The 40th Namur International Francophone Film Festival closed with a screening of Mélissa Drigeard’s new movie, Le Gang des Amazones [+leggi anche:
recensione
intervista: Mélissa Drigeard
scheda film], which is based on the true story of five young women who robbed half a dozen banks in the early ‘90s in the South of France. It’s a film which sits at the intersection of a variety of genres and which looks to understand, without making any excuses, how and why robbing banks felt like the best solution for these otherwise well-balanced young women.

Cineuropa: How did this project come about?
Mélissa Drigeard: It was my co-writer Vincent Juillet who first told me about this incredible story after he heard an episode of a podcast about criminal cases. I wondered how it was that the general public weren’t aware of these women, since what they did was no small thing, it was basically organised crime. I contacted one of them, Hélène Trinidad. I went to see her and spent a few weeks with her. And that’s where the film took root. At the origin of the whole thing was an unbelievable error made by the Family Allowance Fund which meant that, from one day to the next, she didn’t receive any further support, and even though she worked by day and her mother worked by night, the two women couldn’t provide for their family. I found it fascinating that at that stage in their lives, robbing a bank could feel like a solution.

It’s a story about female hardship.
Yes, the characters are in a financially and sometimes emotionally deprived situation. Hélène is a young, single mum. And I realised that exactly the same thing could happen today. But I didn’t want to judge them (there was a trial, after all) or turn them into heroines, which was also a way of doing right by them.

By becoming bank robbers, the characters are aware that they’re demolishing gender stereotypes. Do you feel you were doing the same by making this film?
Yes, totally. The Amazons take no time to decide to walk into the banks simply dressed as women, because no-one would suspect them then. When I, myself, tried to find reference points - films about female-led bank heists - I couldn’t find anything. What I mostly tried to do was make an unvarnished and a bit of a tough film, but nothing spectacular, because the story’s already just that.

The Amazons are at the intersection of sexist and class discrimination, and the film itself isn’t boxed into a particular genre either.
No, it’s clearly divided into different chapters, just like their lives have been: it’s a social film, a heist movie, a prison movie, a courtroom drama! There was a bit of that in the writing phase, with one genre rolling into the next, but then, one day, my co-writer said: we’re not exploring three days of their lives, we looking at their actual lives! And our lives are a blend of genres. What I wanted was to really stay in tune with the girls’ viewpoint; in fact, there are lots of sequence shots and not so many reverse shots. But running through all of that is violence, they come from backgrounds where it’s trivialised. And it was a very misogynistic time, to the point that no-one, including the papers, could believe that these robberies were carried out by women.

How did you decide on the cast?
I wrote for Lyna Khoudri, so it was a huge relief when she accepted the part. She’s both gentle and strong, and there’s a kind of darkness in her eyes sometimes, which can be frightening. I was also sure that she and Kenza Fortas - who was magnificent in Shéhérazade [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
scheda film] - would make wonderful sisters in the film. When it came to Hélène, I was looking for the sunny side of Izia Higelin, she’s captivating too. I had a real artistic thunderbolt moment when I came across Mallory Wanecque in The Worst Ones [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Romane Gueret e Lise Akoka
scheda film]. And finally, when it came to Laura Felpin, a friend suggested her name to me, and when I discovered her work in Killing Blues the deed was done. I needed actresses who weren’t like real Amazons, where you’d have no problem thinking: oh yeah, she could definitely rob a bank.