15/10/2024 - The director and star share their attraction to their film's thematic material and why connecting to their own childhoods was so important for this story

(© Sitges Film Festival)

Sarah (Cécile de France), the mother of two young boys, embraces a more primal — or perhaps more childlike — part of herself in Élise Otzenberger’s sophomore feature, Call of Water [+see also:
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interview: Élise Otzenberger, Cécile d…
film profile]. This cryptic tale of family, motherhood and caring for the younger version of oneself reveals its secrets ever so slowly over the course of the film as Sarah begins to believe in the siren's call of the ocean. At the Sitges Film Festival, where the film enjoyed its world premiere, Cineuropa sat down with Otzenberger and de France to chat about this thematically loaded work.

Cineuropa: Let's start with the film's central premise around water. Why this particular element? What does it mean to you?
Élise Otzenberger: It's kind of an obsession of mine. Water has been very important to me since I was a kid. I also do a lot of scuba diving. I always felt something very spiritual and a bit mystic about that connection to water. I had this idea of a story about aliens but not in a very realistic way, so it's been a long time. It's quite personal.

Cécile de France: For me, too, after I've chosen a film, it’s always, “Oh my god — again, a scene with water.” In almost all of my films, I do a scene in the water. So I said to myself, “Okay, I have to look into my unconscious.” There is something — a message, perhaps, or I’m trying to connect to something from my life before arriving on Earth. I don't know. But I love mysteries. I love what we cannot explain in a Cartesian way, you know. Like Élise, I’m attracted to this mysterious part of life.

Élise, you keep the mystery under wraps for most of the film. But between yourselves, did you speak about some potential explanations to the mystery? Or did you also want to keep it unknown in your own minds?
EO: We spoke a lot but not precisely to give answers. The poetry of the story was very important. So even in our discussions, we had that feeling that the secret, the mystery had to be everywhere, in every scene.

CdF: We were more focused on the relationship with the kids and the connections with them.

EO: And then to be realistic. The poetry had to be the mystery, it had to be there, but the relationship and the struggles, everything that Mom has to handle, that was very…

CdF: It was very important for us and where we concentrated our energy. With the kids [Navid and Darius Zarrabian], it's always special. It's very fragile. Élise was a great director for them – for everybody, but for them especially. She prepared a lot during the shooting, so all of the fantastic parts came easily in a certain way. Both of us are connected to our childhoods and because we have two kids on set, it’s easy for us to connect with them and be connected to this part of childhood that we really need for this film and this part that Élise wanted to…reclaim, you know? The part that could be most difficult was not difficult because the relationship with the kids was amazing.

The kids are such an important part of Sarah's story. How did you cultivate the relationship with them through the shooting process, both on and off screen?
EO: We are very lucky because the actors are brothers in real life. So that was definitely a big gift. We were very honest with them. I think we never tried to hide the difficult part of what that family was dealing with in the story. Of course, they didn't listen to all the very difficult scenes. We tried to preserve them from the deepest adult discussions, but they were very smart. They understood the game.

CdF: We invited them, like in a game, to not take it too seriously, not to say, “We are doing a film; it’s very important.”

EO: And you did that a lot. For me, it was important to choose people for whom the idea of working with kids makes sense. I was very lucky, because not all actors are that willing to play in that way with kids.

CdF: Yes, but I didn’t have to manage them. I felt free and had the opportunity to concentrate on my part, because Élise was so focused on them and also on me. I didn't feel rejected because she had to manage the kids. The preparation was joyful, and our connection was very strong before shooting. So they knew that we were doing something in a happy way.

Sarah goes from not believing to believing over the course of the film, and the boundary is broken between what you might call the “imaginary” or magical and the real world. How do you see Sarah’s relationship with her children and family change?
CdF: For me, it was very interesting to play a character that’s evolving. She starts from being overwhelmed by her mental charge and her job as a mother, which is a lot. So the audience says, “How should she be released from that? How will she become free from this situation?” After this, there is the problem with her kid and instinctively, she decides to believe him. Then the audience asks if she is crazy. The audience is balancing between the Cartesian part of society, and wondering why it is in a theatre, but it's for that: it's to tell stories. That's a part of childhood. For me, it's very important to send a message to everybody, to tell the audience, “Don't forget your childhood, please. You will be a happy adult and a parent connected with your kids.” So you win on both sides if you are still connected to your own childhood.

One last question about the visuals, which are just so beautiful. The bird’s-eye view shots of the ocean, especially, are really striking. What were your visual points of reference for the film? Did you have any elements you wanted to bring out?
CdF: The sea, of course, was very significant. It was one of my obsessions to put those shots in the movie. We didn’t have that much time, but we managed to sometimes have another camera dedicated to the water sections. We had a lot of very special shooting moments just focused on the creature, on the water, on the bathtub. It was really important to me.