06/09/2022 - VENICE 2022: The French filmmaker who turned heads with works made outside of the system spoke to us about his highly endearing first feature film

(© Walter Olavran)

Unveiled at the 37th International Film Critics’ Week, unfolding within the 79th Venice Film Festival, Beating Sun [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Philippe Petit
film profile], toplined by Swann Arlaud, is the first official feature film by French director Philippe Petit, who has previously turned heads with his works made outside of the system Insouciants and Danger Dave (screened in San Sebastian’s Savage Cinema line-up in 2014).

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Cineuropa: It’s really rare to see a landscape gardener in a lead role in a fiction film. Where did the idea for this come from?
Philippe Petit: At the time, when I was revising for film school entry exams, I was doing a geography degree and working in an environmental impact research agency. That’s where I discovered nature as observed by engineers from different angles and I got the idea for a film character evolving within this environment. Initially, I looked at developing something around the notion of trees, mobility, etc., but I couldn’t get funding for the project. I came back to it a few years later, this time homing in on architecture and the inclusion of plants in towns. With Beating Sun, I wanted to show people what it’s like to work, to lead a struggle and a project when you’re forty years old, in modern-day society. That’s where the idea of the landscaper came from, and the question of what we should do with plants in towns today, how we should remodel green, urban plots of land. It’s a topical question, and there’s growing awareness of the need to have plants around us.

The idea of openness is central to the film. Max wants to create an open garden, he’s faced with a few obstacles but there aren’t any “baddies” in the usual sense of the word. How did you look to recreate this state of mind?
It’s a bit of a film in subtraction. Open areas like these only exist in really big parks, like Central Park or Vincennes which are pretty much forests. In France, gardens are surrounded by fences. We don’t have that culture of open places which you can just pass through; we’ve got a more closed-off mentality. To begin with, I was supposed to be filming in Rome, but it wasn’t possible in the end, due to Covid. So I had a think about what other towns might have the same Mediterranean abundance. In France, we found what we would refer to as an “abandoned” piece of land. With Max’s character and his desire to open up possibilities and remove any sense of closure, I wanted to move towards a film with several layers of of addictiveness. So it’s quite a simple story, suspended in time, with relatively subtle narrative knots. Nothing is completely black or white, and the architect who might appear to be a baddy actually offers Max work, a real chance, a career, simply revolving around projects for plant-covered terrasses in hotels, as opposed to open gardens. I also removed any scenes of social struggle or of meetings at the town hall, etc., so as to avoid clichés. I wanted the struggle to feel lighter, carried more by the slightly atmospheric music that I’ve spread throughout the film.

Before this film, you made two unlicensed movies outside of the system. Are you a bit of an outsider, like Max? An idealist guerrilla in the industry?
My vision of film, which is best described by Cassavetes, is to explore what you’re already familiar with and what’s around us. So I focused on my family, my friends, myself, and this film sits at the intersection of all that, alongside the subject of plants. A few years ago, I missed out on a CNC advance on receipts and I had to throw three- or four-years’ worth of writing in the bin. I was furious, especially since it wasn’t the first time. With Beating Sun, I wanted to focus on a struggle, which is also one shared by architect friends and others who, at forty years of age, start to ask themselves questions: this is hard, would I be better off doing something else? What will tomorrow be like? The future isn’t reassuring in the slightest, especially when you have children.

(Translated from French)