During the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, 30-year-old Blandine (Blandine Madec) arrives in the French capital from Normandy to reconnect with her estranged half-sister. Little does she know what awaits her as she navigates Paris and the unlikely encounters it provides. This is the story of Valentine Cadic’s fiction feature That Summer in Paris [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Valentine Cadic
fiche film], premiering at this year’s Berlinale, in the Perspectives competition. Homing in on vulnerability and how to shoot a film during the Olympics, Cineuropa spoke to the French actress and director ahead of the film’s premiere.

Cineuropa: Blandine Madec also stars in your 2022 short film The Summer Holidays as a character named Blandine. Is this the same Blandine we see in That Summer in Paris?
Valentine Cadic: It’s not exactly the same character, but I knew that I wanted to work with Blandine again because I know what she can do and where I could take her character [in That Summer in Paris]. And I developed that Blandine together with my co-writer, Mariette Désert.

Blandine is comfortable enough on her own to explore the chaos around her. How do you write a character who is alone, but not lonely?
When you are alone, you are vulnerable, but you are open to the people around you. I found it interesting that this character has complicated things to deal with, but at the same time, she is open. Sometimes, it’s even more necessary to share such new encounters with people when you’re alone.

Can you tell us more about why you decided to set her loneliness against the backdrop of the Olympics?
Well, yes: you can feel very alone when there’s a lot of people around you. It can also turn rather comic because of the discrepancy. For a character like Blandine, during a time like the Olympics and in a place like Paris, anything can happen. Together with my co-writer, we imagined how this event could have an impact not only on the city and Parisians, but also on people who come for the event from elsewhere. That’s what interested me, as well as how overwhelming it can be as an experience.

What was it like making the film, practically speaking?
A bit like [making] a documentary. We knew what we were going to shoot, but something would happen and we’d have to adapt to the reality in front of us: sometimes, a competition would be cancelled, so we would have to come up with ways to work with what we had. When I meet actors during the casting process, I always ask whether they are comfortable with improvisation because that opens up a lot of possibilities.

And the shoot itself, the crowds and the excitement on the streets, what was that like?
I had already tried this with my short movies, which are also set during events or in real places, so I know the basic points for where the camera should be. For example, it’s a good thing to have people coming towards us, but we shouldn’t be just in front of them: otherwise, they will be looking directly at the camera. We used a tripod and didn’t move the camera too much. When we were preparing the shoot with [cinematographer] Naomi Amarget, I was always saying that whatever we planned, it could all change at the last minute because of something [we couldn’t predict]. We prepared a lot, but also changed a lot during the shoot because we had to adapt.

I think it's a miracle that you made a film that is so calm and balanced in such unpredictable and intense circumstances!
Yes! But also, this was what fascinated me: to see a very kind and calm character in a situation where everything was moving all the time. That said, the Olympic Games are very present in the film, but they are not really the whole movie. It’s another perspective on this event that we’ve seen on television a lot: it's not a party all the time!