Dinner with Le mal bleu [The Blue Problem]
Interview with Zoran Boukherma and Anaïs Tellenne, co-directors of Le mal bleu [The Blue Problem]
How did you come up with the idea of setting the action in a pigeon hideout?
From the beginning we knew we wanted to make a film about lack of self-confidence and the fear of losing control that it entails. When we started thinking about where we could place our story, Zoran, who grew up in the Lot-et-Garonne region, mentioned pigeon hideouts. After going there and meeting numerous “paloumayres” (pigeon hunters), we realized that there truly was a possible parallel between the way pigeon hunting goes on and the system that Marie-Pierre traps Jean-Louis in.
Why did you want to situate Marie-Pierre in an all-male environment?
To shine a light on the main character’s neurosis. When we first meet Marie-Pierre, we see a very confident woman who leads a half-dozen hunters by the nose, but as the story develops, we realize in fact that by surrounding herself with men, she’s cut herself off from the real world, and thus from any potential rivals, but also and especially from her own femininity.
What interested you about self-doubt and about doubting others?
To see just how difficult it is to have self-confidence if you don’t have, or no longer have, self-love or self-esteem. Marie-Pierre doesn’t doubt Jean-Louis, but herself.
How did you develop the characters’ fits of awkwardness?
In a relationship, each partner is trapped in a role where she or he must follow specific rules in order to maintain the balance of the relationship. Anytime one of the partners wants to leave behind their role and break the established codes, that causes a tremor, which is where the awkwardness comes from. In terms of acting, we don’t use psychology to get things across to the actors. We direct them very empirically, almost like animals. For example, in order to get Marie-Pierre to seem really at the end of her tether in the scene where she shows up at the hideout, we had the actress (Sylvie Le Clanche) run around the set for a good ten minutes. Since she was exhausted, she let go of everything, she left her mind behind and that gave her anger a genuineness.
And why is the problem blue?
Alain Bougrain-Dubourg, the famous defender of our friends the animals, coined the expression le mal bleu, which refers to the over-hunting of wood pigeons. We love the title for what it means with respect to hunting, but also for its poetry. The word “blue” makes you think of the bruises on your body, and on your soul too [The French word for bruise is bleu – editor’s note], and then there are “blue” words like the ones the singer Christophe refers to [Les mots bleus is the title of an album by Christophe – editor’s note].
Have you discovered any advantages that the short film form provides?
The greatest advantage of short films is that there is no commercial pressure. We have the complete freedom to write what we want, the way we want and have it acted by whoever we want. The other advantage of short films is the frame they impose: they force you to be efficient and learn how to have the viewer experience an emotional journey in record time.
Le mal bleu was shown in National Competition.
