“I was interested in filming with actresses who assume their age”

One film per year (or almost). François Ozon is as prolific as he is unclassifiable, capable of irresistible comedies (My crime, recently) as great societal works (unforgettable Thank God). But it is with the thriller that he returns to When autumn comes, captivating suspense which focuses on a septuagenarian and an octogenarian, ages rarely portrayed in cinema.

Josiane Balasko and Hélène Vincent play Marie-Claude and Michelle, lifelong friends living in the countryside. Their life is peaceful until the accident: while cooking mushrooms, Michelle poisons her daughter with whom she had a conflictual relationship. Family secrets, ghosts and guilt then invite themselves into this fascinating story which, without needing to trumpet it, shakes up representations of gender and age on the screens.

Madame Figaro. – When Autumn Comes is linked to a childhood memory. Tell us about it.
François Ozon. – My aunt, my father’s sister, had organized a family meal in the countryside: she had picked and prepared mushrooms, and everyone had been sick. Except her, who hadn’t eaten any. As a child with a vivid imagination, I wondered if she had done it on purpose. This story stuck in my head: when you cook mushrooms for someone, don’t you want to get rid of them eventually? This is the question I ask through the character of Hélène Vincent: did she knowingly poison her daughter? Does she feel guilty? There are knots, unsaid things, neuroses and ghosts in every family. It is fascinating to unravel them, to dig them up, to analyze them.

You give the leading roles to actresses aged 81 and 74. It’s extremely rare…
It all started from this desire. We see too few elderly people in the cinema, or else relegated to second or third roles. I was interested in filming with actresses who assume their age. There is no cosmetic surgery, no retouching on Hélène and Josiane, but they are alive, much more so than certain actresses who, having done too much, look like the living dead. I understand the weight of society, the injunction to stay “fresh” in this profession, but, for a filmmaker, it is sometimes more interesting to film a face that moves, expresses, moves.

Is the view of senior actresses changing?
Totally. When I did Under the sand, with Charlotte Rampling, who was only 50 years old at the time, I heard so much… I even had trouble putting the film together! Today, it would no longer be a subject, thanks to the work of actresses like Catherine Deneuve and Isabelle Huppert. However, beyond physical acceptance, passing the decades remains difficult for actresses, because it implies changing the way they look: the profession and the spectators who knew them as young girls in bloom must agree to project them differently, as women. accomplished businesswoman, mother, grandmother… Ludivine Sagnier went through a complicated period around her thirties. She was neither a girl nor a woman, she was offered roles that did not suit her. Today, she is regaining her place: many things are opening up for her. I knew her on Water drops on hot stones – she was 21 years old –, found for 8 Women et Swimming Pool, but I hadn’t filmed it for twenty years. Today she is the mother of three children, a woman very anchored in reality, and I wanted to show her differently, to film the time that passes through our reunion.

We see too few elderly people in the cinema

François Ozon

What you show about the third age also goes against the clichés…On the surface, Hélène Vincent is a sweet granny, but, behind this image, she is an independent and free woman, who had a complicated life, made difficult choices, had a sexuality that some condemn… We tend to idealize grandparents, but they also have liabilities. We lose so much by not wanting to know.

You have always fought against stereotypes associated with the feminine. How do you explain it?
Female characters have always interested me: in a society that has long despised them, women have always struggled. It’s a cliché to say it, but they have the possibility to be everything and can carry as much darkness within them as men. The paths they take to survive are multiple: admirable or amoral from time to time, as is the case in When autumn comes. Perhaps I will be blamed for this, but I am used to it: on 8 Women, it was already disturbing that my characters were not saints. Pure misogyny.

You are called a “protean” filmmaker. Is there a genre that still eludes you?
I never ask myself the question in those terms. It is the story that imposes the genre. But after My crime, which played on artifice and theatricality, I wanted to be more realistic, in a staging that almost disappears in favor of the characters. I would get bored staying in the same hallway.

It is fascinating to unravel, unearth, and analyze what goes unsaid in families.

François Ozon

Sitcom, your first feature film, is 25 years old this year. What do you say to yourself when you look in the rearview mirror?
I may have received rejection for my first films, but I look at them today with tenderness. As if they were the work of a young director to whom I would like to give some advice. I also see that my desire is intact. As for energy, it’s something else. After 50, I wear glasses, I have lost 20% of hearing in one ear, and they give me lemon juice with ginger in the morning to help me get through the day!

When autumn comes, by François Ozon, with Hélène Vincent, Josiane Balasko, Ludivine Sagnier, Pierre Lottin…