15/02/2013 - Romanian filmmaker Calin Peter Netzer offers a few pointers for reflexion about his movie Child's Pose, Golden Bear for Best Film in Berlin.

Accompanied by his actress Luminiţa Gheorghiu and actor Bogdan Dumitrache, Romanian filmmaker Calin Peter Netzer met with the international press after the world premiere of his third feature film: Child's Pose [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Calin Peter Netzer
film profile], in competition in Berlin. Interview with a director who defines himself as "reserved" and "who does not really like to talk".

You co-wrote the screenplay of Child's Pose’s with Razvan Radulescu. Where did your inspiration come from? 
Calin Peter Netzer: Razvan and I first worked on a completely different project, but one which already dealt with family conflicts. But we abandoned it, and started talking about our own lives and the relationships we had with each member of our family. We thought it was an interesting topic. So it all started with my own relationship with my mother, which we then developed into a fictional story.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Why did you set the story in the Romanian upper class? 
Between the mother and son, there is a quasi-pathological relationship. We chose the upper middle class because we thought it would be much less likely to find this kind of behaviour in the lower social classes. Child Pose is a psychological drama.

And while we're on the subject, why this title? 
In the movie, there's a scene in which the protagonist is doing yoga and takes the Child Pose position. We wanted to stick to the title because the son's character is depicted as a victim in the relationship.

Is this mother-child relationship specific to Romania?
In my experience, but it is only my own point of view, parents’ possessiveness towards their children is very strong in European countries of the old Eastern bloc. You probably come across this phenomenon more in Romania than in Germany, for example, where I lived for almost 12 years and where children's education is very different. 

What were your intentions in terms of staging?
When I read the screenplay, which can be seen as minimalist, I wanted to try a new approach, by not using only long fixed shots, for example. I tried to be very close to the characters, I wanted the camera to follow them as if it were almost stuck to them. And since this story is very close to me, I wanted to treat it as objectively as I could. During the shooting, I actually tried to visualize what the editing work would be like. We had two cameras, 126 pages of screenplay and we filmed 13 to 14 hours a day. We then spent two months in the cutting room. It was a very good exercise for me to learn how to slightly lose control.

(Translated from French)