the thwarted story of “If I Were a Man”, the comedy about a woman who wakes up with a penis

Behind the scenes of French comedies (3/5) – This winter, BFMTV reveals the secrets of extraordinary, cult or unusual comedy films. Today, If I were a man.

“As some films are alignments of planets. As many others are misalignments of planets.” On If I were a manAudrey Dana suffered a series of disappointments: filming postponed, casting changed at the last minute, conflict with technicians… And upon release, her film, where a woman wakes up with a penis, was accused of transphobia before quickly disappearing from theaters.

“I didn’t manage to do exactly what I wanted,” admits the director, also co-writer and main actress of the project. “I let myself be distorted. This is often the case after a big success, because there is pressure from the producers who absolutely want our film to respond to something in the market and echo the success of before. A lot of things were imposed on me.”

If I were a man was born in the wake of Under the girls' skirtshis first achievement. Released in June 2014, this choral comedy starring Isabelle Adjani and Vanessa Paradis has attracted 1.3 million admissions in France. This success offers him the possibility of continuing with another project. She then decides to draw inspiration from a dream she had at 20 years old.

“(In my dream), I woke up with a man's penis. I experienced it as an outgrowth. I was in panic and I prepared my things to go see a doctor, to understand what was happening to me. (Like ) it really looked like a man's penis, I touched it to see and it reacted and then I (decided) to masturbate to see what it felt like.

Hundreds of men interviewed

At the time, Audrey Dana woke up remembering “in (her) flesh” “the feeling of what it felt like”. From this dream, she decides to make a comedy.

To write her screenplay, she joined forces with Murielle Magellan (Under the girls' skirts) and Maud Ameline (Camille repeats). She interviews “hundreds of men” about their relationship to sex, but does not contact trans people. A few years earlier, she had already met several members of the trans community for a series project about a trans woman which had not seen the light of day.

“To write this project, I had interviewed a lot of trans people and I had been in such fluid, beautiful, fascinating communication (with them) that I did not ask myself these questions at all (during the writing of If I were a man)”, elaborates the director. “I never spoke to them about my project If I were a mansince he came later.”

First poetic version

In the scenario, it is after a stormy night, as in Big or What women wantthat the heroine, Jeanne (Audrey Dana), a single mother on the verge of a nervous breakdown, wakes up with a penis. Audrey Dana deplores the weakness of this triggering incident.

“There was a scene that I had written, that I had shot, but (which was cut) where a character appeared and cast a spell on him. For me, it was a bit of a divine representation. It was a black woman with very long dreadlocks, old, wise. She understood that I was stuck, that I had to break everything and she cast a positive spell on me.

It must be said that the project deviated greatly from the director's initial intentions. After a “very poetic” first version, the scenario shifted over the course of the “goofy” rewrites. The producers “wanted to push it to the extreme when I would have preferred to be finer, more delicate. When you have a film pitch that can make you uncomfortable, you have to go really gentle.”

“Everything went wrong”

Filming begins under the worst auspices. The disasters keep coming. “I lose the main actor. I have to postpone my film by two months, so I then lose my entire technical team. I relaunch the film two months later with who can shoot since it is financed and it is necessary go there. So I have the technical team who is there and who is available and that's where everything went off the rails.”

On set, the director is confronted by a misogynistic cinematographer who refuses to carry out her decisions. She, who loves improvisation and wants to shoot permanently with two cameras, to leave the actors free to create moments of comedy, comes up against the systematic refusal of the technician. “He told me no,” she remembers.

A climate of tension which prevents her from concentrating on certain complex scenes like the one where she masturbates. “You have to do it, all the same, in front of your whole team! For that you need calm, respect, a kind look and I didn't have it.” She denounces the behavior of a “band of old macho guys” “not comfortable” with a woman in charge.

“I think I played badly”

Two weeks before the end of filming, Audrey Dana called on another cinematographer, a friend, to support her. “I needed to have a man to make me heard. It was the first time on this set that I was really confronted with the fact of being a woman and not being respected because I am a woman What's crazy about a movie called If I were a man.”

