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LOCARNO 2024 Cineasti del Presente

Lucie Prost • Directora de Fario

"He necesitado tiempo para encontrar el nivel correcto de asombro y fantasía que encajase de forma orgánica en la historia"

por 

- La directora francesa habla sobre los cambios de tono en su película y sobre el trabajo psicológico que supone el retrato de la masculinidad y el trauma

Lucie Prost • Directora de Fario
(© Locarno Film Festival/Ti-Press)

Este artículo está disponible en inglés.

In Fario [+lee también:
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, Lucie Prost’s debut feature, screened as part of Locarno’s Cineasti del Presente competition, Finnegan Oldfield plays a French immigrant in Berlin, navigating life in the aftermath of his father’s death. The film, however, takes place almost entirely in the French countryside, where the protagonist grew up. Naturally, he has to confront the ghosts of his past. After the film’s world premiere, the French director sat down with Cineuropa to discuss her debut and its complex main character.

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Cineuropa: What does it mean for the protagonist, Léo, to have to leave Berlin, to come back home to deal with family matters? Clearly, he’s between two places, between belonging and not belonging.
Lucie Prost:
It was important that after the traumatic events surrounding the death of his father, he would go far away out of necessity. I chose Berlin to be that far-away place because it’s a city with a lot of parties, drugs and distractions, and as some of my German friends say, it’s like a vortex. That said, it’s a city that I really love: it’s rich in nature and has something ecological about it, too. With Fario, I wanted to show a certain plurality: the rural world, but contemporary. Léo is someone who’s always been in the countryside, but he’s not the typical cliché of a little boy growing up in the fields.

When we meet Léo, he’s impatient to leave, but the more time he spends in his hometown, the more patient he becomes, paradoxically. I’m curious to hear more about the role of time for him as a character.
Yes, time slows down for him when he’s back home. When he’s back in the place of his trauma, time has collapsed. It was very important to work on the character’s psychological dimension, and to do so organically. We follow his trajectory and feel time changing. It starts with a very hectic rhythm – Berlin – and then he has to adjust to a slower pace to fit the rural environment. The place itself kind of slows things down.

What kind of approach did you and Finnegan Oldfield take to portray that shift?
There’s a lot of interiority also in the character and the way he plays it. I met him a few years ago, but he was the first actor I cast. He’s a well-known French actor, but I’d never seen him in a role like this, as he usually plays more extroverted characters. For the character of Léo, I wanted to work with aspects of masculinity and femininity, and he can portray a manly character, but at the same time, he has a very sensitive, almost feminine, introverted side. I loved this kind of dichotomy that exists within him, so we worked a lot on his delivery pace and rhythm. His character used to be kind of hyperactive, but I wanted him to slow down and represent how he’s matured because of the trauma he has been through.

There’s also the relationships he has with the women around him – his mother, his childhood friend and potential love interests. All of these figures also bring out the masculine or the feminine in him. How important was it to surround him with women?
It was very important to have him at the centre, surrounded by four different aspects of femininity; women who are free in expressing themselves and their hardships. But also, there is the cousin who is a man, but for me, he also represents a feminine force.

How did you work on the film’s visuals, also implementing the more “magical” parts?
It took me a while to find the right level of wonder, of fantasy, of that sense of being mesmerised. On the one hand, I wanted something very organic and artisanal, almost, but also magical, which would make it more unlikely to seem organic. We had amazing people doing the special effects, but it took a lot of work to strike the right balance.

Also, there are moments where things feel a bit dark and heavy, and yet at other times, there is levity and hope.
It’s because of the psychological aspect, that’s what makes me so interested in mixing genres and tones. I think life itself is not made up of a single colour or a single shape. Sometimes, a dramatic situation can alter its tone or shade with just a few words.

That’s also how life works when you’re navigating trauma.
Yes, it happens in life, because we ourselves are capable of such shifts. Even at funerals, people can go from being extremely sad to laughing if someone tells a joke, even though they’ve been in tears until that moment. I wanted to make a film that would release some of that energy.

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