For his second feature film after Revenge (2018), which highlighted genre films in a feminist approach, Coralie Fargeat continues in the same vein with her new film, which won the screenplay prize at Cannes.
What was your training?
I wanted to be a director since the age of 16 or 17 and present the Fémis competition [Ecole nationale supérieure des métiers de l’image et du son]but you had to have bac + 3. So I took the Sciences Po Paris competitive exam. In my final year, I attended 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 being shot in France, Paris and the Luberon. I jumped at the chance. I continued.
I moved up to second assistant and started writing scripts for myself while also coming up with short stories for TV shows. My first short film, The Telegramwas 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, Revengehad to be simple and inexpensive. It was a very linear storyline. I wanted scenes that would allow me to pursue my ideas and my obsessions.
How do you explain your taste for genre cinema?
It was the non-realistic worlds that appealed to me, probably because I felt very inadequate and shy in real life. The imagination and the journey 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 should you look like when you're a girl. For me, it was never easy. I was rather inadequate compared to a dominant female role model. I also said to myself: “When I’m past 50, my life will be over, no one will look at me anymore.” » It made me depressed and I told myself I had to do something about it. The success of Revenge opened doors for me and I found the freedom to express myself on this subject. I also became more aware that there was the possibility of taking a deliberately feminine or even feminist look at the world. A woman, when she goes out into the street, cannot forget her body, unlike a man.
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