While her casting is turned upside down (she had originally considered Franck Dubosc and Stéphane de Groodt), the director also has to manage “problems” with certain actors on the set. They “didn't respond when I told them I wanted us to try more of this or more of that. They didn't want to.”

How to make people laugh in this context? “I feel like I completely missed the first half of the film,” she admits. “I think I played poorly and was too caricatured. I really could have done things differently. (But) I was fighting so hard to try to limit the damage (on set) that I didn't have perspective to see things well.”

Audrey Dana also deplores the appearance of her character in the film. “Even on the costumes, I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't see them in my head. Neither did the costume designer. So when you don't know how to dress your heroine, there's still something wrong.” She also regrets the “a little bit caricatured” decision to wear extremely long hair to emphasize the introversion of her character.

“I was tearing my hair out”

The director is more satisfied with the second part, when her heroine embraces her part of masculinity. “The character is closer to me. It was easier, more obvious.” To help her perform, the actress also wears a prosthetic penis. “I wanted the reality of the weight of this thing that she experiences as a handicap. (Because having a penis) changes things in terms of severity and discomfort.”

If filming is a challenge, so is editing. In the absence of the two cameras to capture all the improvisations, the scenes often lack “brilliant reactions” from the actors. “I was tearing my hair out. It was horrible. It was only concessions, only suffering.”

At the 2017 Alpe d'Huez festival, however, it is joy that takes precedence. Alice Belaïdi, who plays Audrey Dana's best friend in the film, receives an award. The joy is short-lived. Only 157,315 spectators come to the theater. For Audrey Dana, the flop is confirmation that the project was not developed in the right way, as she expected.

“You have to know who you are talking to,” she insists. “The fault of this film is that it should not have been released as a big popular comedy. I don't think we were targeting an audience of big comedies. The marketing (of the film) doesn't bother me didn't make me want to go to the cinema if even I didn't want to go see my own film even though it's a subject that fascinates me…”

The marketing campaign initially even targeted fans of Christian Clavier, who plays the heroine's gynecologist. “The first poster I was offered was Clavier all alone,” recalls Audrey Dana. “Are the people who go to see Christian Clavier's films those who want to see the story of a woman into whom he pushes a (man's) penis? I don't think so.”

Like an injustice

Upon release, the film was accused of transphobia by Act Up. Which Audrey Dana rejects outright, although she recognizes blunders in the marketing, notably the poster where one could read: “One morning, she woke up with something extra.” “When I was attacked by the trans community, it was hard,” she adds, specifying that she had a non-binary trans child and understood a lot about it.

“I understand, when we don’t know who made this film, when we don’t know the person, that we can see insulting or offensive things in it,” she continues. “I am for us being as close as possible to what we are. I am for the development of all humans. So I experienced it a bit as an injustice. (Even if) I was still quite at peace with myself and who I am.”

During the film, Jeanne repeats that she is “a monster” and “a freak.” Replicas that may have offended trans people. “When you have a man's penis that grows overnight and it wasn't his wish, of course you're going to have a hard time with it,” defends Audrey Dana. “I never said people like that were monstrous. That's what the character feels.”

“But the more it goes on, the more she accepts this gender of man. At the end of the film, she is ready to take responsibility for herself. It's a metaphor for the masculine with which she did not want to connect. It starts from rejection to become reconcile slowly but surely.”

“I was relieved”

Audrey Dana claims to have obtained the support of her trans friends. “They know me. Because they saw my look of love and absolute and total benevolence, of total absence of judgment. It was naive on my part to believe that it would go well. My conscience was not not broad enough on these themes today, would I write things in the same way?

After the release, Audrey Dana isolates herself. “When the film didn't work, I was relieved. It's horrible to say that and I'm sorry for everyone who invested, but it was a relief for me. If I don't listen to myself not, it works, so that means that we can pretend to create. I don't want to create. I really want to create and be as close as possible to my truth.

Seven years later, If I were a man found a second life on Netflix. In the fall, the film made its way into the top 10 most viewed films on the platform. “I receive rave messages every day. Either they are not the same spectators, or the world has moved. (There are) people who are breaking out because secretly, they had the fantasy of (knowing) what it is would do (to have a penis).”