How Gustave Kervern avenges the humiliated with humor and gentleness in “I will no longer let myself be done”

At school, he was made fun of. Since then, the Grolandais has acquired a sense of repartee and strengthened his imagination. He is directing a TV film on Arte about brave people who finally get their revenge.

Avec I won't let myself do this anymore, Gustave Kervern signs a feminist road movie starring Yolande Moreau, Laure Calamy and a fine gallery of guests. A TV film close to the universe that the author and director generally sketches in tandem with his friend Benoît Delépine, and which was awarded the Best Director Prize at the last La Rochelle Fiction Festival. Encounter.

What was the starting point of this project?
I wrote the script during the Covid epidemic. The initial observation was that, often, over the course of our lives, we accumulate small humiliations. Sometimes, it's very benign, and yet, without necessarily knowing why, it remains anchored for a very long time. We ruminate and say to ourselves “Damn, why didn’t I answer that?” Why didn't I defend myself? “. The character played by Yolande Moreau, that of a septuagenarian who decides to take revenge on those who humiliated her, comes from there.

Did you put any personal stories in there?
The history of the bathtub [Émilie, l’héroïne, se venge de la propriétaire de son ancien appartement qui n’a jamais voulu rénover sa salle de bains, ndlr] is that of my parents. My mother, at 93, still has the same old bathtub that she has to climb over to wash. I don't know how she manages not to break her face. She never dared to complain about it, she belongs to this generation which prefers to remain silent and accept its fate. For myself, I recycled the bitter memory of sports classes where I couldn't climb the rope, which allowed everyone to make fun of me.

Given its subject, the TV movie could have been harsh and dark. But he is funny and sweet…
It was a question of not falling into caricature. In the nursing home where we filmed, for example, there was a certain cheerfulness, contrary to the image of death that we often imagine. As with the films we make with Benoît Delépine, which basically deal with quite serious social issues, I didn't want any violence. There is enough violent fiction. What interested me here was to film awareness.