Who You Think I Am a Film by Safy Nebbou
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PLAYTIME PRESENTS A DIAPHANA FILMS PRODUCTION JULIETTE BINOCHE Who You Think I Am A FILM BY SAFY NEBBOU FRANÇOIS CIVIL NICOLE GARCIA BASED ON THE NOVEL BY CAMILLE LAURENS International Sales 5, rue Nicolas Flamel 75004 Paris, France Tel : +33 1 53 10 33 99 playtime.group International Press RENDEZ-VOUS Viviana Andriani, Aurélie Dard 2, rue Turgot 75009 Paris, France Tel : +33 1 42 66 36 35 +33 6 80 16 81 39 (Viviana) +33 6 77 04 52 20 (Aurélie) [email protected] German Distributor ALAMODE FILM Dachauer Strasse 233 80637 Munich, Germany Tel : +49 89 17 99 92 0 [email protected] alamodefilm.de PLAYTIME PRESENTS A DIAPHANA FILMS PRODUCTION JULIETTE BINOCHE Who You Think I Am (Celle que vous croyez) A FILM BY SAFY NEBBOU France | 101’ | Scope Synopsis To spy on her lover Ludo, 50 year-old Claire Millaud creates a fake profile on social media and becomes Clara, a beautiful 24 year-old. Alex, Ludo’s friend is instantly enamored. Claire, trapped by her avatar, falls madly in love with him. Although everything is played out in the virtual world, the feelings that blossom are quite real. A beguiling story where lies are entangled with reality. Interview with Safy Nebbou Who You Think I Am is adapted from the epony- mous novel by Camille Laurens. How did you disco- ver the story? I discovered the novel’s pitch in Gallimard’s newsletter, and I instantly expressed my wish to read it before it was even published. Then I devoured it. I was thorou- ghly taken with the novel, and while I was reading, I immediately thought of Akira Kurosawa’s film Rasho- mon, where everyone in turn told their version of the story. I also thought about Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, where James Stewart is in love with the vision of the ghost of a woman. Marivaux’s False Confidences, as well as Choderlos de Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons, but also Borges and Pirandello’s stories came to mind… Michel Saint Jean, my producer, was just as enthusias- tic as I was. So we decided to set to work and write a screenplay. Who You Think I Am is our third film to- gether, after Mark of an Angel [L’empreinte de l’ange] and Bad Seeds [Comme un homme]. It’s not your first adaptation of a literary “prime” or rejected, in other words the work; Bad Seeds was based on a novel by awareness that time has gone by and that Boileau-Narcejac, for instance. How is this it can push us to the sidelines, isn’t limited one different from the others? to women, it is universal… The challenge was highly stimulating, as At any rate, you partnered with a woman, Camille Laurens’ novel was both complex Julie Peyr, to co-write the screenplay… and inexorable, much like the structure of a clock. The fact is that it is a sequential Yes, but beyond her being a woman, it was narrative, with a first story interlinked with her qualities as a screenwriter that guided a second one, both revolving around an my choice, and her work with Arnaud Des- identity issue. Lying, cheating, truth, mani- plechin in particular (Jimmy P., My Golden pulation, and love: such are the delightful Days [Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse] and ingredients that carve out this narrative’s Ismaël’s Ghosts [Les fantômes d’Ismaël]). maze. Beyond its romantic aspect, which Well, this said, I never imagined for a se- makes numerous allusions to the thriller cond writing this film with a man! Parity genre, it also includes a powerful societal was an imperative. What is amusing is that dimension. In short, this convoluted novel Julie Peyr lives in Los Angeles; we there- with multiple entries, and told through fore had to work long distance for over a several voices, offered thrilling adaptation year using Skype and WhatsApp. In a way, prospects for a film. After all, isn’t a movie we were already immersed in the film’s theater a place that enjoins us, for the du- context! ration of a feature film, to take fiction for reality? Indeed, Who You Think I Am is a rather fascinating reflection on the human – and Though we can easily understand what romantic – resources offered by social tempted you from a formal standpoint, media! Is this the new terrain where dan- what about the content? Your film reflects gerous liaisons will henceforth be played a deep connection with Claire, the lone- out? some leading character who creates her- self a fictitious online persona … Absolutely, though often rather less ro- mantically so! But the expression “dange- Claire seeks to solve a conflict by beco- rous liaisons” is quite apropos