FALSELY SIMPLE, FALSELY NATURAL - LOVE LETTERS BY ALICE DOUARD
In her directorial debut LOVE LETTERS, writer & director Alice Douard talks about the bureaucratic hurdles a young lesbian couple (Ella Rumpf and Monica Chokri) has to face in order for both of themto officially become the child’s parents. We talked to the director from her home in Paris.
What was the starting point of the film? Was it the political situation, the characters, or a personal question? First and foremost, it’s a perspective that was previously missing. One that I wanted to create for the next generation: a joyful and humorous perspective on this subject. The political aspect is the role of women in it, but above all it's about this period, which was marked by intense conflict in French politics.
It's almost a period film in that sense, showing the change since then and the path we've come in a relatively short time. We see that by many little details in the production design as well. Exactly. It's only been ten years, but of course, technology has changed enormously, and so has behavior. You see people reading newspapers on the subway or holding a real cigarette pack which don’t exist anymore, clothing has changed, of course, too. That was part of the team's work and was the starting point in which this couple finds themselves, and where the story is set.
Has anything changed in the adoption process over the last ten years, or is the legal framework still the same as it was back then? It has evolved. In 2021, the law was amended so that the partner could acknowledge the child even before birth, thus eliminating the need for the adoption process. For example, in my own experience, it took 14 months for my signature to be recognized. Those 14 months were fraught with uncertainty regarding my legal status. If something had happened, I would have had no rights to the child at all. So, this amendment is progress in some respects but not completely - as it doesn't yet represent equality with the parenthood rights of heterosexual couples. But there are also significant setbacks and difficulties, especially for transgender people.
You just mentioned that there's this autobiographical element in the film. Did you sometimes feel like you're revealing too much of yourself? I've learned about many other women's relationships and compiled these stories and mine to write. So I quickly distanced myself in the scenario from my own history by saying to myself, "This is our story, this generation's story." I found many elements to make a film that was intimate, but wasn't my story. I'm not a musician—my mother isn't a pianist. And then, when the actors for the couple were discovered, it became something else entirely again.
As you mention the role of the mother of one of the parents - why was it important to include this perspective, and what inspired it? I think this character opens up the film in terms of maternity and the generations. Women always have this issue of being a good mother. Their maternal relationship has to be successful. Our mothers, the generation before us, also had their career successes. We, their children, sometimes judged them for that. But at the same time, they opened a path of freedom and a path of possible fulfillment for us. They were also the first generation to live differently than just in the apartment for their husbands. I think the question, what does it mean to be a good mother, is infinite, and no one has an answer. I think this artist is addressing that, knowing that she is a biological mother, that her daughter will be a non-biological mother, and that the question of biology is very quickly forgotten when one is asked to take care of a child.
You have a background in art history. To what extent has that influenced your filmmaking? It's a film that's hybrid in the tonalities. It's a melodrama, but at the same time funny and also a romantic comedy. The film is nourished by my desire for music, my desire for art. I worked with references for my whole team. We talked a lot about the woodblocks of the parquet. And then there is the form of art videos, the way we filmed these videos. I have the feeling that the film takes a somewhat broader approach in these choices.
How did you work with the actors? The script was very preceisely written, and the two really respected their lines. That requires a lot of takes. Monja and Ella listen to each other well. They grasped it very quickly, they had a way of observing each other, of figuring out how it worked. That was great. It's a film that's falsely simple and falsely natural. There are many scenes that require a lot of technique to make them look natural. The language I often have in mind is by Alexi Gruss, a circus director. He says that art is work, and that through work, the work disappears. The more we work, the less we see the work. When the circus artists walk on the hoops, we think it's easy, but they've worked so hard that it becomes easy. To achieve this simplicity in the presentation, a great deal of work actually took place.
Do you need more or less technique to truly reach your goal? That depends on the filmmakers, the films, and the scenarios. I'm a little bit German. I work with my wife, whom I've been together with for 20 years and with whom I've worked for 20 years. We produce together, giving ourselves plenty of time before we start the preparation and filming, to find the best partners, the best locations, to figure out how to make it work. Time, that's the most important thing.
You are also a producer. Yes, my wife Marie and I put together a production company for a short film shoot. That film won the César Award. Because that was all we had produced, we joined a production company to produce my first feature film but we wanted to be co-producers and also executive producers of this film. That's the key to my freedom.
Might be a sequel to the story of the two of them? What I found beautiful about the film was showing all the ideas and questions one might have beforehand, before the birth. And then to arrive at the moment when the child is there, the encounter and the silence surrounding that encounter. We move away from this public and legal perspective and into the question of family, into what happens in the intimate sphere. I felt it was a good focal point to the story.