“Uh?… what was this business for? What did it give to these girls? What did I just watch? are questions that Denis Côté would like to hear aboutOne summer like that. At least, that’s what he told the Duty a few days before the screening of its 14and feature film à la 72and Berlinale.
Presented Monday evening in Berlin, A summer like this features three women, played by Larissa Corriveau, Laure Giappiconi and Aude Mathieu, who spend 26 days in a retirement home to talk about their sexual behavior, under the supervision of a distant therapist (Anne Ratte Polle) and a benevolent social worker (Samir Guesmi), as well as under the sometimes indiscreet gaze of the cook (Josée Deschênes).
Even more than at the beginning of his career, when he first made films for himself, Denis Côté feels the desire to surprise the viewer. After Wilcox, wordless essay film about freedom and isolation, and Social hygienea pastoral tale about male failure, he returns with a feature film in which he embarks without a safety net on the exploration of female sexuality.
“I wouldn’t say I’m without a net, let’s say I’m on a tightrope. There’s a responsibility that comes with a movie like this, and you have to prepare for a hit or two when it’s finished. If someone said to me “well done you did your homework as a 48 year old straight white male” that would be a really nice compliment, but maybe I don’t need to wait for it because we have the right to make the film you want. »
To parry the blows, the director has surrounded himself with precious allies. As script advisor, he called on Rachel Graton, whose play The night of 4 to 5 recounts an assault. Three female sexologists accompanied him from the start of the project to the final cut, and the actresses read each version of the script. If he kept François Messier-Rheault in the photo – “he is so sweet, I knew there would be no problem! — he replaced his editor with a woman, Dounia Sichov. However, none coach of intimacy was on set.
“If we are a beautiful family, we trust each other and the casting is well done, we are able to work without suspecting anything. Everything was on paper, I didn’t improvise anything. Nudity and sexuality have become secondary for me as well as for the actresses. All along, my two words were benevolence and respect. »
As for the actresses, they were in confidence and generosity. In addition to stripping, they performed very intimate scenes, including a long scene of bondage, where Larissa Corriveau, whom he calls his muse, delivers a performance evoking contemporary dance.
“During the shoot, I always said to the director of photography, if I am excited by my frame, by my actresses, there is a problem. If you think we’re eroticizing something, tell me. The goal was to achieve tenderness. The scene of bondage, it carries a lot of violence, but someone asked me how I managed to bring a certain tenderness into it. For me, it’s a victory to take the opposite view of something that would be supposedly scabrous and to make it beautiful. »
three graces
Assuring that he does not want to provoke anyone with this film in which he tackles delicate subjects such as incest, hypersexuality and erotomania, Denis Côté reveals that the genesis ofA summer like this goes back to a tavern conversation between friends.
” Since The Decline of the American Empire, what are the Quebec films that talk about sexuality in an uninhibited and frontal way and where this is the heart of the film? Same question for nudity. Rodrigue Jean’s cinema, Night #1by Anne Émond, and Sluts or the natural sugar of the skin, by Renée Beaulieu: these were the only examples I could name. Are we modest in Quebec? Why does it still exist in France, old pigs who undress all they want? It bothered me. »
Shortly after this watered-down reflection on Quebec cinema, Denis Côté came across an essay on nymphomania through the ages: “What does the word nymphomaniac mean? And why doesn’t that mean anything? Before Freud? After Freud? And there, I really started to like it and, slowly, it became a little more Bergmanian, my approach, with less nudity, less sex. It has nothing to do with the films of Catherine Breillat, who put scenes of penetration in films mainstreamnor with Nymphomaniac, by Lars von Trier, who wanted to shock the bourgeois. I didn’t feel like going there. »
To critics reproaching him that this retirement home does not correspond to reality, Denis Côté replies that he knows it since he discussed it with three sexologists: “I asked them if they found it eccentric. They thought it was wonderful and would like it to be able to just watch women live with each other and take notes — it’s called cognitive-behavioural — instead of doing therapy. They told me: “That’s the new way of observing people. Looks like you got it all figured out! ”. »
As he has repeated over the years, Denis Côté likes to make films on subjects he does not know. Far be it from him to read everything that has been written on female sexuality. A summer like this is not a documentary, and its forest setting sometimes gives it the appearance of a tale.
“When you know your subject too well, you make very sociological cinema. A summer like this, it is very Rohmerian; we are 26 days with beautiful human beings. In seven years, they may be thinking “do you remember how cool it was that summer?”. Or not. I do not know. It seems like I have a duty of ignorance when I go into my subjects. It’s silly, but it’s true. Now that the film is finished, I’d rather hear the women talk about the film than myself having to explain the mental mechanisms that led me to create this or that scene. It seems that I like that the film no longer belongs to me”, concludes Denis Côté.
A summer like this will be released in the coming months.