A SIRENE in PARIS – The latest film from Mathias Malzieu is part of the movies that come to the shows on June 22. The director of A mermaid in Paris is assigned on its creation process. Interview.
[updated June 22, 2020 at 8: 00 a.m.] The first output of A mermaid in Paris was complicated. Four days after his start in the theaters, the cinemas have had to close due to the coronavirus. For the reopening on 22 June, the latest creation from Mathias Malzieu is back on the big screen. Released six years after Jack and the mechanics of the heart, first foray a successful composer and writer on the land of cinema, and A Mermaid in Paris tells a story of impossible love between a crooner with a broken heart and a mermaid, stranded on the banks of the Seine. After writing a novel of the same name that appeared February 6, 2020, the album Surprisier was released on February 28, 2020, before giving a film. A few weeks before its first outing in march, we met with the director to talk about romances, impossible, genesis of his film and the power of the imagination and the marvelous.
“to Play a siren, nobody can deny that !” Interview of Marilyn Lima and Nicolas Duvauchelle
A SIRENE in PARIS – After a first output prior to the containment, A mermaid with Paris is back in theaters on June 22. During the first release of the movie, Nicolas Duvauchelle, and Marilyn Lima had responded to our questions.
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where did you get the idea of this romance impossible between a crooner with a broken heart and a mermaid ?
To my real life. I have not met a mermaid with fins, but it happened to me to live love stories difficult it’s hard to get back. It’s almost like a mourning… I thought about it and I started to have in mind a character that drew his energy in the nostalgia and joyful. I wanted that something might happen to her much too well, much too fast. As he was a singer, I thought it was funny that he falls all the time in love of singers. And the ultra-singer in the mythological creature is the mermaid. I liked the idea that something in reality at the top of his dreams crowding his entire life. What is for me the metaphor of what happens when one falls in love, finally.
“I like the idea that someone took charge of my universe.”
Gaspard looks like you, this romance is inspired from your life : you have not had the desire to embody it ?
No, because I also like the idea that someone took charge of my universe. Already, I don’t know if I have a talent of an actor, it is a real trade. And I think that I would have missed back. It doesn’t mean that I would not like to try one day, but I don’t know if I’d like to do in my films. I would like to maybe work in the dreams of someone else… If I was proposing and that I liked that, why not ? This would be an incredible adventure. But, having thought about the book, the disc, to the film, I wanted to be behind my camera, with my actors, rather than to have an interaction with myself. I wanted that Gaspard is not just me, but a composite between me and someone else.
so, what is it that convinced you to elect Nicolas Duvauchelle for this role ?
I was more with Nicholas, that really is its density and its physical side gross. The fact that he does not cheat, he does not compose. I loved the intensity of it in lots of films where I saw it. In this dreamlike state, quite feminine and childish, it was necessary that the character of Gaspard is rooted in reality. Because for that the dream can be seen better, he should play of contrasts. I wanted someone who can re-transform at the touch of love to become himself : I bet Nicholas and I’m super happy. He made me a surprise : they are funny. He brought a cloth extra dimension comic that I had not expected.
And for Marilyn Lima in the role of the mermaid ?
Marilyn, it really is a flash. There has been an exchange of sensitivity with it which was great. I very very very want it either.
Nicolas Duvauchelle and Marilyn Lima as A mermaid in Paris. © Thibault Grabherr / Sony Pictures Entertainment France
A mermaid in Paris is released six years after Jack and the mechanics of the heart : why have you preferred the live action rather than animation this time ?
What I had preferred in the process of animation, it was directing the actors : the voice actors and the animators. So much for Jack and the mechanics of the heart, we are in a reality that is completely parallel. But A siren in Paris is happening in a contemporary Paris : 2016, the flood, the speakeasys, all exists. The only element that is magical and supernatural, it is the siren. I need to anchor this story in reality, the contrast would be stronger. And the animation poses on a filter : it stylizes reality. There, I had actors in flesh and bones, real scenery. The offset and the emotion of the poetic are more strong.
But you have not met difficulties to transpose your imagination into the real world, compared to the cinema of animation ?
But II loved these constraints ! It is it work. There are also constraints in animation, only what are not the same : one has the impression that we can all make, but at any given time, there is a budget to stick to, textures to make,…etc., For A mermaid in Paris, we had a limited budget, but it has allowed me to have the narrative function of the film Surprisiers [people who want to change their world through their imagination into A mermaid in Paris, editor’s note] and their side craftsman. I didn’t need to make it in the glitz. Also, I didn’t want to turn in the green background : I wanted a real mermaid, a real decoration.
“The imagination allows for the shade, to escape, to escape and plan. We forget at what point the imagination is crucial”
You are an artist to wear many hats. Between the music, film and literature, that is-that which comes to you first ?
Still writing. Because it is a cinema portable : I can dream songs, characters, images, and I can write anywhere no matter what happens, as it happened to me when I was hospitalized in 2013.
A siren in Paris is a love story, but also an ode to the wonderful and plume : do you think that our society lacks ?
Yes. And this is not an accusation. It’s just that we live in a troubled time. I started writing this story just after the attacks of 2015. I’m not Parisian but I’m living in Paris. I love this city deeply, it is beautiful and amazes me every day. I wanted to re-enchanting Paris. After that, yes, there is a mode of laziness emotional, of cynicism. It is easy to be cynical. A way to resist the torpeurs social and climatic and other, that we are suffering, it is also the wonder. The imagination we use every day : to project, to be in empathy, putting oneself in the place of someone… it is necessary to imagine it all. The imagination allows the nuance. The dictatorships that threaten us, the climbs of the nationalists, it is when the shade no longer exists. The imagination allows you to escape, to escape and plan, and I believe that we tend to forget to what point the imagination is crucial. We talk a lot about ecology, and it was unfortunately right, but I think we should also talk about ecology emotional : the culture and curiosity, it is that the spirit of Surprisiers I think.
