For the second feature film after Revenge (2018), that highlighted genre films in a feminist approach, Coralie Fargeat continues in the same direction with her new film, which won the screenplay prize at Cannes.
What was your training like?
I wanted to be a director since I was 16 or 17 and to present the Fémis competition (National Higher School of Image and Sound Professions)but you had to have a baccalaureate + 3. So I took the Sciences Po Paris competition. In my senior year, I participated in a film shoot. I spoke to the first assistant and told him I wanted to do an internship. A few months later, he called me. He was looking for an intern for an American film that was shooting in France, Paris and the Luberon. I jumped at the chance. I continued.
I moved on to second assistant and started writing scripts for myself, while also making up short stories for TV shows. my first short film Telegramhe was very noticed at the festival. My problem was that I especially wanted to make genre films, and in France you don’t find people for that. My first feature film, Revengeit had to be simple and cheap. It was a very linear story. I wanted scenes that would allow me to pursue my ideas and obsessions.
How do you explain your taste for genre cinema?
It was the unrealistic universes that appealed to me, probably because I felt very inadequate and shy in real life. Imagination and travel made me feel alive. Creating fake things with real things excited me.
How did the idea for ‘The Substance’ come about?
It’s an idea that has been with me since I was a child. What you should look like when you are a girl. It was never easy for me. I was quite inadequate compared to a dominant female role model. I also said to myself: “When I turn 50, my life will be over, no one will look at me anymore.” » It made me depressed and I told myself that I had to do something about it. His success Revenge it opened doors for me and I found the freedom to express myself on this subject. I also became more aware of the possibility of taking a deliberately feminine or even feminist view of the world. A woman, when she goes out on the street, cannot forget her body, unlike a man.
You still have 49.31% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
