Tea time with Les rosiers grimpants

Interview with Julien Marsa and Lucie Prost, directors of Les rosiers grimpants [The Climbing Roses]

In order to make Les rosiers grimpants did you become interested in the borders and threshholds between childhood and adulthood?

Lucie: “Threshholds” don’t mean much to me. Some days I feel like an old woman who’s lived a full life; others I’m like a playful kid. I’m more interested in what we call adolescence: you try to keep things under control, but you’re still out of touch; you try not to take things too seriuosly, but you’re happy to try and build things over the long term, you get stressed out about these things not progressing anymore, and so on. I like all of those contradictions. I think our generation of thirtysomethings has a teenage quality. In our film, there’s also a childish aspect in the summer, the old pals, the beers. The scene with the police officer is very childish but the girls could be forty or fifty years old.

Julien: I don’t think you cross any threshholds or close any doors behind you when you leave your childhood. For me, childhood is a territory that remains open and extends into adulthood. I’m pretty sure you can see that in our characters who’ve kept a child-like quality in their behavior, their way of speaking, for example.

When you wrote the script, were you thinking about the idea of timing and reciprocity in romantic relationships?

Lucie: Not really. But, yeah, I do believe in timing. At the same time, I dream of a world where true relationships would transcend bad timing, cause I’m a little romantic.

Julien: I don’t really believe in questions of timing, or rather, I wouldn’t say it’s something I worry about. What’s important is to live your relationships to the fullest, regardless of whether they last or fall to pieces right away; what matters is that encounter, what comes of it and the way it enriches you or makes you think about your own way of life. What Rosalie experienced is indirectly connected to a relationship, and even if that troubles her, it’s fair to say that she probably gets something positive out of it too.

Les rosiers grimpants plays around with the ideas of sexual desire, fantasies, eroticism, and the sincerity and simplicity of relationships. Do you think ideas like decency and fidelity, which require us to control our desires and projections, are meaningful?

Lucie : Hmm hmm… For me, the film’s eroticism and representation of a fantasy are more about bringing the body back to life, cause it was halted in its tracks by the abortion. I don’t think the film depicts any frustration of desire. But, yeah, in society at large, I suppose it’s more practical if we don’t all screw each other all the time… I don’t have much to say about that, it’s a general trend in society. In the 70s people were happy to sleep around a lot; today there’s more of a return to the values of couplehood (with the enconomic and moral crises); motherhood is the ultimate fulfillment like it’s never been before…. But if people are happy like that… At the same time, people leave each other more often today and try other things, but before, marriage was harder to get out of. I think what’s important is not being dishonest with others and with yourself.

Julien: I actually don’t think our intention here was to talk about controlling your desires, but more like being in harmony with them. To know where you are and what you’re looking for. And maybe what pushes Rosalie back to her hometown is that she wants to be sure she really doesn’t want to be a mother. So we had no implicit intention of questioning the desires society imposes on us any more than the ones that you can’t control. .

What interested you about a rural setting – the connection to the earth, to flowers, a sense of freedom?

Lucie: I was inspired by my grandmother’s house and her little village in the Doubs area of eastern France. I’d planned on images of the magnificent Loue river – it’s Gustave Courbet’s homeland. It’s the place of my childhood. Your senses are heightened ten times in places like that; nostalgia is easier to feel there, and for technicians like us, it’s easier to bring to the screen. I love flowers. They say you can live with some serious hardships if you’re surrounded by them. In the end, we didn’t really get the most out of them, though. We shot in the Morvan area because we got support from the Burgundy region, which is magnificent, but unfortunately the climate and soil don’t favor the growth of flowers.

Julien: The question of scenery in the film is very important because it also helps to envisage things in relation to the difficulties Rosalie experiences, and her ability to step back from her life through her contact with nature. And then the earth and the vegetation also help you breathe. Sometimes we wished that the landscapes were mental, the reflection of a character’s psychological state, but that’s very hard to translate to the screen.

How did you imagine the female character and her inner strength? Do you think of her as more of a liberated woman or a dominatrix?

