Tea time with Nus dans les rues la nuit [Naked At Night In the Streets]
Interview with Benoît Rambourg, director of Nus dans les rues la nuit [Naked At Night In the Streets]
Why did you choose to film in black and white?
It was instinctive. I’ve always viewed the film that way. From the beginning. It’s a choice that requires you to produce an explanation for the financing commissions. This is what I came up with: “I want the film to have a nostalgic element, or rather a poetic one, because I hope the film evokes each person’s own childhood, and the black and white images will contribute to that. It is not that black and white necessarily signifies the past, but it I believe it allows the viewer to detach themselves from a certain realism and contemporariness. Some would say from a certain triviality. And by having to fill in the holes in the color, the viewer is spurred to take the first step towards the imagination, or in our case, towards memory. In the film, I show them moments from childhood that everyone recognizes, men and women alike, as everyone has experienced moments that are more or less similar.” After that, as a director-cinematographer without a design team, without a costume team, with only two image assistants, it became clear that I had more control over the photography by conceiving it in terms of density vs. luminosity. And I loved that.
What interested you about this age for the characters?
The age, just for this story, was the latest possible moment before puberty, when kids are moving awkwardly from childhood into adolescence, when they might be unsure and immature about sex, but when they’re beginning to feel desire, sometimes even violently. Considering what Cédric and Sofiane do, they can’t yet be teenagers, but considering what they think about, they can’t quite be completely children. Those are the types of questions that everyone has their own idea about. When I talked to a commission (that rejected the project), one filmmaker, whose films are enormously successful, assured me that it wouldn’t work with kids under fourteen or fifteen. I had put eleven to twelve in the script. In the end, my actors were ten and eleven years old.
How did you choose and direct the young actors?
Since we were going to do a lot of work beforehand, then film at night, and film them half-naked, we needed very motivated young actors whose parents would really be behind the project. I wasn’t opposed to doing impromptu castings if that fell through, but I decided to start by looking for children who’d already shown some interest in acting. I saw hundreds of photos of children who’d applied. Marine Albert (the casting director) showed me a lot of videos of children she’d seen at previous casting calls. We met twenty or so of them, including Emrys and Hugo who gave off the right vibe. I think their “partnership” worked really well. After a second filmed test, we were sure. Both of them had done only one other casting call before ours and hadn’t been chosen. I spent a lot of time with them, especially filming them improvising, doing exercises, trying to make everything as playful as possible. The idea was that afterwards, on the set, I would be able to direct them like any other actor whose strengths and weaknesses I knew, and who was used to my presence and to the camera.
Why did you not want to show any female or maternal presence in the household of Sofiane and her father?
The story is based on things I’ve experienced. I wanted to be faithful to that part. And nothing in the writing justified creating a character of a mother, nor eliminating her absence.
To what degree does facing up to the feeling of one’s powerlessness against illness interest you and can you see yourself making other films on this topic?
There’s no illness of that type in what I’m currently working on.
Have you discovered any advantages that the short film form provides?
Since I haven’t made a feature film yet, I can’t compare the two. We made this film with a very small crew. I don’t see why you couldn’t make a feature film that way. Except that on a longer film, I certainly couldn’t overwork my crew the way I did – the crew was great, young professionals cutting their teeth (like me).
Nus dans les rues la nuit is part of National Competition F6.
