Night cap with Marie Boudin

An interview with Margot Barbé, director of Marie Boudin

 Marie Boudin is an elegant short film that’s poetic and melancholic. What is its starting point?
The film is first of all about a character, Marie Boudin. Coming home from school one evening, a friend and I were talking about names that made us laugh. Marie Boudin’s was still fresh in my mind. There was something pathetic and touching about it. I started drawing her everywhere in little stories, writing stories about her and her group of crooked friends. She was a character that touched me deeply, and that I knew very well. She is anxious, clumsy, sometimes angry with the hurdles in life that she couldn’t overcome. I wanted to make a film that took her out of her daily routine, her comfort zone in order to confront her with the things she feared, the unexpected, the unknown but guided by a desire for serenity.

Tell us about the animation techniques you used?
For this film, I wanted to keep a traditional technique. Everything is black ink on paper. There’s a sort of letting go in the graphics which is similar to my sketch books. I wanted it pure, simple, and to keep only the fundamentals. I wanted to have gaps, to use improvisation, to play around with emptiness.

What are your works of reference?
There are many authors, illustrators and directors whose path I have crossed in my life but strangely, for this film, there’s no direct influence. I think what comes closest to what I tried to do in terms of tone is found in the film Le congrès by Ari Folman, or perhaps the aura and refinement in Yoriko Mizushiri’s films and most of all, the poetry of the photographer Masao Yamamoto.

Your film will be screened at the cinematheque in February 2020. What do you think about the visibility of short film in France?
I am very proud that my film will be at the cinematheque. It’s an important venue for cinema, as is this festival. For now, Marie Boudin is being screened in 4 festivals and events in France. I think it’s on a good track so far. I hope that it will continue here and also abroad.

Would you say that the short film format has given you any particular freedom?
Constraints regarding production time and the length of the film are essential when writing the scenario. I have a tendency to go off in lots of different directions but I only had 6 months to make this film, so I had to make choices and ask myself the key questions regarding the story I wanted to tell, imply and convey. Marie Boudin is part of a larger universe and without this constraint I don’t think this film would have existed. Of course, there are lots of other aspects that I didn’t have time to include in this film but I’m saving these desires for my next films.

Marie Boudin is being shown in the National Competition F12.