It all started with a crush on Juliette Binoche. The French icon, after reading The Ouistreham wharf, of the journalist Florence Aubenas, dreamed of bringing it to the screen. “I fought for its adaptation, she says on Zoom from Paris. I assured Florence that her book was very cinematic and its theme important. I had to produce it. “Ten years passed between the beginning of the process and the release of the film, in which she plays the main role.
The key is the story of the intrepid French journalist Florence Aubenas, the very one who was taken hostage in Baghdad in 2005 during the Iraq war. His Ouistreham wharf, published in 2010, related, through the character of the writer Marianne Winckler, her own adventure. In order to make a book out of it, the reporter had infiltrated the precarious world of housekeepers, getting hired alongside them in companies and then on the Ouistreham ferry, between Normandy and England. Where, between arrivals and departures, housekeeping is a combat sport.
In the eyes of the actress, the subject addressed was all the more crucial in times of crisis and climate change. “How to include the invisible? asks Binoche. Most of these jobs are performed by women all over the world. They have children and can’t do it. Me, I need to live inside what is happening in reality, to build bridges. »
Reluctant at first, Aubenas agreed to see his story adapted if Emmanuel Carrère was the project manager. The writer of Yoga and of The snow classoften screenwriter, had not made a film since The moustache, in 2005. “The proposal to make Ouistreham was unexpected and irresistible, he says, also in a virtual interview. What a challenge! »
On a wire
The screenplay written with his former partner, Hélène Devynck, was a long process for Carrère. He explored social cinema, on the fine line between reality and fiction, imposture and empathy, in an approach often stuck to documentary. Raising the question of the difficult reconciliation of classes in France.
“We don’t have any Dardenne brothers or Ken Loach here,” Carrère said. In the connection with reality, we generally feel the external eye of the filmmaker. He perceives his film somewhat in line with those of Stéphane Brizé (The law of the market): a local social cinema.
He must have asked himself the same question as Florence Aubenas about the merits of hiding his identity. For her book, the journalist had chosen to pose as another. Not him. “The equivalent of the book, in cinema, would have been a hidden camera documentary. What I do not like. I have never done immersion journalism, always playing cards on the table. If people agree with my approach, they accept. By his own bet, Aubenas had obtained the true hour on this work. She got up at 3 am to do it with the others. In the film, fiction intervenes. »
Apart from Binoche, the performers of the film were non-professionals also working in the cleaning trades. They knew these impossible schedules, outside the working hours of the bosses. All of them met in Cannes with the team, last July, when the film was screened at the Directors’ Fortnight.
The adventure was not a long calm river for the Oscar winner of the English patient. Carrère refused Binoche to produce the film. “I was shocked, she admits, while having the reaction to answer him:” It’s hurtful, but the film is more important than me, and these women are humiliated all the time. He was surprised that I didn’t have a nervous breakdown. At least the filming went well. If it had to go badly and more…”
Clash of classes
Two characters from the film were already in Aubenas’s book. They attended workshops every two weeks for several months. The famous actress landed on the set the day before the shooting among a group already formed: “I was exhausted, sick, flu, and I was losing my father, in a situation of vulnerability. Emmanuel had organized a dinner with everyone. Women wanted to take care of me. Overall, it was a warm welcome. They understood that I could help them when they were afraid or forgot a word, to give them confidence. Emmanuel had told me: “The actors, it is you who take care of them.” But he left them free to use their language, at their own pace, by embroidering their own story. Hélène remained on her guard at the start. »
Hélène is Hélène Lambert, a revelation in the film through the strength of her performance, in the shoes of the writer’s great friend. This cleaner does not know that her partner is playing a role, and will not forgive her after discovering it. In the script, Carrère pushed their friendship relationship.
During filming, Binoche will find herself in the position of the writer of the film, privileged among a group of precarious workers, able to find her comfort when the others continue their life of misery. Some blamed him. But such was the delicate bet of its gap between two chairs, which also gives the film its accents of truth.
Ouistreham will hit theaters on March 25.