Breakfast with J’attends Jupiter [I’m Waiting for Jupiter]
An interview with Agathe Riedinger, director of J’attends Jupiter (I’m Waiting for Jupiter)
The film is very bright and full of pastel colors. Can you tell us a little bit about that esthetic choice? Can you tell us something about the location where the story takes place?
Even though it seems unreal, the film is about escape, a passage towards the light. Or more specifically, it’s about an attempt to “iconize” a young woman, the celebration of one type of femininity. The film isn’t girly or clichéd (even though clichés are part of the story), but I wanted to bring out an angelic, Madonna-like side to Liane, the heroine. So, the film’s entire artistic direction was built up with that idea in mind, whether in casting, the costumes, the accessories, the sets and of course the technical aspects, and so on… My first idea was to situate the film in a sort of Eldorado, an Eden that was a bit off. I wanted the story to unfold in a place that would evoke the softer side of life, warmth, but I also wanted the audience to feel a certain weight, a shortness of breath, a harshness in order to accentuate Liane’s desire to escape. We were lucky to have had the support of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region and filmed neared Marignane. The region has some incredible locations. It’s filled with colors and light and some places are deserted, muted, worn away by time, heat and dust. It’s like being in a western, it’s very poetic! I wanted to give the feeling that paradise isn’t far off, but that it’s behind us, that we were this close to tasting it. The sets are parched like Liane, the light is blinding. That is also why she is so colorful in the way she dresses and speaks – she’s trying to compensate and stand out.
That decision also stems from my desire to draw a connection between the codes of the Cocottes from the turn of the century and today’s reality TV. The Cocottes would crumple in piles of flowers, lace and diamonds, frills, little dogs wearing ribbons, smooth, powdered skin, a whole world of fake naivete. If you look at paintings and photos from that period, the Cocottes are displayed in a world that is terribly feminine and girly, too much so for the time but charmingly so for us. They’re also very bright, since they were practically icons in the mystical sense. By adapting that older feminine staging to today, it’s easy to slide into the hyper-femininity that reality TV demands. So I had a great time using those codes. Too much blondness, too much pink, too much lace, too many shiny, pointy nails. Too many codes that scream, “I am a woman”, in the sense of soft and strong, and naive in particular. But I am also genuinely fascinated by bad taste, by going overboard. I think it’s lovely.
Why is there so little information on the programme itself?
Because the show in itself makes no difference. What matters to Liane is to be a part of it. She is completely absorbed in imagining her future, she fantasizes about it and is even prepared to make it up. Besides, the fact of not knowing anything more about the show means that it becomes The Show, a sort of Holy Grail. There is only one that we don’t even need to say much about…
How did you select and work with the young actresses?
For the role of Liane, I was looking for a young woman who could project both vulgarity and grace. It was very important to me to connect the world of reality TV and the Cocottes – supremely refined and elegant women who were models of beauty and represented the alpha females who were adored but also completely immoral. I was looking for a face, a very specific skin that would make the audience journey back through time despite the very modern tricks used to disguise her. Then I gave Sarah-Megan Allouch, who plays Liane, “homework”: she had to watch documentaries on the Cocottes, read articles on the period, study paintings and photos of Liane de Pougy, la Belle Otero and others… And watch reality TV for hours and hours. She had to steep herself in the refinement of the women of the past and the animal vulgarity of the women of today, their combativeness and innocence. She had to create elegance through bad taste and capture the essence of two circumstances. She had to understand how bodies are exposed, what motivates TV participants and Cocottes, what is considered beautiful and valuable, and why. After that, we worked on the very particular mannerisms of certain participants in reality TV shows. They way they move their head, flip their hair, move their fingers, go from being angelic one second to exploding with rage the next. We worked on the script’s musicality, on which moments needed to be theatrical or choreographed. Liane was into having a total grip and staging herself. As for the other young actresses, I was looking for women who were more anchored in reality, who had something raw or spontaneous. Girls who could play uber-femininity while being feral and who also had tons of hair! It may seem insignificant, but that detail is relevant… For these characters, it’s the thing that brings them together, the banner to wave that says, “I am seductive” and “I am powerful”. The young women who play Liane’s friends were not professional actresses and that lent things an interesting freshness. They had fun going to extremes without worrying about being super spot on and that carefreeness is what I was looking for because their characters are also into staging themselves, into appearances. As I did for Sarah-Megan, I gave each of them a backstory that explained where they came from, what their parents did, where they lived, what kind of music they liked, their education, their future plans, and examples of impressions that were specific to each one.
Have you discovered any advantages that the short film form provides?
Absolutely. I wanted to experiment with a type of staging that I probably wouldn’t have been able to do for a feature film. I wanted to do something so radical that it verged on being experimental. That goes for the relation between image and sound, the importance of the shots and making them like paintings, the slightly weird cuts, and stretching time…
If you’ve already been to Clermont-Ferrand, could you share with us an anecdote or story from the festival? If not, what are your expectations for this year?
I’ve never been but I find it all exciting! I expect a lot of energy!
J’attends Jupiter is being shown in National Competition F5.
