash. But Margaux gave me support, the story evolved, getting better over time. Writing for Anna Vernor II actually stretched out over a long period and went through several rewrites. I had lots of doubts about the end. I wanted to come up with a surprising ending, and I couldn’t find one at first. It came around the twentieth time. I’m glad I saw it through and made the film, which, in my opinion, is better than the script.
Why did you decide to set the film in a fantasy world in order to talk about the process of mourning and memories?
I’ve been writing “fantasy” stories since I was a teenager. At first, they were short stories. It wasn’t a conscious decision to write in a particular genre, it’s my way of approaching fiction at the moment. I imagine that fantasy helps me talk about topics in a roundabout, allegorical way. For this film, my interest was in memories and the objectification of memories. Sometimes I ask myself questions like “What’ll happen to my desk when I’m dead? And the tennis racket I’ve used for fifteen years of my life?” The beginning of Paul Auster’s novel The Invention of Solitude pretty well sums up this type of questioning. It’s the story of a man who goes to his father’s house after his father dies in order to sort through his personal effects. Anyway, that was the starting point for the script: the way objects can absorb the owner’s life and continue living without them.
The film’s soundtrack is particularly remarkable. How did you work with the composer?
I wanted to work with Paul de Menthon, a muscian friend of mine who I collaborated with on another project. Since I’ve known Paul for a long time, I knew the film’s tone would speak to him. Paul was part of the project from the beginning. We exchanged music for several months. And then, one day, we got together around 3pm in his studio at the Porte de Lilas where he paints and works on music. In the middle of the workshop there was a piano. He sat at the piano and began playing a melody that I instantly liked. I took out the script and read some parts out to him while he continued playing. That took about a half an hour. We’d found the film’s musical theme, it was obvious. Later Paul came up with the idea that we needed to use an organ instead. A year later, the film had been shot and we went to the Temple des Batignolles at midnight. That’s where we recorded all the music for the film on a traditional organ with the help of two fantastic musicians, Claire Duizabo (organist) and Arnaud Toulon (music producer)!
The film benefits from a wonderful cast. How did you direct the actors to create the particular, almost dreamlike, atmosphere?
It was very pleasant editing the film, which means that the actors were good. I was very lucky to be able to bring them all together on the same film. I’d already worked with Tara-Jay Bangalter on my first short. Since we know each other well, I have the impression that on the set we manage to adjust the acting pretty fluidly by only exchanging a few words. The first two nights of shooting, we immediately filmed scenes with four actors. We began with the wide shots, and it’s not easy to find the right pace and tone when you’re far away from the actors. Vincent Macaigne, who plays a slightly daft guru, sometimes made the others burst out laughing. We had to make this grotesque situation seem believable or the film would have sunken. Once, when that was pretty difficult, I decided to play the film’s background music on set. And that really helped. The wide shot in the film is the one where the music was playing at the beginning of the take. In a film like this one, directing the actors is also very much a matter of the scenery and the costumes. We were in a particular frame, a chateau, in the dead of night with nary a hint of wind. That dreamlike atmosphere might have helped direct the actors, rather than the other wary about.
Which films did you draw from?
Anna Vernor II is a product of the imaginary world of teenage sagas. The film’s title is a reference to the fantasy stories that we grew up with. But I’m not making fun of them, there’s more of a nostalgic tenderness tinged with black humor and poetry. My intention with this film was to re-appropriate the world of those tales, the world of childhood, but make it have to deal with more “adult” topics. I would willingly cite Edgar Allan Poe, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and Harold and Maude by Hal Ashby, among others.
Have you discovered any advantages that the short film form offers?
With this film, I allowed myself to explore a purely magical world, which is more difficult to sustain in a longer format. In fact I have grave doubts about trying to sustain a film for an hour and thirty minutes where one of the main stars is a magic candlestick. Short films offer the possibility of testing out a world, of committing yourself 100% to a path of romanticism.
Anna Vernor II is part of National Competition F6.