Lucie: Well, that’s funny. I would never have thought you could see her as a dominatrix. I had an abortion ten years ago, and the way this girl deals with her situation is what I could only dream of doing – I would love to have gotten myself together like her. She’s one of today’s thirtysomethings, she wants to know how to live on her own and love it, but she still wants to build solid connections with people, things that have a meaning. She has to take stock of the situation, see the people she loved and still loves, her family home. It’s the basic story of roots that you go back to when you’re feeling harried by an event. She’s a bit lost, but she’s strong.

Julien: The idea was to show something that’s hard to live through, something disturbing, possibly tragic, but to find a way that was lively, rich and generous. We absolutely did not want to make a cheap or depressing film. I think the character developed out of that intention. As for domination, on the one hand, I don’t think there’s a contradiction in the fact of being both liberated and dominating, and forunately the question is never that black or white either. Does Rosalie use the people around her, lean on them to make herself feel better? That’s a possible interpretation. Does that make her a bad or destructive person? I’m not so sure about that.

Do you try to get to the bottom of human relations, especially those related to childhood?

Lucie: That’s another dream – the connection that lasts, which we show in the film. And yes, there are things like that in real life, they’re precious, an asset that you’ll never doubt again, a story of brotherhood without the messiness of brotherhood (which means the family all over the place).

Julien: It’s funny, it seems like you saw a lot of things connected to childhood in the film, while I don’t recall that being an area we spent much time on when we were writing and filming. But it’s nice to know. It gives us the feeling that you’ve reappropriated the film in your own way, based on who you are and the experiences you’ve had..

Do you think we every finish growing up?

Lucie: Technically, yes, since we associate ages with demarcation points – childhood, adolescence, adulthood. There are very sad children, there are very lively children, and it’s possible that the sad children will become lively adults, and vice versa. Age and context play a role, but we’re responsible for a lot of things, I think, when we’re kids, we’re responsible for harmony and balance in the family to some extent. We also move very awkwardly. That can be hard. An adult who’s successfully cut the cord may be capable of greater tranquility and naiveté, and may be even more lighthearted than a child. So everything’s really relative.

Julien: I feel like I have a lot more responsibilities now than when I was a kid or a teenager, but it doesn’t bother me, and that doesn’t stop me from still feeling like a kid.

Do you think short films are effective in questioning the meaning of human relations and of “macro” social units?

Lucie: It’s not an easy format. You either come up with a good idea, which is tough for a format that’s fifteen minutes. Or you risk tackling subjects that should really be dealt with over a few hours. Our characters aren’t all that complex, but we still tried to develop them a bit. I don’t think you can talk about a murder if you’re in a half-hour format, it would seem too superficial. So you try to find compromise topics, and you look for a tempo for a little cantata, short forms that are delicate and not too intense.

Julien: To my mind we made a feature film in a short format, in the sense that we roll out a story where we take our time to present the situation and the characters. We also didn’t back off from filming long scenes, or sequence-shots. Or from keeping scenes that aren’t crucial for understanding the story, but that add little hues and textures. Personally, I’m not a big fan of short films with a concept or a punchline. I really think you can use this format to tell deeper stories, and not just unwind a little trick.

Les rosiers grimpants was either produced, co-produced or self-financed with French funds. Did you write the film with this “French” aspect in mind: making movie references, building a specific context (in a particular region, for example) or inserting characteristically French notions?

Lucie: I placed the story in a village in the Doubs area because that’s my region. The Morvan region looks pretty similar so that was perfect. It would have been weird to shoot by the seaside, yeah, maybe, like really weird. I wanted the remains of a landscaped garden, and our composer suggested a sort of “Asian” music, which we liked a lot, especially since Julien and I love Asian cinema. One of our electricians told me that he was glad to shoot a French film where no one’s talking about love up against a fridge – I loved that comment! So, no, not much France, I hope.

Julien: We talked a bit about Going Places for awhile. But allusions are neither here nor there, it’s tough to say what’s left of them at the end. Anyway, there weren’t any dominant references because we didn’t want to make a film that was “in the tradition of”. When we were filming the last scene on the basketball court, we started with a hand-held camera close to the characters, it was really hackneyed. We said, “Shit, we’re about to make a Dardenne Brothers film!” and we absolutely did not want to go down the social naturalism route, so we switched tactics. Which is a long-winded way of saying that film references can provide a contrast, but they don’t spare you from the risk of reproducing them all over again!

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Les rosiers grimpants is being shown in National Competition F2.