French director Jeanne Herry is competing in the Cannes Film Festival for the very first time with Another Day, her 4th feature film after Elle l’adore (2014), In Safe Hands (2018) and All Your Faces (2023).

Cineuropa: Your last two films tackled social issues. This time it’s alcohol addiction.
Jeanne Herry: That’s one aspect of the character. The focus of the film is actually the woman herself, Garance. Addiction is a very widespread phenomenon and alcohol addiction even more so, because it’s so easy to get hold of. You can buy it pretty much anywhere, it’s really normalised and it’s a huge public health concern. That’s from a societal perspective. But it also leads to some very hard to manage behaviour in collective and intimate spheres. Turning to alcohol also says a lot about the difficulties associated with living. Why do we look for crutches in order to live or exist? Because life isn’t actually easy. This particular crutch is chosen by a lot of people, and things can spiral really quickly, going from a situation where you drink to have fun, and you enjoy it, to something far more harmful.

Why choose a young thirty-something woman as your main character? How would you describe her?
I wanted her to be a young woman because we tend to associate alcoholic women with being fairly old, down on their luck, with a gravelly voice, etc. I thought it would be interesting for her to be younger and full of life. Because Garance has a real life-force, but she also consumes a lethal amount of alcohol. That’s how she functions and it doesn’t stop her from having a life or a job, or doing what she needs to do, up to a certain point. I also wanted the character to end up consuming such excessive volumes that she finds herself close to death. And that’s when she hits a crossroads: one direction leads to life and the other, towards death. What should she do? She’s someone who self-destructs, but who also loves life deeply. She tries to control her worries with alcohol and to rely on alcohol to move forwards. But it’s not a good crutch.

Why make her an actress?
I wanted to show all the different sides of a person: their work, family, love, friends… Being an actress is a profession I know well and it’s a mysterious one because not many people properly understand it. It’s a job that isn’t always all that concrete and people tend to idealise it too. I thought it would be powerful. And I wanted her character to be very mobile. Because actors move around all the time, since they’re always looking for work, pulling out all the stops to find it. They do theatre work, shoots, dubbing; they teach… I wanted there to be lots of movement in the film, a character who moves around, who adapts and who’s always relocating.

How did you manage the eight-year time period covered by the story?
When you’re telling a story over eight years, it’s important to cover pretty important slices of life. And addictions are also long-term things. So I chose certain periods and eras; I created chapters and ellipses. I used voice-overs to cover these ellipses, including the story the two sisters tell one another about their lives - their dialogue. It’s a portrait with and without gaps. Some things are left out. Also, given that Garance ends up having black-outs, she forgets certain moments from her life, and the audience does too, since you don’t see them in the film, because there are lots things which vanish from her memory.

The film nonetheless moves at a fast pace.
There are lots of sequences, lots of characters, plenty of atmosphere, lots of apartments: it’s a profusion of everything. And there’s a pulse to the film, which is that of the character who’s hectic and on the move. It’s part of the film’s DNA.

There’s a female protagonist, love as experienced by women, and a very female-heavy family too: why this particular focus? There’s a sense of gentleness to the film.
I just wanted to spend time in a female sphere. Obviously, gentleness can be a male thing too, but I wanted to explore the capacity women have for caring and endurance when it comes to caring for others. That’s what we’ve been taught to do, collectively: to look after children and husbands, to be welcoming and understanding.