Breakfast with Reisende auf einem Bein
An interview with Alexandru Petru Bădelită, director of Reisende auf einem Bein [Traveling on One Leg]
How did you come up with the idea for writing Reisende auf einem Bein?
The idea came when I first decided to write a project for admission to Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains. I knew that I would be in the same shoes as the main character, Irene: far away from home, heart-broken and trying to find love and be at peace with my soul in a foreign country.
Can you tell us more about the title of the film, and about the principle of collage and your German-Romanian inspiration?
The title means “traveling on one leg” – and it is a little metaphor from Herta Müller’s book of the same name. That is the Romanian-German inspiration. For me, it means the fact that when you leave your country, the journey is difficult, you feel like a lot of things are a struggle and that you will never be able to keep up with the rest of the world, because you’re moving on only one leg.
The Collage is the space of memory, of creativity and of freedom. It helps the character deal with the ghosts of the past, of her risky choices and of unrequited love.
I love the book so much because it tells a story about loneliness in a very poetic and cruel way. The film also ties together the story of immigration of the fictional character from the book, Irene, and the real life experience of my mother, Ecaterina, who immigrated to Italy nearly twelve years ago.
How did you work on the animation and the different steps of drawing and cutting?
For the animation I used old and new pictures of Berlin and also from Romania. I used a lot of old letters from my mother’s youth that I have. Also I did some shots on green screen with the main actress, Andreica Sonia Casandra, on the filmset at Le Fresnoy. And at the end I assembled all these elements using an animation software – After Effects – trying to keep all the poetic energy of these materials alive.
What place did you reserve for words in the film?
Words are like little poems in this film and they work like songs about loneliness and melancholia.
Your main character is still young. Why did you choose that period in life as a crucible for her? Did you envision this period as the moment of her First Love?
I think that Irene, the main character, needed love and freedom. I worked with a young actress, Andreica Sonia Casandra, because when we’re young, life teaches us a lot of cruel lessons about love, among other things. At the same time, Casandra was going through a break-up during the filming, so I thought that that experience would help her deal with her broken heart and create a more realistic and touching character. It was one idea of First Love, because she felt more alone and lonely than in love.
When you wrote the script, were you thinking about the idea of reciprocity in romantic relationships? Is one-sided Love possible?
Yes, of course I thought about “the reciprocity of romantic relationships”. Mainly because I was going through a lot of moments of doubt myself and I was personally living out the results of unrequited love. I think we can love someone without being loved back, but from my perspective, that is an illusory love; we don’t love ourselves enough to be able to let go of a person that we think we love and go find someone who loves us in return, as we are.
Do you think that Love can leave room for freedom and lived experiences without the Other?
I think that everyone has his or her own way of living love. Love is freedom – but it is also a prison that you enter into out of choice. I think that true love is hard to find and that for many of us, it doesn’t exist because we don’t know how to see it.
Do you think that escape is a better solution than taking a stand? Can the imagination be effective for all solutions: escape, taking a stand, conflict, compromise?
I think that imagination and creativity are a savior for many humans. At the same time, it can slowly kill us and make us become invisible. We cannot always be brave and fight life and problems; sometimes we are humiliated by our love and life conditions, so we choose to run and to escape. I totally agree with this. We are meant to survive – and rarely to become martyrs.
Did you envision a parallel between grief and romantic expectation? Your character passes through various similar stages: depression, anger, denial…?
I think your question makes a good point. Indeed, the film tries to show these stages for “Irene the young Romanian woman” who is metamorphosing into “Irene the German immigrant hybrid woman”. There are a lot of contradictions along the way. And the whole process is depicted within the parameters of a traumatic life event. For free people, Communism was traumatizing.
Did you imagine some of the film’s scenes as rituals? In general, do you think that cultural rituals can lead to the development of the self, or are they more of a subterfuge?
I think that some sequences in the film work as rituals of loneliness. Intimate, little gestures that the main character performs for herself in order not to lose her mind. We all have these if we reflect on it. They are rituals that help us remember who we are, what we like and maybe what we love. I believe that rituals are a great thing when they are not mistaken for monotony.
Could you have made the same film with a young man in place of your heroine?
Yes, I definitely think that a young man could have been the main character. A big part of what the whole film crew did is to bring to life a story that has a lot of my own feelings. I felt a great empathy for Irene, even though I am a man.
How did you imagine the female character and her inner strength? Do you think of her as more of a liberated woman or a dominatrix?
I see the main character as someone who blends courage and fear in her quest to find herself. Love and Immigration are important motifs and stages in doing this, but in the end we are all scared sometimes when life gets really cruel; sometimes we find the courage to fight, sometimes we fall to the ground.
In Reisende auf einem Bein we do not see the main character’s parents or any of her friends. Why this choice?
I think that this underlines the fact that Irene lives in isolation, a sort of outcast. At the same time, it is also a matter of story telling. At the editing stage, some characters didn’t end up in the final version of the film.
Do you think shorts films are effective in questioning the meaning of family and of “macro” social units?
I am so grateful – with all my heart – to the Short Film Festival of Clermont-Ferrand for accepting our film in the Festival. It means so much to me and also to the great team of talented people that I worked with. What we tried to do with the film is tell a little story about the life of Irene, an artist and a lost soul in love. If the film says more than this and makes a larger statement about human relations or society, then that is only with the intent of building up the main character.
Reisende auf einem Bein was either produced, co-produced or self-financed with French funds. Did you write the film with this “French” aspect in mind: in building the film’s context or in questioning certain notions?
Reisende auf einem Bein was made with 8400 € which came entirely from Le Fresnoy – Studio National. From my point of view, it could be considered a co-production because I am Romanian, and because I used Romanian actors and my own shooting locations in Romania, mainly in Fratautii Vechi – my home village – and even in my house. Some parts are in Brussels, but in an apartment. All the people from the film are friends of mine and the whole production depended a lot on feeling comfortable with the people I work with.
The French aspects of this film come only from the people I worked with during post-production, talented sound people and really good friends from France who helped me a lot translating the project into French – from the initial writing stages up through the final subtitles. Living in Tourcoing for a year while making the film also helped me a lot to filter the story of Irene into something meaningful and touching.
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Reisende auf einem Bein is being shown in National Competition F11.
