While watching Katell Quillévéré’s Heal the Living, it’s so easy to imagine the many ways it could have gone wrong. In the hands of another director this remarkable film – which unfolds in the 24 hours between the untimely death of young surfer Simon (Gabin Verdet), and his heart being transplanted into Claire (Anne Dorval), a middle-aged woman – could easily have lapsed into soapy sentimentality. Many more experienced filmmakers than Quillévéré might have struggled to balance the narrative’s two halves, or incorporate its large cast of characters, or would have need much more than a sleek 103 minutes to tell this story. Quillévéré’s third film is her most ambitious yet, and it may also be her best. It’s an intelligent, graceful and emotionally rich piece of work, and I met the director in London recently to discuss it.
I'm interested in the fact that you have expanded the scope of your filmmaking with each feature. From focusing on one young girl's experience with Love Like Poison to a family story with Suzanne, and now you have this large cast of disconnected characters that you have to bring together. Are you conscious of pushing your boundaries and working on a bigger scale each time you make a film?
I think it's a mix of the conscious and the unconscious. What I'm conscious about is trying to be aware of my strengths and my weaknesses in each film that I make, and in the next film I make I always try to push the boundaries of where there was a fragility in the previous film. I want to keep a very personal vision, so you can find a thread in the films, but at the same time to put myself in danger, to go beyond.
Your previous two films both had a very strong protagonist, so I guess the main challenge here is that you don't have a central character. You have multiple perspectives that you have to switch between.
I started off with this reticence because I really don't go for ensemble films. The trap you can fall in with an ensemble film is that you sense what really interests the filmmaker is the artistic direction of the film, the mise-en-scène itself, more than the story or the characters existing in their own flesh. I worked against that quite consciously to not fall into that trap. I like characters and story, and the directing or the mise-en-scène must always serve the characters and the story as opposed to the other way around.
It was actually surprising to me that you managed to make this film run to just one hour forty minutes. I could easily imagine another filmmaker taking this material and making a two-hour or two-and-a-half hour film, or even a TV miniseries. You manage to get across a lot of information and incident in a brief timescale.
Yes, I thought it would be interesting to tell the story in a duration that I call 'classical', but at the same time without watching the clock and being in a state of emergency. I wanted to be in a more intimate relationship. As a result, I knew I had very little time to make the characters come to life, so every scene and every detail was crucial to make that come across.
That makes me think of the scene where Monia Chokri is taking a break and imagines her boyfriend being with her. It's such a beautiful character detail. Were moments like that in the book?
That scene in the script is not in the book, but in the book this nurse has just spent a sleepless night with her lover and she is waiting for the text message from her lover that doesn't come. She is still haunted by his body, so it's inspired by the book but it is not the story in the book.
So when you read the book, did you instantly see the story? Were there images that grabbed you as being inherently cinematic?
I think like any reader I have my imagination and images and emotions that come to me, but because of my work I have a specific intuition that comes to me. Another director would not necessarily see it cinematically, or see the same bits that I think would work as a film. So the challenge originally was to fish out of the book what would work in a cinematic way, and equally seeing what I left out and how that would affect the whole thing. What do I need to flesh out more or add to?
Was it easy to find this balance in the screenplay, with the multiple characters and the two halves of the story, or was that balance something you had to find with Thomas Marchand in the edit?
The challenge starts at the writing stage and you have to keep following it throughout, it's present through the whole development of the film. There's a kind of crisis at each stage when you have to find this balance again, and by the end you have something quite different from the original script. There's a strange sensation that you have when you've made a film, that you realise it's really not the script that you wrote, but at the same time it is the same story.
The film has a very touching lyrical quality and there's also the fact that it's a heart at the centre of the film. The movie wouldn't have worked with a different organ, if it had been a liver transplant or something like that. There's this metaphysical and romantic association that adds an extra layer of emotional resonance. It's more of a love story.
Yes, the liver is not quite the same thing. Definitely for me I treated it as a love story, as a melodramatic love story. I tried to keep these three elements on the go, the physical side, the emotional side and the metaphysical side. The challenge was how to go from one dimension to another and do it in an organic way, and the answer to those questions is in the aesthetics. I had to find a coherent form and shape that complemented the film.
My favourite scene in the movie is the flashback to Simon chasing his girlfriend on the bike. I love that you use this scene to show the strength of his heart, in both a physical and emotional sense.
Definitely, you see it is a good heart in both senses. It is beating so strongly.
