Lunch with Daphné ou la belle plante

An interview with Sébastien Laudenbach, co-director of Daphné et la belle plante

 Note: This film was co-directed by Sébastien Laudenbach and Sylvain Derosne. The interview was conducted with Laudenbach, with support from Derosne.

  Where did you get the idea to make Daphné ou la belle plante [Daphne or the Lovely Plant]?

Quite simply when I met Daphné practicing her profession. The idea seemed totally obvious. So I returned to the erotic club where I had seen her for the first time and I left her my name and number, letting her know that I was interested in meeting her in order to make a film about / around / with her, without knowing in the least what form the film would take.

 How did you assemble the film crew? Did you consciously try to work more with men or with women for this film?

The crew was put together very much as the initial idea had developed, in step with the successive meetings that took place throughout the film’s creation. I had met Jean-Christophe Soulageon at the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival in1999 and we had stayed in touch ever since. He had gotten financing from the CNC and wanted the film to be completed by the end of 2013. Now, I wasn’t able to make it during that period, and moreover I needed technical and logistical assistance for certain parts of the animation. So I approached Sylvain Derosne about joining the project, and rather than bringing him in as the animation director, I thought it would be fairer and certainly more interesting for him to co-direct. He followed up with the film and took care of 90% of its production, with help from the technicians and technical assistance of the studio Manuel Cam. Many of the film’s artistic choices are his.

Julien Signolet, the sculptor, is a friend from my neighborhood. I was thinking about the film when he mentioned collaborating on the bonds between wood sculpture and animation. So he became a part of the project very naturally. I was able to concentrate on this “sculpture” part with just him thanks to logistical support from Florian Duval, a producer at Double-mètre animation.

There was no particular intention to work with only men or women. It was just chance. The music was the product of that chance. I met Juliette Armanet when the film was almost complete and we were wondering about the music for the leaf-dance sequence. There again it seemed obvious and natural that Juliette should do the music in collaboration with her associate Manuel Peskine. The piece you hear in the films is a song from her first album, which is due out shortly, but we kept only the refrain. It seemed like it was written for the film.

The rest of the filming is peppered with other chance encounters of this type, but I won’t go into all of them.

The crew was assembled through intuition and desire.

 Is the account that we hear Daphné’s own, or did you work with an actress?

No, it’s Daphné. After our first meeting outside her workplace, we met two other times. There are about six hours of interviews. The questions were simple and followed the structure that is in the film itself. I wanted to begin with what she exposes, her body, but thinking of it as a protective envelope rather than as the exposure of her intimacy. So my first question was, “Describe yourself”, and that’s the beginning of the film. Then I gradually moved closer to the inside, the heart, while also taking in the spectators’ gaze upon her, her gaze upon the spectators and so on. Obviously, there is a lot of material that we did not use.

I still marvel at how accurate my intuition turned out to be, stumbling upon someone who had such a clear and developed understanding of her work and her position. Daphné speaks well, very well in fact. But what you hear is still an edited version of what was captured live.

 It’s easy to understand the metaphor with the woman who tells her story in the plant animation sequences. The viewer probably expects more roses and gladioli, but you’ve chosen to represent mainly solid, majestic trees. Why this choice?

As I said, I saw Daphné’s body, the tool of her trade, as a protection, a bark. There is the bark, and beneath it different layers that lead to the heart. So the image of a tree came naturally. I also wanted to talk about what is a very urban profession using natural elements, and Daphné herself talks about her work as if it were second nature to her.

For all that, she practices a crude, harsh, raw profession. It is not some kind of intimate, delicate striptease. So a tree is more appropriate than a rose, since you have to have guts to do this by choice.

Moreover, a tree is wood, and wood is malleable. So you can play with numerous aspects of the material, from the bark to the sap. It is majestic, but it can be reduced to dust, and even burnt. But it can also become an object or a work of art.

Lastly, the name Daphné refers to the myth of Daphne and Apollo, where Apollo hunts Daphne down in order to have her, and her father, the river god Peneus, transforms her into a laurel. And that is how she escapes Apollo’s passion. The laurel is a tree.

 Currently in France there is talk of outlawing prostitution because young women are abused, kidnapped and imprisoned in order to make them practice the profession. Daphné’s account seems to go in the other direction for she seems free to go beyond her dance when she wants to, and she seems free to choose her clients. Did you talk to Daphné about this feeling of free choice? 

Yes. It is important for her to practice this profession by choice. That was a part of her account that could have made it into the film: Daphné is a feminist, she wants to use her body as she sees fit. At the same time, this conflicts somewhat with her position, for she works within the limits of a company that guarantees her a certain amount of protection, but that also imposes its conditions on her. Now Daphné has freed herself from the company and practices her profession in a much more openly theatrical setting, and she is her own boss now.

But be careful: Daphné is an exotic dancer, not a prostitute. What happens in the “little rooms” is not illegal. All she does is perform a private dance on the other side of the barrier for a client who, in his turn, is free to do whatever he wants, as long as he stays on his side of the barrier.

 Why did you decide to limit yourself to only one account and present nothing on forced prostitution?

Because that is not the subject of the film, nor its origin. We did not set out to make a documentary on the sex trade in contemporary France, but to draw a portrait. It’s the person that interests me, not her profession.

Daphné’s account lets us understand how much she enjoys her work and the need she has to prove that she is competent in her profession. Are we expecting her to talk about her job like an office worker talking about all the files that need to be processed?

Yes and no. Earlier, I mentioned our first meeting. If on the one hand, I marvel at having stumbled upon this person, I also think that chance is only one element in our meeting. Obviously there were several girls that day. But I think I went to see her, quite simply because I saw myself in her, because she and I are similar, because we seemed to belong to the same world.

 Daphné brings up the question of salary. She seems to think that she’s underpaid, and yet she doesn’t seek a raise… Why didn’t you discuss the issue of establishing rates? Do the dancers have a say in deciding them? Is Daphné afraid she’ll lose clients if she raises her rates?

At the time of the interview, Daphné was working for a company that set her salary. So she was not at liberty to set her own rates. She is not a prostitute. She is a dancer whose profession is in the domain of live performance; everything is legal and taxable. At the same time, in the film she does talk about the fluctuation of her revenue based on the tips that clients leave, which can sometimes be quite considerable.

 At one point in the film, the animation seemed to me to suggest that Daphné sculpted herself through men’s gaze. Do you think that the “construction of self” is determined in part by the Other’s gaze?

Yes, obviously. But Daphné, who begins as a tree, is a multi-faceted creature, just like everyone. Her profession can reduce her to bits and ashes, but it can also exalt her. The kindly or desiring looks of her clients obviously increase her self-esteem. Not so much for her beauty as for her presence. Those looks are good for her because she feels important at that moment for those people. The gaze sculpts wood in order to turn it into a beautiful, artistic form. Certainly, it remains an object, but a sculpture is after all a very special object…

 
 Daphné ou la belle plante is a French production. In your opinion, what does the French film industry offer that others don’t, as far as short films are concerned?

I’m at quite a loss as to how to answer the question, since I have never worked with producers outside of France, and I have never had a very precise understanding of the stakes in international film production. I would suggest Jean-Christophe Soulageon for a better answer.

Programme for viewing Daphné ou le belle plante: National Competition F2.