Lunch with La fin du dragon

Interview with Marina Diaby, director of La fin du dragon
[The Dragon’s Demise].

In La fin du dragon, you address the disappointment and misunderstanding in a mother-daughter relationship. Why were you interested in showing this failure?

I am not sure that it is a question of failure in the case of Marianne and her relationship with her mother. It is more a question of a missed opportunity between this mother and this daughter, which is punctuated by the mother’s inevitable passing. It is a missed encounter that she will have to grieve.

The death is a final point that puts an end to this relationship in limbo, as well as any hope of the relationship improving. This is what I was interested in addressing: death does not make Man better than what he could have been, but it does condemn relationships to remain fixed for eternity.

In La fin du dragon, you also address the fact that the relationships between each child and the mother are very different.

Yes, indeed. This is a central point of the film. It is the idea that three children of the same mother in reality don’t have the same mother. Each child experiences and appropriates this death through the shared history they have with her, through what they projected onto their relationship with her (and vice versa), combined with who they are themselves.

I think there is an important element of fantasy, of the unreal, that interests me with these three characters. We don’t know if the mother who is dying is the mother described by Marianne, or by Angèle. At the end of the day, this is not what is really important. We try to grasp this mother solely through the memories each child has of her. And with memory, we are no longer dealing with reality.

My first feature-length film will also deal with parent-child relationships. So yes, I believe I can say that I am indeed interested in this theme!

In La fin du dragon, the brother and sister acknowledge the failed relationship experienced by your main character. Why did you not decide to have them deny this reality?

Because she is living it before their very eyes, and they can’t help but see it! And also without doubt because there is a lot of love between these three people whose one point in common was having lived in the same womb.

Why did you choose to make a comedy about maternal bereavement?

I only wanted to address this subject, which has often been addressed in short film, if I succeeded in finding the right tone that I was interested in working with; an absurd and humorous disconnect, but one that does not cut into the tragic death of a mother, regardless of who that mother might have been. The tone changes as the day goes on, as the masks come off, as the pantomime fades away. My goal was for the viewer to follow the same course as Marianne, first in her escape and evasion (which translates into laughter for the viewer) to finally coming closer to the unavoidable emotions of the dramatic circumstances.

How did you conceive the peculiar environment of this life’s ending?

I wanted the setting to be a completely imaginary place. I did not want a realistic environment, so I imagined a house that takes in people whose lives are nearing the end, a warm, pleasant, bright place far from the often sordid imagery of a hospital environment. The singular tone of the film had to be reflected through the artistic direction, and that’s what I tried to find with the production designer (Charlotte Luneau) and her team.

Furthermore, the Doctor Cornett also contributes to the creation of this offbeat and unusual universe, as well as the dog, of course, which is a parable of what we are trying to escape, and yet is there with every step we take.

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In your opinion, is the unsaid a source of suffering?

Living is a source of suffering! What we say or don’t say, when we say it, to whom we say it, these are the choices that ultimately determine and trace our life’s path.

Do you have any brothers or sisters? Why were you interested in this relationship?

Yes, I have several siblings, which were a source of inspiration for my characters. One of my brothers is part of the film’s distribution as it was he who played the role of Doctor Cornett (Lamine Diaby).

In your opinion, can we say exactly when and if we ever stop being a child?

In any case, I think we always remain the child of our parents. That’s the principle… and it is also what makes these relationships so complex. Our ancestors are there forever, like a shadow that we have to deal with, regardless of our age.

As embodied by the main character, the director has to find songs and music to accompany the film. How did you make your choice and did you easily come up with Jacques Brel?

I had to go with Brel because his entire career, he sang of death in every tone, laughing about it, making fun of it, with the talent that was his. I discovered “La ville s’endormait”, a song of his I didn’t know, which evokes the twilight of a life with poetry and implacable lucidity. In fact, this song is from his final album, Les Marquises, which he wrote while knowing he was dying of cancer. His apprehension of the end of life changed into something darker, heavier, but also and above all marvelously true and moving.

That song was exactly what was needed for this film because it was such a precise fit: the time to laugh is over, now it is time to confront death…

Do you think that the short film is a good tool for calling the family unit into question, as well as the “mega” unit that is society?

I think the short format is fabulous. It forces you to condense a subject and probe it to its very marrow. The superfluous, the “fat”, doesn’t work well in the short film. We are highly constrained, in the writing as well as in the production, where time and money are rare commodities. I like these constraints which force us to get to the essentials, to the heart of the story we want to tell: the short film is a pledge. It is a formidable exercise, and in my personal experience, the perfect antechamber before the grand bath that is the feature-length film.

We can question anything in short film. In my opinion, there is no subject that isn’t adapted to this format.

La fin du dragon 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?

I didn’t write this film with these “French characteristics” in mind. But it is true that I absolutely wanted to shoot in the Limousin region where I grew up and where I was able to shoot the film thanks to the support of the Limousin region. As far as Brel is concerned, he is Belgian. I suppose that gives me a European aura!

My first film, Beyond the Night, was also given the label of “very French” cinema.

I dig deeply into my own past when I write. I was born and grew up in Normandy and in the Limousin. It is without a doubt this that makes me a “very French” author!

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La fin du dragon can be seen in the National Competition F6 programme.

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A meeting with Marina Diaby is scheduled following the screening of the F6 program on Friday, 10 February at 2 PM at Le Rio cinema.