24/05/2023 - CANNES 2023: The Belgian filmmaker talks about his meta and mischievous film noir that probes the end of patriarchy, and plays with gender codes and genres

(© Cha Gonzalez)

After the surprising Lucie Loses Her Horse [+see also:
film review
interview: Claude Schmitz
film profile], a narrative mosaic that explored the psyche of a wandering actress, Claude Schmitz returns with The Other Laurens [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Claude Schmitz
film profile], a clever and hard-hitting meta-thriller that exhausts the strings of the genre, opening the way to insurrection for its young heroine. The film is being unveiled as part of the Cannes Film Festival's Director’s Fortnight.

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Cineuropa: What are the origins of The Other Laurens?
Claude Schmitz: I wanted to make a film about identity and heritage. When I was young and in boarding school, I was first shown a lot of auteur films, Bergman, Kurosawa, and then in the next boarding school, B-movies, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, the testosterone-filled films of the 80s, which conveyed a very caricatured and gendered vision of the world. In a way, these two types of cinema mixed in my head, and created a kind of schizophrenic heritage. I wanted to make a film that mirrored these two cinemas, a film that was both a tribute and also critical and ironic. It's a detective film, an investigation, and it's also an investigation into the question of gender. A film noir that mixes comedy, action and B-movies. In the end, it's a tale about the disappearance of a vision of the world that I would describe as patriarchal, a fable about the lie of fathers.

And then there is this young girl, who for me is the main character, even if the protagonist is the detective. This young girl is a bit like me. She becomes aware of this environment made up of father figures who convey an outdated relationship to the world.

I think that's what the film is about, the collapse of this patriarchy. And all of this happens through a form that I wanted to be lyrical, romantic, that completely leans into the codes of the genre, without having a cynical look, by giving the characters a chance. The film is a kind of metaphor, an allegory. It's a film of pretences. There is a fake White House, a fake Mexican border, a fake Grand Canyon. We are in places that refer to the United States, and to the fascination of Europeans with North American culture.

Is de-territorialising these elements a way of looking for their truth, but also of seeing them as discourses, as signs?
Yes, although I don't know where the truth lies. All these symbolic elements have a double identity. They are places that exist "in real life", but which also refer to other places. It has to be said that this is a film about the double and identity crisis, a film that has a double level of reading.

How did the story come about?
I come from a theatre background, so Shakespeare is the ultimate storytelling resource for me. Often in his work, there are duets of jesters, fools, who take a critical look at what is happening, in complicity with the spectator. They can also bring a variation on the same theme. This is the status of the two policemen in the film. They bring a comic counterpoint, a grotesque twist to the tragedy of things. This burlesque dimension contradicts the drama and reminds us that we are in a story. Formally, this is the kind of thing that fascinates me, when the film allows itself to take side roads, anything that allows the film to deviate from the expected trajectory. What I want to do are films like adventures, where everything is not given in advance from the first images, the idea being to navigate things, to create each time fragments that give different colours, to create a sort of baroque object.

(Translated from French by Margaux Comte)