Breakfast with Essaie de mourir jeune

An interview with Morgan Simon, director of Essaie de mourir jeune [Try to Die Young]

 What inspired you to make Try to Die Young?

Birthdays are hardly ever what we would like them to be. They are the stuff of nightmares and bad memories. They make us think of the time that has passed, and that we discover lost during the course of an evening. They are a moment of truth.

 The title of the film can lead us in two directions: they can give us the feeling of a desire to die prematurely (die young) but involuntarily, in order to avoid “getting old”. It can also give us the impression that suicide is an option (try to die). Which sense did you imagine?

I see the title as advice from Hervé’s character, but in a sense it is not at all morbid. We should consider it as the idea of taking advantage of the present moment, to relax, to not think any further than the following minute. We must live quickly. It’s a philosophy of life. Inversely, Vincent is a very reserved character. The evening of his 25th birthday pushes him further into that reserved state. He needs to escape. It is vital for him to live his life, which we wish to be as long as possible for him.

 As we are inside his head, we see that the hero from Try to Die Young is totally disillusioned and sees no future for himself. We could conclude that he is in a state of depression. Did you conduct any research into that question for the making of Try to Die Young?

i don’t think the character is depressed. He is only disillusioned and bitter. We are all this way at certain moments. He doesn’t see how to escape from the situation he is in. He has within him a generosity, a humanity, a personality that he cannot express with Hervé, who is unwittingly crushing him.

 In Try to Die Young, our hero retains this phrase: “Work hard at school and end up like us.” In the film, did you approach this phrase, and the whole of the film in general, as a projection of his own depression with regard to others, or on the contrary, as a empathetic perception of his environment, filled with adults, and with a feeling of having failed.

We spend 15, 20 years of our lives at school and end up not using much of what we’ve learned, outside of the essentials. That fascinates me. Vincent has no one to cite as an example, not even himself, and perhaps that is his definition of failure. It is a lucid reference to the absence of a true father figure for him. He doesn’t want to end up like that.

 Do you know the film The Never-Ending Story and its melancholic morass? In Try to Die Young, is there a similar morass?

That film is part of my childhood memories. But I don’t remember that morass. Perhaps I haven’t fallen in that morass yet.

 Try to Die Young questions several human relationships. At one moment, you present a shattered body, like a trophy. In your opinion, what bruises are the worst: those of the body or the mind?

It is a bottle of perfume shaped as the body of a woman. I see the silhouette of Vincent’s mother, and everything that it implies in the film but is never said. It is not a trophy. it is more an antique statue that despite the damage still remains standing. The worst bruises I believe are the silent ones which are present but denied by all.

 Try to Die Young is a French production. In your opinion, what does French short film production have that the other’s don’t?

It brings quantity and variety. No other country produces as many short films. Hence, the importance of a festival like Clermont-Ferrand. Everything can exist at the same time in the same place.