Play by Catherine Léger (Princess) presented at La Licorne in April 2017, a few months before the Weinstein affair broke out, one of the highlights of the #MeToo movement, Baby sitter is back on the big screen under the direction of Monia Chokri (My brother’s wife).
“I wanted to adapt the play because it made me think and gave me more questions than answers,” says the director, whom we met a few hours before leaving for the Cannes Film Festival, where she sits on the short film jury and accompanies Falcon Lake, the first feature film by Charlotte Le Bon. I wanted to offer this to people because we are in a period of ready-to-think. Suddenly, Catherine, who is not a Manichaean, arrives with all her intelligence, asking questions that force us to think. There are gray areas in all the characters; neither is right or wrong. »
Baby sitterwhich won the prize for best film and best actor (Steve Laplante) at the Monte-Carlo Festival, features Cédric (Patrick Hivon), an uneventful engineer who, after a few too many beers with his friends, steals a kiss to a journalist (Ève Duranceau) live on television.
“Cédric enters his bubble, but it’s not sexual, judge Patrick Hivon. It’s a little beak on the cheek, not on the mouth. There is something tender, it’s not as if he had grabbed it, made an object of it… but it’s sure that if you look at it with the latest glasses that have been sold to us socially, it exceeds the limits. Cédric evolves in a professional world where guys have money and power. He is someone who has not questioned himself much in life. »
In a few hours, the clip went viral and generated a large number of comments on social networks. Some congratulate the man for his gesture; the others condemn him. Some blame the woman for having rejected this gesture; the others salute his courage.
“Social networks have changed everything, continues the actor. It’s like the Salem Witches. It will even sometimes seek cruelty in us. At the same time, there have been so many routs in the justice system, so many women who should have been listened to, so many victims who have been flouted. We live in a funny era…”
Now unemployed, Cédric finds himself a stay-at-home father when Nadine (Monia Chokri), his wife suffering from postpartum depression, tells him that she is going back to work. With the help of his brother Jean-Michel (Steve Laplante, who takes over the role he had created on stage), well-meaning journalist, he begins to write Sexist Story in order to ask forgiveness from women for all the reprehensible acts committed by men against them.
It doesn’t exist, a female character in her twenties, blond as wheat; in life and in the cinema, she is there to serve the desires of others and her word matters little to us. Gradually, we discover that it is she who has the power, a benevolent power.
“Cédric is not necessarily a bad guy, believes Catherine Léger, who is writing the screenplay for Baby sitter. He is not malicious. He’ll say it’s just a jokebut there it is at a time when the “just a joke” does not work anymore. For me, Jean-Michel is more problematic than Cédric. He embodies the savior, a character that fascinates me. If there’s a knight, that means what he wants is a princess. When you don’t want to be a princess, you distrust saviors and knights. It was my impulse at the heart of this project. »
And God created Amy
And the baby sitter in all of that ? Cross between Mary Poppins and Brigitte Bardot, Amy (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) arrives on roller skates at Cédric and Nadine. The young woman with uninhibited sexuality confronts them with their own prejudices and leads them to reflect on paternalism, misogyny and gender construction.
“There are a lot of fantasies around the woman who helps, who is at the service of the other — the nurse, the nanny, the secretary… — and there are also a lot of fantasies around the conquering man, explains the screenwriter Charlotte has fun, by Sophie Lorain. And there, we arrive with a character of baby sitter very frontal and very direct. It’s as if all of a sudden, the fantasy is active and not passive. It destabilizes everyone; that’s what I wanted to play on. »
“It doesn’t exist, a female character in her twenties, blond as wheat,” adds the director; in life and in the cinema, she is there to serve the desires of others and her word matters little to us. Gradually, we discover that it is she who has the power, a benevolent power. The film deals with relationships of domination; the cornerstone of #MeToo and the problems of our society is to say that we no longer accept these reports. Rebuilding power by imagining a power where people are responsible for the development of others, I find that’s what is fabulous about the baby sitter. »
With an aesthetic reminiscent of the 1970s productions of Just Jaeckin (Emmanuelle, history of O) and David Hamilton (Bilitis) with a touch of Italian horror cinema with Argento sauce (Suspiria), Baby sitterimmerses us in the tale for adults where wolves are sometimes more in danger than little red riding hoods, where princesses can turn into witches, where genres are brilliantly deconstructed.
“Initially, I wanted to destabilize myself as a designer, reveals Monia Chokri. When I create a work, the question I ask myself is what is the fairest way to tell a story. The universe of the tale and this kind of aesthetic precision seemed to me just enough to be able to support the subject of the play. I took the codes of the genre, of horror, of giallo, of erotic cinema, codes that manhandled women, that objectifyed them and that infantilized them, in order to divert them and integrate them into comedy. »
“Both the play and the script were more classic comedy; Monia arrived with a completely explosive imagination and turned it into a darker comedy. It’s perhaps more confrontational than in the theatre, but it’s a proposal that I find interesting and which is perhaps more in tune with our times. We don’t talk directly about #MeToo, but the response is more ferocious, ”concludes Catherine Léger.
Baby sitter hits theaters across Quebec on June 3.