Night cap with Marie Salope (Bloody Marie)

Interview with Jordi Perino, director of Marie salope (Bloody Marie)

 How did you come up with the idea of the encounter between Marie and Karim?
Marie is a character very freely based on a young girl I know. Strong, but who doesn’t have the words to define herself, raised in denial of her own condition. I didn’t want to focus on her confinement, I wanted to give her somewhere else to go, a world where the realm of possibilities is as great as Marie’s own appetite for life. It is here where she encounters Karim, a lover, who is also a bit different in his own way.

 Why did you choose marginal characters? For you, do they have a particular magic about them?
Marie’s straightforwardness, Karim’s impulsiveness – it’s a way to give a kick to the anthill of decorum, the codes of social relationships, and everything considered normal. Thus, their encounter has an explosive quality, borderline monstrous but powerfully alive. Yes, they are quite magical – describing them, having them speak to each other, the first shots with the actors, were joyful moments.

 Bloody Marie deals with the question of appearances, how we relate to those appearances and how heavily those appearances weigh upon our lives. Why were you interested in this question?
This is basically a story about liberation, about accepting oneself in order to live in freedom. Marie is someone who can only be candid and sincere. She doesn’t spend her life posing or marketing herself, which is the antithesis of what today’s world produces. I believe she is a big middle finger to the superficiality of our modern world, but without really knowing it.

 How did you create the music in Bloody Marie?
I sent the script to a musician whose work really moved me, Antoine Mermet. We had never met, and he replied and accepted to write the music for the film even though it wasn’t necessarily his cup of tea. I gave him carte blanche for the first proposal, and I immediately liked what I heard. From there, we truly found a place for the music during the editing of the film. In the end, this collaboration brought something powerful to the hovering strangeness in this film. You really have to listen to what this nice and humble guy is doing: https://saintsadrill.bandcamp.com/

 What interested you in the question of the mother-daughter relationship?
I don’t think this was central to the film. But Marie seems to be in a fusional relationship that went too far, that she doesn’t know how to escape. It is something that has been dealt with thousands of times in cinema. What interested me more were the small touches used to evoke this context of confinement and to offer reasons why Marie had no other choice than to seek elsewhere… at all costs.

 Bloody Marie describes a journey consisting of unfolding events and choices made by the characters. Did you imagine this string of events as mere chance, or was she taking her own future in her hands?
A bit of both… the film describes the defining moment when she decides that nothing will stop her, but she meets Karim by chance. From there, the film develops its own logic, that of the collision, as if they could not avoid each other, and every time they meet the collision is stronger. The strange atmosphere in the film holds to this. In the end, I think what is the most important here is Marie’s desire for emancipation.

 In Bloody Marie, you also deal with the question of affect and its complexity, of attachment and detachment… Is this a theme that appeals to you?
It’s a love story between two explosive people where everything becomes possible. Romantic passion trumps reason. Marie and Karim love each other, hate each other, find each other, leave each other, alternating between childish tenderness and violent exchanges. It’s just about living a life that has the taste of life. That’s why we are attached to them, despite their differences and their excesses, they just want to love and be loved.

 Any cinematic coups de cœur in the past year you’d like to tell us about?
Staying Vertical by Alain Guiraudie, Nocturama by Bertrand Bonello and Elle by Paul Verhoeven.

Marie salope is being shown in National Competition F11.