Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni have created a distinctive cinematic universe, characterised by bold aesthetic choices, which they revisit again in Diane in the Loop. The film – which has just had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, in the Orizzonti section – follows Diane, who is intent on tracking down her mother’s rapist and avenging her.

Cineuropa: How did this project come about? What was the first spark?
Ann Sirot: It all started with a question: what do we do with our parents’ traumas, and how can we stop them from being passed on from one generation to the next? For indeed, these past traumatic events – in this case a rape – especially when kept quiet or revealed late, will have a tremendous impact on many aspects of our lives.

Raphaël Balboni: It is a deeply serious subject, but we approached it in a similar fashion to how we had addressed Alzheimer’s disease in Madly in Life, which was a comedy. This time, however, we wanted to find a different way to offset the seriousness of the main theme, hence the idea of tackling it through the prism of the western.

AS: At the same time, westerns often stem from violence experienced in childhood. Many of them are revenge stories. Why shouldn’t that apply to sexual violence? The western cannot be reserved for male wounds – the genre can be used to address any human pain.

Once you'd made the choice to take on the western genre, how did you decide on how you were going to use its standard tropes, both narratively and aesthetically?
RB: Well, first we have Diane, the protagonist and avenger, whom we built as a strong, very feminist character. We then discussed our idea with our heads of department. We wanted to make sure that the references to the western in the film were neither overemphasised nor too timid - they needed to be clear without dragging the movie into slapstick territory. Our costume designer quickly suggested we should have cowboy hats and a feather motif. For Diane, we imagined an androgynous wardrobe. It also meant opting for anamorphic lenses, which have a vintage feel, and the Scope format of course, which we have always been fond of. Then came the shot breakdown. We used far more outdoor wide shots than we usually do, hoping that their atmosphere would gradually seep into the storytelling.

AS: And this right up to the final confrontation between Diane and her mother, where we play with genre-related clichés and conventions – character profiles entering the frame, close-ups of their eyes. We also needed vast expanses, but we played the offbeat card and found that at the seaside. Our landscapes are very different from the desert in the USA, but you still get the sand. In terms of the narrative, we had to have the inevitable showdown, but we wanted it to be surprising, which is why it doesn’t pit Diane against her mother’s rapist, but against her mother herself, the bone of contention being all the silence that has surrounded her rape – because even when it is kept quiet, the trauma of rape festers and damages family relations.

One of the specificities of this story lies in the fact that it also tackles the male side of the intergenerational transmission of trauma.
AS: That is true. We quickly realised that there was a character we never see on screen: the rapist’s son. We wanted to explore what happens to a little boy who grows up in this climate of sexual violence starting from the premise that even if the rape isn’t spoken about, the child, and then the young adult he becomes, can feel its presence. Discovering it must be a shock, but at the same time, a part of him likely knew, or at least had perceived that violence. The question of how men deal with acts of sexual violence committed by members of their own family is very rarely raised, but to us, it seemed crucial.

Once men and women have confronted the inherited weight of sexual violence and considered how to stop it from being passed on, do you think the only thing left to do at this point is to reinvent heterosexual love?
AS: Exactly! This is a question we also raise by depicting the sexual act itself, as we did in our previous film, for that matter. It is so taboo and complex - how do you represent it? Obviously, the idea is to reject the representation of sex as conveyed by the porn industry, which perpetuates patterns of domination.

RB: We always stage our sex scenes with the help of a choreographer and align their aesthetics with the tone of the situation, depending on whether the sexual act is performed in a more mechanical way or is something more symbiotic. These are completely different ways of relating to your partner, and we also want to show that on screen, often with a touch of humour and poetry.