09/08/2024 - The Naples-born director zooms in on the final months of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI’s lives during the French Revolution

(© Locarno Film Festival/Ti-Press)

This year, the Locarno Film Festival opened with an unconventional period drama, The Flood [+see also:
film review
interview: Gianluca Jodice
film profile] by Gianluca Jodice, where French icons Mélanie Laurent and Guillaume Canet embody the no-less-iconic figures of Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI from the moment they’re brought into the Tour du Temple to be tried by the French people. In a conversation following the screening of the festival’s opening film, Jodice chatted with Cineuropa about putting together a “personal apocalypse” in the form of a costume drama.

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Cineuropa: Congratulations on opening the Locarno Film Festival last night. What was that like for you, and with this particular film?
Gianluca Jodice: Of course, being [Locarno’s] opening film is quite important, and I was very excited. When you make films, you’re used to having impressive previews, but never on such a large square with such a huge audience. It also meant the screening had to be technically perfect to accommodate a big outdoor screen, rather than a movie theatre. It was a unique event, which I don’t think will be repeated. Unless I’m invited to open Locarno with another film of mine, that is.

You describe the film as a personal apocalypse. Can you talk about that side of it, the bigger and the smaller scale of the movie?
There’s a public apocalypse because there’s History here [with a capital H]. Like all major turning points in the history of mankind, it’s a traumatising one. Big changes go hand in hand with violence, unfortunately. But I also investigate a more private apocalypse, within a couple and a family, at a time when masks are slipping. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are no longer a king and a queen. Everything they used to be is no more, so they find themselves naked.

We’re all grateful for the French Revolution, but there’s empathy in your film towards the royals. Could you talk to us about how you counter-balanced that empathy?
That was the hardest part. I was careful not to be too empathic, because that would have resulted in a monarchist and nostalgic film, which would have been too much. It was a matter of keeping the right distance from the events. When it came to feelings, too, I didn’t want to insist too heavily on pain and suffering, although they were definitely there. There was a lot of violence, and people used the guillotine. Showing everything without indulging in sentimentalism meant taking a big risk, and I was perfectly aware of that.

Mélanie Laurent and Guillaume Canet have portrayed different aspects of romantic love in many of their films. What was it like working with them while portraying that particular couple?
All of the relationships you see on screen feature in the script, and I was very lucky that they both loved it. I did separate readings with each of them, and we talked at length about the story. To be honest, I was a bit worried because the film’s beginning shows Marie Antoinette as a really horrible person, and Mélanie is very sweet. But she really managed to depict that negative side of her character from the get-go. The same applied to Guillaume; the king had to be a very closed man, firstly because he was a king, and secondly because of his being on the autistic spectrum, or having Asperger's syndrome, which prevented him from being empathetic in the conventional way. Even if he doesn’t become a lovely or a loving man, he takes a small step towards his wife for the very first time. Obviously, this happens just before the film ends.

What can you tell us about the actors’ literal and metaphorical transformations within the context of this period film, where costumes and make-up are so important?
Aside from the costumes and wigs, there was another aspect that was probably the hardest one to endure: the king’s physical body. Guillaume [Canet] had to wake up at 4 o’clock every morning and undergo a four-hour make-up session every day for six weeks – can you imagine? It was really tiring for him. We did a lot of tests for his make-up because we were worried that such a thick, heavy layer of make-up would hide his subtle facial expressions and feelings. We actually wanted him to wear even more make-up than he already does, but we settled on less for that very reason. That was probably the most difficult side to managing the “period” aspect of the film, actually.