Do you currently feel more like an actor, director or screenwriter?
Basically, I’m an actor, and I’m an actor who decided to write his first screenplays. Then I’m a screenwriter who decided to direct his first films. So I’m all of those things, I’m an artist, a filmmaker.
Do you like to wear many hats?
Yes, no two projects are the same. I’d say I love playing other people’s stuff, I love writing my own stuff and writing for other people, but I don’t think I could direct other people’s stuff. In the end, I think directing is perhaps my most intimate gesture.
Between “Les scènes fortuites” and “Niagara”, which was harder to make?
All films are difficult to make, but I would say that the challenge with “Les scènes fortuites” was obviously the budget, because it was a micro-budget of barely one hundred thousand Canadian dollars, which is very little. Then there was the whole adventure of discovering this profession. And then with “Niagara”, there were several challenges, obviously the budget – it’s a film with a bigger budget, of course – the pandemic, the postponements of shooting due to the pandemic, and all the logistics due to the pandemic. Niagara is a real movie, but it was also a real movie to make, like all movies, I think. Every film has its own adventure, every film has its own path, and that’s what makes them such extraordinary human adventures.
How do you feel when you have to juggle several roles on a shoot? several hats?
Joy, excitement, feverishness.
Is it really what drives you to wear all those hats?
In fact, it’s a question of freedom: it allows me to make a much freer gesture in the work as a whole, and then sometimes it also allows me to play with the very actors I idolize, to whom I’ve offered a role. It’s a really wonderful experience. In “Niagara”, for example, I had an emotional scene to play, and we had very little time to do it because the weather wasn’t on our side, but Guy Jodoin, whom I’d been directing for ten days or so, helped me a lot to do that scene. At the end of the day, it’s all about collaboration. The director’s job is not necessarily that of orchestra conductor, but rather that of one who distributes tasks and enables people to collaborate with each other and bring different artists together.
In connection with your latest film “Niagara”, it’s often said that you have to hit rock bottom to bounce back. Do you think this phrase echoes your film?
The main theme of Niagara is falling. It begins on the bridge at the top of Montmorency Falls in Quebec and ends at Niagara Falls, so it’s from one fall to the next. It’s the story of a character who falls, a character who’s depressed, but a character who falls only to rise again. So, yes, in a way, you have to hit rock bottom to get back up again. Everyone has their own bottom, I think, but yes, the beauty of falling is the act of getting up again.
By Nora Staelens
