10/09/2021 - The film and theatre director talks about his feature debut, a hybrid and dreamlike film

(© BRIFF)

Cineuropa meets with the film and theatre director Claude Schmitz, known for medium length films that were in heavy rotation at festivals, including Rien sauf l’été and Carwash [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (winner of the prestigious Prix Jean Vigo). He tells us about his feature debut, Lucie Loses Her Horse [+see also:
film review
interview: Claude Schmitz
film profile], a hybrid and dreamlike film presented in the National Competition of the Brussels International Film Festival. 

Cineuropa: What are the origins of the project?
Claude Schmitz: Initially, I am a theatre director. I’ve been directing plays for 20 years, and making films in parallel for about ten. There have often been intersections between these projects. This mix of genres is something I’m accustomed to. I created a theatre project called Un royaume for the Théâtre de Liège. This play already tells the story that we see in the film, it offers a reverie about the job of being an actress. It was before Covid, and we wanted to present that situation, an abandoned and empty theatre in which something had taken place, but we’re not exactly sure what. In this case, reality caught up with fiction. We set up the production, performed it in Marseille and Liège, then Covid arrived. Everything stopped, and the tour was disturbed. The Liège theatre suggested I do something anyway, something that could eventually be shot and streamed. But I offered to create a real cinematic work instead. We stayed in the empty Théâtre de Liège for about two weeks, and shot the film with a very small crew. It is without a doubt a hybrid and slightly strange object, but for me, it is a work of cinema, then of theatre. 

This reflection on the job of the actor also raises the question of the idea of work in art, of everything that comes before the work or the performance. This has particular resonance when we know that the film was shot during the pandemic, while all theatres were closed. What happens when it is impossible to perform? 
These are things that interest me more generally. What does it mean to represent the world? When actors take on this task, what does that represent for them and for the audience? We become responsible for the destiny of characters, we do not necessarily play ourselves, and yet we put a lot of ourselves in it. There is also the question of the porosity between like and art, in the film. And there is another kind of ambiguity in the film, with its slightly dreamlike quality. It is at the same time a reflection on the job of the actor, and on what it means to represent the world. The making of a poetic material, the concept of representation, is something that fascinates me, and it also fascinates me to show it. 

What about the figure of the female knight? Her work is both a quest and a fight?
The idea was to look at the figure of the knight-errant, to imagine that actors or actresses are like knight-errants who, with their things, their armour and their horse, are seeking a quest. They are not mercenaries without morals. The knight is pursuing an ideal. Through this figure of the knight-errant, I wanted to suggest a metaphor about the job of actor, with characters going from one castle to another, hired on one project then on another, and always trying to fulfill their mission the best they can, following an ideal. The wives of King Lear, the play that my actresses are performing, are indeed three very strong women. They are in a rapport of domination towards the father at the beginning of the play, but they will completely break free from this figure. We cannot reduce the play to the question of the patriarchy, but it is part of it. All of this constitutes the imaginary corpus that allowed me to thread together this story, King Lear, the knight-errant, Alice in Wonderland… 

What projects are you working on?
I’d like to be able to continue with my project Lucie, to anchor it in time. In parallel, I am preparing my “real” first produced feature debut, which should be shot next summer. A fake genre film. I will also continue the Royaume tour next year, and create a new show. 

(Translated from French)