Dinner with Ton cœur au hasard

An interview with Aude Léa Rapin, director of Ton cœur au hasard [Your Heart Left to Chance]

 In Ton cœur au hasard, you depict a very lonely young man who seems to be searching for something. In you work, do you sometimes cut yourself off from the outside world and seek out solitude?

Well, let’s say that Ton cœur au hasard is the product of my very close collaboration with the actor Jonathan Couzinié. We wrote the script together one desperate night, when we both kept wondering how it was possible for people to feel so alone in our highly connected world.

The idea grew quickly. What we had to do was completely blow up that loneliness and throw Freddy, the main character, into a real journey to find a girl he had met on the internet. A virtual love that he tries to make real by looking for a girl he only possesses through a single photo.

 In the film, you question the relationship Freddy has with women. Do you think there is a sharp divide in modern society between men and women, one that is especially visible in romantic relationships?

I certainly believe that all forms of romantic relationship imply division, misunderstandings and a sense of being out of synch. I don’t think that can be simplified to a question of men and women. I think it depends on who, what and how people meet each other. I don’t really like the idea that there is a particular way of being a “Man”, and way of being a “Woman”, and that that implies “a sharp divide in modern society”, as your question states. What I can say is that Freddy is a man very much wants to have a love story with a woman, and that he has no idea how to go about it because he lives in a fantasy world. He identifies with the type of footballer who sports a haircut like David Beckham’s or Antoine Greizmann’s. He thinks that if he looks like his idols that will give him a certain edge with women. He developed that look for himself out of a pure fantasy – precisely the fantasy of what a “man” should be. And he’s chasing after an image; he is not in love with a woman, but with the image of the woman on the screen of his portable phone.

 Ton cœur au hasard opens on a rather amusing scene of heavy drinking, and it is only later that we discover that your hero does not fully participate in the joy. What made you create that contrast?

Freddy trudges through his back-breaking job in the chicken industry; he is almost religiously devoted to his old, broken-down van; and, yes, he is plagued by his addiction to tobacco and alcohol. Freddy battles the loneliness and nothingness of his social life.

Every time he touches something in his van, he breaks it, and each time it’s quick and immediate. By extension, the first time he touches the girl in the film, he breaks her too. That is me working through the indelible imprint that Of Mice and Men has left on me. Like Lenny in Steinbeck’s book, Freddy thinks that he’s doing good, and he ends up taking advantage of a girl who may very well have been the one he was searching all over for.

 Your hero is totally detached from reality and a sense of responsibility – his own in particular. He does not realize that his actions are reprehensible. Were you trying more to condemn the influence of alcohol, or the influence that excessive loneliness has in modifying his perception of reality?

In order for me to properly answer your question, you’ll have to be clearer about which actions you’re referring to. What interests me in the character is the whole, not just his relationship with alcohol, which is only a facet, a result of other things. And in any case, I do not want to condemn the character or his relationship to alcohol; I’m not really interested in judging him, or in making him a spokesman for “my morality”.

 While he claims to have a successful career, the young hero of Ton cœur au hasard seems to live in his van. This inconsistency puts into doubt the reality he experiences. Were you intentionally creating doubt? Was that something you started with as you wrote?

Is he on a real quest, or is it only an imaginary one? In other words, does the girl in Spain really exist? I decided to accompany Freddy and take him seriously, wherever the truth may lie. I chose to stick to “his” truth and see where that would lead us. I don’t know whether Freddy truly feels that his career has been a success, but he needs us to think it has. Everything in the film is ambiguous, and from that ambiguity arises doubt. It’s fascinating to let the viewer come to his own conclusion.

 Freddy seems singularly destitute when faced with life. He has no colleagues and no friends. No mother, no father, just a grandmother whom he is clearly unable to communicate with… Why not envision that inability to communicate with a direct parent, or within a group of acquaintances?

I don’t think I mention in the film that the character has no colleagues, friends or family. That’s what you deduce from it. Someone who travels necessarily divorces himself from his daily routine and from those that normally people it. So yes, he goes to the south of France and stops at his grandmother’s house. That was a narrative choice that seemed interesting. I’m comparing Freddy’s loneliness with that of his widowed grandmother, who is visiting her husband’s tomb. Each of them, in his or her own way, tries to give life to a person who does not physically exist, and when they are faced with each other, their loneliness gets the upper hand. The two of them understand each other better in silence than through speech.

 Did you research cases of extreme loneliness of this type, or is it all purely imagined?

I think we all grow up with stories like that. My own grandmother sets an empty plate at the end of the Christmas table so that my deceased grandfather can eat with us… My aunt got a dog after she separated from her husband and she talks to it as if it were human. Other people watch Youporn or play Second Life, and so on. Everyone has his or her way of ruffling their isolation and filling the void.

 Ton cœur au hasard was produced in France. In your opinion, what does the French film industry offer that others don’t, as far as short films are concerned?

I would simply like to say that this film is not a product of the French film industry as it is commonly understood. We intentionally did not seek any financing. I wrote the script in June, thinking that I would shoot the film in August and September, and that turnaround was too quick for my producers to begin the process. So we started off with our own funds and a very limited crew. We had a van that was insured for four people, so the crew could not exceed that number. I did the filming myself, and I also decided to handle the editing. The sound engineer, Virgile Van Ginneken, also did everything on his part from beginning to end: sound recording, editing and mixing. We received support from competent people who believed enough in our project to lend us their time and talents. For example, the singer Emily Loizeau, who did us the honor of composing a piece for the film. We made a film in the most make-shift way possible, with a large helping of passion and confidence.

I’m now very anxious to make a film fully in accordance with the standards of the French film industry, and in that way to be able to answer your question.

Programme for viewing Ton cœur au hasard: National Competition F4.