Jeanne, 24, comes from a modest background. Gifted in mathematics and statistics, she intends to get out of it. Taking advantage of an internship in an investment firm, Jeanne manages to attract the attention of the boss with her unstoppable forecasts. Rapid rise, sudden fall? In The Silver Venus, the young heroine, who says she is “neutral like the numbers”, is faced with double discrimination. In this, the very macho world of high finance only sees her as a “poor” defector and a “girl dressed as a boy”. In an interview, filmmaker Héléna Klotz and actress-singer Claire Pommet, aka Pomme, unravel the rich plot of this emancipatory thriller.
It should be noted that Jeanne lives with her father and her younger brother and sister in a police barracks: another eminently masculine environment. With her Lisbeth Salander air, Jeanne stands out from the decor.
“The idea for the film was born during the Yellow Vest protests in France,” explains screenwriter and director Héléna Klotz.
“There were a lot of police officers in the service of the government, who hit the demonstrators a lot… And I found myself wondering how the youth were going to position themselves in relation to this double violence: that, physical, of the police, and that , financial, of the government. The world of high finance has established itself, because it is the seat of money, and therefore the seat of power. Repression on one side, and money on the other: these two mythologies structure our societies. Before even having a draft of the story, I knew that I wanted to set the story in these two mythologies. »
“Alternative models”
Jeanne therefore emerged slowly, migrating from this “mythological” backdrop to the foreground. In this case, the character went through significant transformations.
“I first wrote for a boy, because I had met someone who was trader and who died, reveals the filmmaker. If high finance interested me, it was because I had met this person who had been crushed by that environment. I wrote this character for a few months, but I couldn’t imagine myself in it. And with the tragic outcome… I was too close, actually. So I started looking for a heroine. Except that I wanted a heroine that we hadn’t seen before. »
Birth of Jeanne, which Claire Pommet plays brilliantly in a first role which we hope will not be the last. As soon as the script is read, the interpreter of I don’t know how to dance fell in love with Jeanne at first sight.
“She was a female character who was quite new to cinema; a character who embodies her femininity in a way that is not classic. In any case, in France, she really wasn’t a usual female character. That’s the first thing I said to myself. The second is that he was a character who crystallizes many themes that interest me intimately and which, I think, are important in society. That is to say, female ambition, codes of femininity, gender, and of course social class – the fact of coming from a background and wanting to get out of that background,” summarizes Claire Pommet.
Pointing to the t-shirt worn during the interview by the person writing these lines, the actress continues:
“I see your t-shirt Titanium : well it is exactly this notion of new femininity that I am talking about. As a young girl, I look around me, and I didn’t see much of that, in the cinema, in my adolescence, alternative models like those proposed by Julia Ducournau or Helena. »
To continue the director on the subject of the gender fluidity of the main character she imagined:
“For my part, I say “female character”, because I really envisioned her as a female character, but one that we wouldn’t have seen a hundred times before. I tried to find contours that would speak of a femininity that speaks to me, and this, from a contemporary perspective. I projected myself a lot into Jeanne, because I went through a moment in my life, after having a child, where I no longer wanted to be assigned to being a woman. At the time, I wore men’s clothes, but without putting words to it. »
When the protagonist became a protagonist, Héléna Klotz really began to write “from her own experience”, according to the main interested party.
“What is fascinating about Jeanne is that she escapes the codes; she invents herself as she wants to invent herself. And I, who am older than the character, find it important, today, that we can invent ourselves outside of the initial assignments. »
Vertical dominance
Jeanne’s professional trajectory is consistent in this regard, since the character stands in opposition, with the same mixture of determination and rebellious spirit, against the narrow values of the boys club what is high finance.
“There are very few women there,” says Héléna Klotz. It’s all about hierarchy. In the film as in life, there is always someone who is superior. Fares [Sofiane Zermani]he is Jeanne’s superior, but above Farès, there is Elia [Anna Mouglalis], and above Elia, there is the character of Mathieu Amalric, at the end… So, there is always a kind of dynamic of superiority. There is always someone who dominates someone else. We would like to get away from these relationships of dominated and dominant, but unfortunately, it is very vertical. The whole system is like this; he is at work everywhere. »
Returning to Jeanne and her masculine attire, Héléna Klotz adds some interesting nuances:
“I’m talking about hierarchy, but if Jeanne has taken on male clothing, it’s to blend in with the pack, to which she is a stranger. She took the dominant’s costume by calculation, and made armor out of it. At the end of the film, Jeanne gets rid of it, because she no longer needs it, but it remains… other. »
Jeanne, non-binary character? Perhaps, undoubtedly, but it remains a categorization.
“Even today, I like that Jeanne still escapes me. I like the idea of a character who is vague, who is not determined,” says Héléna Klotz.
Avant-garde director
On the personal front, between two maneuvers aimed at escaping her condition, Jeanne comes to educate an ex-lover (Niels Schneider) in matters of consent: another promising theme.
“The question of consent immediately appeared very, very delicate to me,” recalls Claire Pommet.
“What do we do when there has been an attack and consent has not been respected? How do we write the rest of this? How do we do it so that victims do not remain victims all the time, and so that aggressors do not remain aggressors all the time? I’m of the opinion that all good directors who have done avant-garde things have thrown themselves into the void at one point or another when tackling delicate subjects. »
Claire Pommet without hesitation places Héléna Klotz in this category of avant-garde filmmakers, saluting in passing the immense listening and collaborative spirit of the director.
In return, Héléna Klotz has nothing but praise for Claire Pommet, rightly convinced that a real meeting took place between the actress and the character. To conclude the filmmaker in a tone of confidence:
“Before meeting her, I read an interview that Claire gave to Mediapart, where she recounted the violence she had suffered in the music industry, as a woman. And I said to myself that she could understand my character, her destiny, her somewhat cold side, which has lost its skin… Besides that she could understand Jeanne, I had the impression that Claire could bring her things, from his experience. When I met her, I told her all this, and I gave her a scene to read. As soon as she read it, I knew. I knew the film would exist, that we would make it. It’s like when you fall in love and you don’t know what the future will bring, but you want to get started. »
To launch yourself into the void, well. Because it takes one avant-garde artist to recognize another.
The film The Silver Venus hits theaters on March 22.