Tea time with Raymonde ou l’évasion verticale

Interview with Sarah Van den Boom, director of Raymonde ou l’évasion verticale [Raymonde or the Vertical Escape]

 Why did you place Raymonde in a rural environment, with gardens and nature?
Because for me, Raymonde’s pastoral setting is part of the story, it is a context that is indissociable from the character. Raymonde is a woman of the countryside of yesteryear, she is not very educated but has a strong connection with nature. She lives on the outskirts of the village and tries in vain (and very awkwardly) to integrate with the inhabitants who don’t think very highly of her. She is the crazy woman, the local witch. So, she is completely marginalized both socially and geographically. She tries to conform to social demands (religious ones in particular), but there is a turning point in her life where she realizes that all her efforts have been for nothing. She turns to her “wild spirit” and dives into an animistic dimension. Nature is a force around her that she starts out by fighting, but then to which she surrenders. I took inspiration from the female members in my family. Raymonde’s house is directly inspired by my great-grandparents’ house in Burgundy, which my uncles have preserved in its original state, including the content of the cupboards and the attic, with its old three-piece suits and corset dresses. It’s a universe that speaks so strongly to me that in a way, I even feel as if I grew up in the period between the two wars. That’s also why it is difficult to pinpoint when Raymonde’s story takes place: most of the story’s elements come from the past, and then there is that improbable Minitel that Raymonde uses… Anyways, Raymonde belongs to a rural, outdated world.

 How did you work on the animation, in particular the bodies and the materials?
The animation was done at JPL films, in Rennes. From the beginning, I wanted to work with rich and soft materials. I wanted a film that was visually rich in textures, especially those in nature, and those in the characters’ different plumages/coats. With Jean-Marc Augier and Fabienne Collet, we thought about the different materials for the settings and in parallel, David Roussel and Anna Deschamps offered solutions for the marionnettes. Everything was conceived to be realistic and extremely detailed in order to give the impression of a miniature world that we could slip into and inhabit. The animation was done through the great talents of Gilles Coirier, Souad Wedel and Marion Leguillou who built on the voice of Yolande Moreau and succeeded in giving Raymonde all her soul.

 Why did you want the characters to be represented by animals?
Initially, Raymonde’s character seemed obvious to me: a woman with an owl’s body who experienced difficulties fitting into society. And then her story was built up around her. If you look closely, the village animals are all domesticated animals whereas Raymonde and the crow woman at the end are both birds of ill omen that live on the outskirts of villages. And also, I feel a strong connection with animals. I find that they are not all that different from humans, and I wanted to blur the boundaries.

 What interested you in Raymonde’s solitude?  Did her connection with religion have to be her only possible avenue of escape?
That’s a good question. What interested me were the efforts she makes (and that she seems to have made all her life) to find a companion, to satisfy the demands of her religion which she really follows to the letter, to organize her daily life, whereas she is of a different nature. I belong to a family of artists full of distracted, shy people who have organizational problems, and as a result, self-confidence problems. On another note, we discovered quite late that our daughter was autistic. She wasn’t diagnosed until she was 18 when she developed a school phobia and refused to go to school. She had courageously battled all her life to conform to social norms until the day that she understood why she was struggling so much. And that day was a liberating day for both her and us as parents. She could finally be herself. So, Raymonde’s social anxiety is something that speaks to me on many different levels. I first imagined Raymonde as being autistic without being aware of it, in a world that ignores the very concept of autism. Her escape is not through religion as much as it is through the sublimation of reality and letting go. In the beginning, I wanted to represent that through art, and in particular through song, but owl song is quite restricted, a limitation I found very interesting.

 How did you work on the film’s rhythm?
In a very intuitive way, it was mostly done through computer animation… I worked with a Quebecois editor that I like very much, Annie Jean, who is intellectually gifted and offers me her expert perspective when I’ve got my nose too close to the grindstone.

 Are there any particular freedoms that the short film format allows you?
Yes. First of all, the short film format allows you to tackle more eccentric subjects. When we make a feature-length film, the budget spent on animation leads to a tendency to consider the film as a product right from the beginning. You have to think about your public, and to be sure that you will make enough money to meet costs. It’s another kind of logic. I could have never told the story of this depressive owl in a feature-length film, no one would have given me a penny for that! Furthermore, the short film, like a short story relative to the novel, allows through its concise nature to create a “temporal gumdrop”. We have to say a lot in a short amount of time. It’s like a small piece of candy that leaves an enduring taste in the mouth!

Raymonde ou l’évasion verticale is being shown in National Competition F9.