I want to ask you about some of your casting choices. Anne Dorval is an unusual choice as she works in Canada, and you have so many great French actresses who could have played this role. How did you make that decision?
It's just that she's the actress in that age, in her 50s, who moved me the most in recent years when she was in Mommy, from Xavier Dolan. She is so amazing I just wanted to meet her and work with her, and I wanted to propose this part because it's a mother but it is the opposite to the performance she is making in Mommy. That was interesting for her and for me. This was her first French movie and that was really important for her. She was obsessed by the idea of having a good French accent in the movie, and she was scared that all he French actresses would be jealous of the fact that I chose a Canadian actress to play this part.
And you have Monia Chokri so you are collecting all of Dolan's favourite actresses.
Yes, but I really chose Monia because of her performance in a French movie that I saw, the name was Gare du Nord from Claire Simon. I saw her in that movie and I didn't even know she was Monia Chokri because she was physically so different from Dolan's movie. I didn't recognise her, and I saw what an amazing actress she was and I wanted to meet her. I didn't care about the fact that she was another Dolan actor.
I expect a lot of actors wanted to make this movie with you, particularly with the book being such a bestseller.
Well it would be a bit sad for me if that was the only reason, but maybe. [Laughs] It was not a bestseller when I first started but when I formed the cast it was. I think it must be one of the reasons in a way, because it's reassuring to everybody and you feel like this kind of story can be a success, it can talk to people. It's also linked to my previous movie Suzanne, the fact that the four main actors were nominated for the César. It helps you as a director because actors can trust you and they see that you can direct them. I think they were also convinced by the screenplay. And maybe they liked me, I think! [Laughs]
How do you work with your actors? You have actors from wildly different backgrounds, some very experienced and acclaimed and others, like Gabin Verdet, who are newcomers. Do you have to direct them in different ways?
I never read any book or anything on how to give actors direction. I only trust myself and the relationship I can develop with someone. For me, it doesn't matter if it's a child or a famous actor or a non-professional teenager, it's just a one-to-one relationship. I'm trying to let myself go and feel the person inside of me and understand the way she works. What is important for me is the discussion I can have with the person before, to observe her, the way she moves and everything, and to give people love and trust. I really believe you can make magical things when someone is looking at you with love. When I direct, I always have inside me the same feelings that the actors do. I am strongly connected with her, I am in the same state, and I think she can feel that and I can transmit things just like that with my body and my voice.
You said you never read a book on directing, but you started making films at a young age. You did your first shorts in your 20s. Were you always going to be an director?
I didn't go to any film school. I just went to university and then I started making shorts and the features. I think I just had this belief, which started when I was 17 or 18, that I could do this job, but it's just a belief, something that protects you from your fears. Then this belief becomes a reality, you created that for yourself, to help you do something with your life. So that's what I did. [Laughs]
I guess it helps to be in a supportive film culture in France. We've seen a wave of very exciting female directors coming from France, while we are constantly asking questions here and in the US about why female directors aren't getting the breaks.
Yes, I think that's because we have a great protective system. Every foreign moving coming out, we tax it, and with the tax on the cinema ticket we finance our own movies. That's a great idea, and that's why we have so many movies. You need to make many movies to have some good movies, and if you have many then you have more women, it's kind of mathematical, you know? I think there is also a tradition of feminism, in cinema and society, and the place of the woman is something that we always fight for, and I think that's why we have so many women in cinema.
Finally, given that this is your first adaptation, how was the experience of showing the film to Maylis de Kerangal? Did you get any feedback from her?
Sure, she was one of the first people to see the movie.
Was that a nervous moment for you?
Oh yes, I was so nervous. It was the first screening of the movie and we had all the actors, which is kind of scary too because they are all really nervous themselves. There was Maylis, and there was also Roman Polanski because he is the husband of Emmanuelle Seigner. And he came to see my movie! That was just awful for me. I remember I saw him just before the screening and I was drinking champagne. We didn't know each other and he told me, "You know, you shouldn't drink so much because you'll have to listen when people tell you what to cut." So I said okay, let's drink another one! [Laughs] I don't know if I was more scared by Maylis or Roman, you know, but the fact is it had a happy ending because he really loved the movie – but he really loved the movie – and he doesn't like anything so I was really surprised. She loved it too, so that was a really great screening. After that some people did not like the movie, but they both did so it was okay for me.
Heal the Living is released in the UK on April 28th