In the Cannes Film Festival Special Screenings strand, Avril Besson makes her feature debut with Marvelous Mornings, which follows Charlie, who meets Marina after the death of the former’s grandmother. The film reunites her with India Hair and Raya Martigny, from her breakout short, Queen Size, which was nominated for the 2025 César Award for Best Short Fiction Film.

(L'articolo continua qui sotto - Inf. pubblicitaria)

Cineuropa: How did you come to work with your two lead actors in both Queen Size and Marvelous Mornings?
Avril Besson: I made the short film after writing the feature. It was super-hard to find the money for the feature because they were not that famous. India had been my friend for a very long time, but nobody really knew Raya as an actress – only as a model. She sent me a video, and she was so intimate, so private, so tender. I love it when people don’t show everything so easily. We shot the short film on a whim with no money and no budget, just to show their chemistry. We made the short to help finance the feature, and the characters were originally from the [feature script]. We worked together over the course of seven years, and this was a lot of time to get to know each other, think about the characters and rewrite the script together.

The film has been described as a “slice-of-life” flick, but it encompasses a lot of different tones. Moving from script to screen, what was important for you in this regard?
It’s an interesting question because, for me, it was really a comedy. Shooting was pretty hard, as we had absolutely no money. I also put a lot of pressure on myself because it’s my first film, and I felt very scared and vulnerable. I think this [energy] went into the film without me even noticing it. I started editing during shooting, on the weekends, and the first time I saw it, I thought, “Oh, it’s super-melancholic.” I had no idea. We were laughing a lot on set, and it was one of my best friends who told me, “I think it’s because you’re sad.” But I like it because I think it suits the film. It’s about grieving. I didn’t want it to be dramatic – there are no major conflicts. It’s just the ebb and flow of life.

Is the storyline inspired by any particular moments in your own life, the lives of those around you or stories from films?
I lost my dad when I was a teenager, and he was extremely young. Nobody saw it coming. I grew up because of this experience; it defined me. I did my grieving, but I grew very close to my group of friends, who were here at the screening, actually. I really needed to party and travel, and my friends raised me. It’s Aristotelian stuff: the impulse of love is the impulse of death. When I lost my grandmother, it was totally different – I was an adult, but it was so hard. I was so sad because I knew it was going to happen. It was as if my childhood was finally over. [Like in the film], I heard that she’d booked my spot in the [family] grave and paid for it. It’s the worst kind of affection you can receive.

The central relationship between Charlie and Marina is lovingly undefined – it has both romantic and platonic elements. What was important to you about this relationship?
It would have been too hard for me to write a character based on just one life experience. In the short film, people believed it was going to be a friendship. For me, it was obviously a love story. They had to kiss and make love – they were totally attracted to each other from day one. I read a lot about trans heterosexual girls and that it can be very weird for them to be with a woman, as it can be dysphoric. I really liked the writing of the [sex] scene [in Marvelous Mornings] because I felt like it was something that, if you don’t have trans friends, you would never even question. Sexuality and gender are not at all the same subject, and can have different consequences in your love stories and on the way you approach intimacy.

Were there any moments during production that were either particularly memorable or brought about an unexpected change to the film?
It was always about moving beyond the impossible. There were moments when we were told, “Sorry, you can’t shoot in this place any more,” or “It’s not going to be possible to do this.” There was one scene where Charlie tells Marina that her mother used to jump from this rock that’s 13 metres high, so I really wanted her to jump with Marina [at the end of the movie]. It was complicated to shoot this, and it’s so clichéd. Any film set in the south of France has people jumping into the sea as a sign of freedom, and it’s not interesting. Eventually, I said, “Okay, they’re just going to be sitting on the grass together.” When something is not possible, it makes you think beyond what you know.