here since ming someone else. What touched me Claire works as a professor of comparative about her, at first, was her status as an invi- literature at the university. How not to think sible woman – emblematic for most wo- of Laclos’ text when dissecting the power men over the age of 50. Yet my purpose play and manipulation games that have wasn’t to protest outright or go for a head become commonplace in social media on, militant approach. For me, Claire is a today? Under cover of the virtual world, it sort of “anti-heroine,” who is both complex is easy to invent a new identity and a new and paradoxical. Her tragic dimension, life: the one we would like to live… Social therefore, is tinged with destructive guilt. networks offer an endless number of However, she overcomes her humiliation possibilities to promote, cultivate and fuel and sorrow by expressing her life force various forms of “dangerous liaisons.” Most through another, imaginary woman. Let’s probably, these new technologies will also say that she is a distressed person, partly spawn new pathologies… the victim of our society as it is today. In any case, the feeling of being past one’s We get the feeling that this subject is par- also conceals reality (by immersing us ticularly close to your heart… in a virtual world) at the same time. The film plays with this mirror effect. In addi- Yes, it is, because I too was duped by a tion, the narrative constantly goes back woman on social media! A woman who and forth between Claire’s real world and was Claire’s age and pretended to be her online persona’s virtual life. We speci- younger, just like Claire. This affair, see fically worked to achieve this with Gilles I’m talking about an “affair,” happened to Porte, the director of photography, and me while I was writing the adaptation of Cyril Gomez-Mathieu, the artistic director, Who You Think I Am. Isn’t that incredible? seeking similarities and correspondences I exchanged with this “catfish” for three not only in the images but also in the months before I discovered the unplea- lighting and the pacing. This is why mat- sant truth. Like Claire, she’d used someone ching icons or screens appear continually. else’s picture. I must say I drew a lot of ins- Also, we wanted the visual expression of piration from this experience to write the everyday life to be suffused with the no- screenplay, even re-using some of my own tion of perfection. Moreover, we favored a exchanges with her. contemporary vision of Paris, with recent architecture and urban areas staging the Reality is intermingled with fiction on body and its surrounding space in a very many levels in this adventure… conscious way. I’m thinking in particular of Claire’s apartment: she lives in a modern Yes, it’s somewhat crazy, but also rather high-rise, surrounded by windows, a sort logical at the same time! For we could say of glass box. When night falls, her reflec- that Claire, much like the woman who tric- tion appears in the picture windows and ked me, is a screenwriter in that she writes her double can thus come into play… the her own life, assigning herself a role, as if image nearly taking on a ghostly dimen- she were an actress or a film director. This sion. is where the main point of convergence with cinema, and with my film in particular, This makes for a perfect transition to talk is found. Moreover, and this probably isn’t about Juliette Binoche, your ideal Claire/ entirely by chance, Who You Think I Am is Clara… Did you think about her right from the most cinematic of all my films, with a the start? few, modest allusions to Hitchcock in the first half and to Truffaut or Sautet in the Right away! I thought about her while I was second. writing the screenplay, and when I sent it to her, she read it in 3 hours and instantly said Also, your narrative approach is highly vi- “yes.” We fined-tuned the screenplay in a sual, multiplying shots of French windows, simple and constructive way. Concerning mirrors, screens… the narrative, Juliette has a viewpoint that is at once all-encompassing and extremely The film has a “genre” dimension that I’m sharp, she ceaselessly proposed ideas. I entirely ready to acknowledge, far from can truly talk about self-evidence between naturalistic writing. You need to accept this us, and trust. I could feel that there was choice to fully enter the story. We’re in a something, beyond the story and the role symbolic, playful and metaphoric form of that spoke to her as a woman. On set, she’s expression the entire time. The computer a Stradivarius, yet with a rare honesty and screen, for instance, aims to make us face moxie.