Sarah (Sonia Cordeau) and Jonathan (Guillaume Cyr) have just bought a house in poor condition which they dream of renovating according to the tastes of Madame, who shows a strong penchant for showy colors and zebra patterns. “ Bungalow, it is the extension of my life. I’m two decisions away from being Sarah! exclaims Lawrence Côté-Collins, who has drawn on several decoration ideas over the five seasons ofA dinner almost perfect and the four seasons of VIP designwhich she also made.
” With his background reality show, Lawrence met a lot of people who are ridiculed, those who are called “from the small world”, but she rubbed shoulders with them and loved them so much that she wanted to show them without laughing at them, because they are people who have real problems,” explains Guillaume Cyr, for whom the role of Jonathan was created by the director — who had led him in his court footage Score — and its co-screenwriter, Alexandre Auger (prank And The Barbarians of Malbaieby Vincent Biron).
“I am not passing judgement. It really comes from my roots. I think I’m doing hyperrealism. Reality always, always, always exceeds fiction. I’m not so original, I do copy paste from what I see. I need to make cinema that looks like me. I heal myself through this. Everyone is in a little danger of being in my cinema”, warns the “ junkie of the shows of renovations”.
Even if the relationship between Sarah and her mother (Sylvie Léonard) is inspired by that which the director lived with hers, Lawrence Côté-Collins affirms that Sonia Cordeau changed the game in audition: “Sarah is an extension of me and, like I overact my own life, I always seem to be in a summer theater. I tried a lot of actresses who had my attitude, then I found that Sonia’s proposal brought all the nuance that I don’t have and which allowed me to detach myself from the character. »
“I went towards something a little more fragile than the other actresses. The chemistry between Guillaume and I worked really well from the start, there was also something in the bodies that was interesting,” confirms the actress.
house of horrors
Lacking great financial means, the couple first asks Steve (Benoît Mauffette), a friend, to undertake to redo the bathroom. Faced with the disastrous result, Sarah and Jonathan have no choice but to hire the gifted Josée (Ève Landry), who doesn’t hesitate to flirt with Sarah with the finesse of an old dirty mononcle. Which does not displease the one who is a little tired of watching over her boyfriend teenager.
“Two girls who cruisingit can be a lot more trash than a guy who cruise a girl, says the director. It’s not a caricature, it’s a scene that I experienced. We live in a double standard. It’s Sarah who raises her fist at Jonathan, but no one talks about it because we tolerate much more the violence of women against men; if it had been Jonathan who had raised his fist, we would talk about it more than that. It is when you are out of sight that violence is expressed. I find it the fun to play on the pattern of values, because — I know I’m going to look like a cheeky girl — I like to make people think, to have a dialogue with the public. »
Money doesn’t grow on trees, Jonathan will make choices that are questionable to say the least so that the renovations can continue. Then everything will turn into a nightmare. Cynthia (Geneviève Schmidt), Sarah’s colleague, hadn’t she warned her with her macabre and preposterous renovation stories?
“Very quickly, while filming, we realized that if we played a little too much comedy, we were shooting ourselves in the foot, because the universe and the sets spoke for themselves. At the beginning, it was so destabilizing that we constantly said to ourselves that we had to do less, or almost do nothing. It’s so garish, so big, that if we tried to play the slightest bit of comedy, we fell into the sketch, ”says the actor.
“We really had to rely on Lawrence, who was directing us like clockwork. As she has a love for the marginalized, I trusted her completely to find me on the same tracks as her. It’s a topical film, although she didn’t have that in mind at all when writing it, which begins like The Fair of Misfortuneswith Tom Hanks, but which goes really towards the codes of the horror film”, continues Sonia Cordeau.
To the delight of the actors and the director, Bungalow was shot chronologically, since each room of the Laval bungalow recreated in the studio was renovated as the story evolved.
“I would draw plans, then the set team would scale them. It was like a magical power. I said that I wanted such a thing and things were built in the studio. I walked into the set and it was exactly like what was in my head. I was perpetually like a child in a candy store,” explains the director, who was inspired by the bungalow behind the one where she grew up.
Cruel Camera
In order to benefit from the additional help offered by SODEC at the heart of the pandemic, Lawrence Côté-Collins made some sacrifices, including that of bringing New York to her rather than shooting a few scenes there. These changes have resulted in Bungalow has become a camera where the characters seem prisoners of a dollhouse imagined by Stephen King.
“Everyone is locked in a box all the time. In the shop from Jonathan, they are dressed as federal inmates. It is a very prison film. There is hidden prison everywhere in this film. We deliberately built the house with ceilings of eight feet rather than nine feet, to crush the characters. »
With her couple shaken by the arrival of an intruder and her foray into the underworld, Bungalow evoked discarded (2016), the first feature film by the woman who honed her skills at Kino for 10 years.
“You know, we always end up making the same movie… Bungalow, it’s a super-wicked movie because I think society is cruel and violent. I feel trapped in a capitalist system that destroys the environment. All layers of society bother me. It’s all about looks, lies, manipulation. The mold of theAmerican dream, it’s like a muffin tin, but I’m not a muffin, I’m a cookie lying on the next plate. my cinema is trash and violent, he lacks love, but he is everything I have encountered in my life”, concludes the filmmaker.
The film Bungalow will hit theaters on April 7.