“It is the fusion of the two which creates this kind of disturbing relationship with the moment T”

Every day, a personality invites itself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Thursday March 14, 2024: The director, screenwriter and novelist Guillaume Nicloux. His new film “In the Skin of Blanche Houellebecq” with Michel Houellebecq and Blanche Gardin was released on Wednesday.

Guillaume Nicloux is a director, screenwriter and novelist. The trail to the stars, his first feature film, shot in 16 mm and in black and white, was a harbinger of the path taken from his beginnings to today. His work is above all experimental. In 1997 he signed Octopus with Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Clotilde Courau. Then there was the trilogy dedicated to film noir with A private matter (2002), This woman (2003) and The key in 2006. He toured The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq in 2014, with Michel Houellebecq in person, or even The Ends of the World, with Gaspard Ulliel in 2017.

After Pick up And Thalassothe final part of his satirical trilogy is released on Wednesday March 13, 2024: In the shoes of Blanche Houellebecq. Blanche Gardin is president of a lookalike competition dedicated to Michel Houellebecq, to ​​which the real Michel Houellebecq goes. Obviously, unforeseen events will come to thwart all this, with a plot which, at times, has neither tail nor head, but draws us in.

franceinfo: I would like to point out that the two main actors, Blanche Gardin and Michel Houellebecq, are indeed the real ones. How was this film born?

Guillaume Nicloux: It’s a special process, a strange alchemy between everyone’s desires which converge at around the same time. It’s trying to find, at a given moment, the common energy that allows us to set off and invent a story together with a base. This base will also allow us to explore the private parts together, to reflect on current events, to mix in a fairly underground way, with a particular mesh, their intimacy and fiction.

“This film offers comedy, but with somewhat parallel paths within the subtext.”

Guillaume Nicloux

at franceinfo

You have always touched on the intimate in your work. Isn’t that the starting point of this desire to become a filmmaker?

I think it took me a long time to achieve this desire. I believe that the trigger was really, both The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq which liberated us, which launched us into autofiction, since it was almost a camouflaged documentary, and then this extension which went through The nun. This film was for me on much more intimate grounds, linked to my education or to questions at certain moments of my adolescence. What interests me is that what I experience in an intimate way can find resonance in films. And conversely, that the food that we accumulate and that we produce on films can also turn against us, so that it nourishes the next film, that it cancels it, that it creates something organic in fact.

You were talking about your education. What were you like as a teenager and what education did you receive?

I was quite a rebellious child. I suffered from school phobia. I left traditional education very early. I was two years behind in sixth grade, but that was my nature to not be able to sit still. I would have liked at times… When I saw friends who were passionate about what they were learning, I was a little devastated. I despaired of one day not being able to access this knowledge. And then little by little, I understood that we could possibly cultivate ourselves, learn with others. It’s another path.

In all your films, there is a form of contemplation. When we film Michel Houellebecq, time is suspended. You have to get into your rhythm. Are you also like that, contemplative?

It happens to me. Michel also has his own temporality, so we have to adapt to it, which allows us to see time pass differently and at a different speed.

Banche Gardin also has a temporality of its own!

Also, it is the fusion of the two which creates this kind of disturbing relationship with the moment T. Sometimes contemplative, sometimes very agitated, sometimes submissive, in any case very receptive to climates and places.

Aren’t you afraid of your own feelings and emotions? I have the impression that your actors serve as a bit of a shield for you.

Without a doubt. But I’m often afraid. From what I don’t know. I’m often afraid of not being totally connected to what’s happening, and of missing out on something that I could have shown better, said better. But at the same time, it’s fear that motivates me. So it’s paradoxical.

“It’s the curiosity of not knowing what’s going to happen in 30 seconds that excites me the most.”

Guillaume Nicloux

at franceinfo

A sentence starts the film, it is from Maryse Condé: “Laughter is the first step towards liberation. We start by laughing. We laugh so we free ourselves and therefore we can fight“.

Yes. It’s interesting, you cite a pro-independence author, who precisely highlights something that Blanche Gardin practices acutely. It’s a way of opening the film in fact, by granting yourself the right to mockery, but in a benevolent way. It’s about addressing themes that are important markers today, having everyone’s point of view, to compare ideas and above all to debate. Ultimately, the most interesting thing is to debate even if people don’t agree.

Watch this interview on video: