Belgian actor and filmmaker Jean-Benoit Ugeux has presented the world premiere of his debut fiction feature, Maturity [+leggi anche:
recensione
intervista: Jean-Benoît Ugeux
scheda film], at the Arras Film Festival.

Cineuropa: What lies at the heart of this film?
Jean-Benoit Ugeux: What I think I want to say is that everything is a matter of perspective. Ludovic is an old white male in his fifties who’s a little out of touch, who doesn’t understand modern reality at all. Someone who’s totally lost in the face of a changing world and who doesn’t have the tools to adapt. A person who hasn’t made peace with his past and who tells himself his life could have been different if he’d questioned certain things earlier… I wanted to depict a multi-faceted character.

Ludovic is in his fifties, but his encounter with a teenage girl brings out his immaturity.
I wanted their encounter to make him behave younger and for her to grow up; for them to meet halfway and then continue on their own paths. This teenage girl clearly forces him to take a good look at himself, to wrestle with more probing questions than the type people his own age might prompt. Ludovic is always on the run, which is why we wanted to make him an architect: he spends his time building other people’s homes but hasn’t really built one for himself. We never see him living anywhere; he’s constantly on the move. He leads a very libertarian kind of life; he’s clearly a right-wing character: someone who’s succeeded, enjoyed himself, had fun, but then who suddenly realises he might have missed something.

He's constantly on the move and, paradoxically, the film captures him in moments when he’s pausing, waiting or silent, alongside all the action.
He’s forced to stop, but you sense he doesn’t have the tools for it. The more the film advances, the more of these pauses there are: he pulls over to the side of the road; he has no place of calm. Since he’s quite a voluble character who drives the narrative, it was a way of imposing a little distance. I’d written in these "stolen" moments where we simply observe him; I definitely didn’t want them to be sacrificed during the filming process or to only be included if we had time. In the end, we used almost all of them. They were very important for giving the story space to breathe.

You often film him in wide shots, like an entomologist.
There are a few closer shots, but yes, they’re often wide shots, set in a very urban environment where he’s a little lost. Ludovic is omnipresent, he’s in every shot, but cinematically-speaking we needed to find a way of keeping our distance. I don’t really like close-ups; I rarely use them—they’re not my thing. In this instance, you end up wondering whether he’s starting to blend into the background or to dissolve.

Where did the story come from?
Almost all my films are about family; it’s actually the common thread running through all my work. When I started writing it, I didn’t have a child, but I’ve had a little girl in the meantime. I really liked the idea that sometimes you meet someone who comes and fills a void, a hole left by someone else. A character with a gaping wound that he isn’t even really aware of, but which is revealed to him by another person.

Is it also about the idea of passing things on?
What stops the character from being fully formed is the absence of things being passed on in his life—from his father, and from himself. We had fun turning him into someone who keeps on giving people gifts, of increasingly disproportionate size, for want of knowing how to give something. He comes to understand that there are other things you can give people: being attentive and listening.