Winner of the Governor General’s Award, among other distinctions, the novel Ru was ideal for a film adaptation. Through episodes and gripping descriptions, Kim Thúy recounts his family’s arrival in Quebec after they fled communist Vietnam by boat in atrocious conditions. Despite a warm welcome in Granby, this recent past haunts the very young heroine. It took a long time, but the film directed by Charles-Olivier Michaud, co-produced by Kim Thúy, is finally here. In an interview, the filmmaker talks about the challenges he had to overcome in order to bring the very popular autobiographical work to the big screen.
You should know that several filmmakers wanted to adapt Ru. From the lot, Kim Thúy selected Charles-Olivier Michaud. For what ? Partly because of something the director said in his video presentation to the author. Namely that, according to him, immigration was not the subject, but the backdrop of the story.
“After that, Kim invited me to her house, in Longueuil, and I spent the whole day there, in the middle of a snowstorm: it was in 2017,” explains Charles-Olivier Michaud during an interview which is held at the Festival inToronto International Film Festival (TIFF)last September.
“Kim welcomed me and understood what I wanted to do with the film, and it resonated with her, I think. In fact, that famous day, we talked little about the novel: we talked about his mother, his life… The content of the film remained in flux. At this stage, it was mostly along the lines of “you must not go there”, “you must avoid that”… It was consistent with who Kim is: she has an incredible artistic vivacity and does not hesitate to completely change a novel at the eleventh hour; she doesn’t like things that are fixed. So, we gave ourselves time. The film was built through numerous conversations between her and me. »
It is understood, since the source is literary, two certainties must immediately be admitted: firstly, the film will not be able to cover the entirety of the novel, and secondly, the vision proposed will not be able to correspond to that imagined by an entire everyone reading.
“We couldn’t put everything in the film,” agrees Charles-Olivier Michaud. It was impossible, if only in terms of duration. There were also passages that Kim did not want to see adapted. I would like to point out that Kim was never dogmatic about this. It was more: “I got over this event, and the film is not that. » And she was right every time. »
The scenario thus took shape, slowly but surely, of confidential exchanges. The non-linear narrative structure unfolds according to the memories of Tinh, the author’s alter ego.
Being inside and outside
As for the direction, the preferred path appeared to Charles-Olivier Michaud like a revelation. “You should know that Kim is a magnetic person. And so, one day, I was looking at her in the middle of a group, and I realized how she was always the center of attention, but without doing anything to make it happen. It’s like… natural. People gather around her, go towards her. At the same time, she connects with everyone, she talks with everyone… What struck me the most, however, is this impression that as much as she leads the group, she is simultaneously in the background, studying people. »
This paradox, which consists of being both “inside” and “outside”, Charles-Olivier Michaud decided to translate it visually. How ?
By placing Tinh at the center of the compositions, with the other characters in orbit around her. Or, by filming her in close-up at the end of the frame with, behind her, the universe that she contemplates from a distance.
“It appeared to me all the more strongly because this incredible faculty of observation that Kim has, it makes her the artist that she is. Her books, I call them photo albums without photos: with the details, the textures, the specificities of places, of people, of universes, that she summons, it’s as if we were there. Except that, to achieve such descriptions, she must have looked in a hyperattentive manner. She already had this gift of perceiving everything as a child. The proof, his book Ru, that’s it: the sum of his detailed observations at the time. Making that the driving force behind the production was also a way of showing the birth of an artist. »
This approach also ensures that the film is completely anchored to Tinh’s perspective.
“We experience the film from his point of view, yes. We see humanity in its tragic and funny aspects from its own point of view. But not by putting the camera in the place of Tinh’s eyes. On the contrary: we see her, observing the universe all around, and us with her. It becomes very lively. »
Driven by curiosity
Still on the subject of production, Charles-Olivier wanted to evoke, without recourse to explanatory dialogue, the feeling of confinement which overwhelms Tinh, and from which she will leave at the end. In an ingenious formal approach, the filmmaker presents, to do this, a succession of closed places: the luxurious family apartment in Vietnam, the prison, the escape tunnels, the hold of the boat, the refugee camp, the passenger compartment of the plane, that of the bus, the clan’s apartment in Granby, hardly swooning…
Once again, the progress is dependent on Tinh’s reminiscences. Some of these places do not immediately come back to her memory, like the prison and the boat (to which we return more than once, in small painful touches), for the simple reason that Tinh is not ready to revisit them. Even in thoughts.
“This chain of closed places comes from something that Kim told me. She told me: “We were always confined. In Vietnam, we stayed in the apartment. When we went out, we stayed in the car. When we fled, we were in tunnels, in a boat hold… I didn’t decide anything. » And it’s true that, when you’re a child, you don’t decide where you go. I wanted to report on that as well. »
This, once again, makes the image speak rather than the characters.
Traumatized, and as if stunned, Tinh doesn’t act as much as she goes with the flow. Although she speaks little, she nevertheless observes the world with this “hyperattentive gaze” that characterizes her. Nothing of this unknown environment escapes him.
This immense curiosity, since that is what it is, ensures that Tinh is never a passive protagonist. On the contrary, if she silently welcomes the words of many people (her best friend from Quebec, her old neighbor who also arrived from Vietnam, her teacher at school, and above all her own mother, in particular), Tinh does not care. creates no less an abundant new inner universe.
She contemplates what she has been and decides what she will be.
The awakening of an artist
As the film’s release approaches, Charles-Olivier Michaud is filled with contradictory feelings. He is excited when he thinks about the reception that the public will give to the film, but calm in relation to the vision put forward in the adaptation.
“Beyond the theme of immigration, it is the story of a family, and it is the story of the awakening of an artist,” he concludes.
However, as we know, adapting a successful novel often turns out to be a thankless exercise: not enough like the book, too much modeled on the book, too many freedoms, not enough freedoms… What did the main interested party think?
For the record, not only did Kim Thúy approve of the finished film, she loved it. As she told us at TIFF during a previous interview: “I cried from start to finish. It is so beautiful. I told Charles-Olivier not to cling to my story; to go as far as he could and wanted in his own art, in cinema. And he did it. »
The film Ru will be on display on November 24.