Breakfast with Au loin les dinosaures

Interview with Arthur Cahn, director of Au loin les dinosaures
[Dinosaurs In the Distance]

How did you come up with the idea for Au loin les dinosaures ?

I had just finished La Fémis [The National Film School] and wrapped up writing a feature film with writing support from the CNC [National Film Center]. I couldn’t find a producer for it. It was a little naive of me to imagine going directly to feature films, and a little depressing not making any headway… After a few months, I decided I needed to write a new short to get things rolling.

I was watching a video on YouTube, the song “Sad Dreams” by Sky Ferreira, where, in one of the scenes, the singer is in a polkadot dress in the middle of a field. It’s kind of a clichéd image but I thought it was lovely all the same, it resonated with me, just like Sky’s sullen expression, and that was when I suddenly saw the first scene of the film: Aurore turning on a farmer in a field before she takes off.

Everything else followed from that. I had been mulling over various ideas, and memories from my adolescence stacked themselves up like a puzzle that almost puts itself together. And there I saw the film.

Why were you interested in adolescence?

That’s a question I didn’t really ask myself. My characters came to me, and I didn’t really think about their adolescence. I think at thirty I’m still becoming myself and evolving, like I was when I was sixteen.

If I think back on it, I can already say I was interested in adolescence because I put a lot of myself into the film, a lot of my memories, and I’m only thirty-one, so my memories are mostly about being a teenager.

What I do know is that being teenagers makes them freer and more vulnerable at the same time. And also more isolated. So they need each other all the more. And it was their isolation that, among other things, moved me and that I wanted to show: two lonely people meeting up.

So, as for the questions that Aurore and Loup – the two characters in the film – wonder about, they’re ones you could ask yourself at any age, and their issues – dealing with grief and owning up to the reality of one’s desires – are questions that come up throughout life.

Why did you create such a stark contrast between Loup, who lives tightly wound up with his childhood dreams, and Aurore, who is completed anchored in reality?

My friends who know me would tell you that Aurore and Loup are two facets of my personality. But I’m not sure that’s so interesting for the viewer…

The film talks mostly about the beginning of a friendship. Aurore and Loup strike a balance, they work together like communicating vessels. The film’s resolution is precisely in that Aurore gives Loup the chance to confront reality while Loup lets Aurore inject some dreams into her hard life.

We wanted to maintain that contrast when casting the actors. The understanding that develops between Aurore and Loup works because of the talents of Marie Petiot and Constantin Vidal, who play them, and who ended up really becoming friends on the set.

Why did you situate the story in the countryside, rather than the city?

We needed solitude. Aurore and Loup are two isolated, lonely people who meet. Their space-time is suspended and the countryside they move around in provided that. We were extremely lucky to be able to film in the region of Pays de la Loire, in the fall to boot. The natural surroundings we filmed contribute greatly to the film’s soft, sad, lovely atmosphere. The film crew felt genuine pleasure and excitement shooting in the wide open spaces, using CinemaScope no less! Benjamin Rufi, the cinematographer, really made it all stand out. We worked together to make the countryside an implicit character in the film.

Why did you choose the allegory of the dinosaurs?

Oh! At a certain point in the film, Loup tells Aurore that as a child he thought we were all sleeping dinosaurs and that we were all having the same dream, and that the dream was our human life. I didn’t have to look too far to come up with that: it’s an idea I had when I must have been five years old. I thought it was possible. What Loup tells Aurore is word for word what I could have told you.

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In Au loin les dinosaures, life’s trials and tribulations seem far away, as unreal as Loup’s fantasies. How did you envision that effect and to what end?

I’m not sure that the trials seem unreal, but yes, I guess they are off-camera and far away. Aurore and Loup are removed from them. It’s sort of like when I said that they were suspended. For me, I think it’s pretty charming to film not, let’s say, a car accident, but the skid marks on the asphalt. I’m not really sure why, maybe out of sense of modesty. I don’t know.

Aurore masks her father’s illness, it’s simply a far-off noise. She’d rather listen to the voice of her burgeoning desire, arousing farmers like at the beginning of the film. She cannot face the invisible drama unfolding in Paris without her, it’s by looking through Loup’s oneiric prism that she is able to admit her father’s passing and mourn it.

But her father’s illness is real. I don’t think it’s on the same level as Loup’s fantasies. I’d say the key is to look at it the other way round: Loup’s fantasies are as real as everything else. Too often people underestimate the imagination and dreams. But dreams are real things; they exist. When I wake up in the morning, my dreams can have an impact on me and on my day.

Moreover, it’s important that Loup’s imaginary lover have a real body, a real flesh-and-blood presence. And for a long time, I wanted the dinosaurs that appear at the end of the film to be marionettes, so that we perceive their tangible character. But for financial reasons, that was not possible.

Do you see yourself making other films on the theme of frienship?

It’s a very wonderful subject that allows you to connect to very lovely emotions when you’re writing, and to feel a great deal of love. In general, I have a lot of love for my characters, no matter what the subject of the film. I don’t know if I’ll make other films on friendship. I’ve noticed that often you discover what your film is about after having written it. My next short film, Herculanum, which I filmed this fall with Jérémie Elkaïm, talks about love this time.

When you wrote the script, were you thinking about the idea of reciprocity in romantic relationships?

Um, I don’t think I have any particular ideas of the sort when I write. I tap my intuition, my characters, their truth. When she meets Loup, Aurore thinks she might be able to go out with him, that’s for sure. But he quickly lets her know that he’s homosexual. In the end, she doesn’t get what she thought she wanted, but she gets much more.

Do you think short films are effective in questioning the meaning of human relations?

I don’t watch a lot of short films, and actually I had trouble writing one at the beginning. In fact, our film Au loin les dinosaures is already thirty minutes long. But the more short films I write and watch, the more excited I am about the freedom the format offers. It allows you to understand things very quickly without necessarily going on and on. I don’t know whether it’s a good way of questioning the meaning of human relations, as you put it, but I think some stories are best told when they’re captured with the quickness of a short film.

Au loin les dinosaures was either produced, co-produced or self-financed with French funds. Did you write the film with this “French” aspect in mind: making movie references, building a specific context (in a particular region, for example) or inserting characteristically French notions?

The film was produced thanks to funds from the CNC and the Pays de la Loire region. We could not have made the film the way we did without that assistance.

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Au loin les dinosaures is being shown in National Competition F7.