“It’s a hymn to the game of actors, to lie to tell the truth”

François Ozon is a director, screenwriter and producer. Along with Claude Lelouch and Jean-Jacques Annaud, he is one of the rare filmmakers to touch upon directing as well as writing and producing his films as well. A prolific filmmaker, he releases an average of one film per year, often diametrically opposed. His films have character, aesthetics, photography and his bias is systematically assumed. This has given rise to films that stir up the desire to discover them on the one hand, and to let them pick us up. We think of eight women (2001), swimming pool (2003), Ricky (2009), Vase (2010), Summer 85 (2020), Thanks to God (2018).

This Wednesday, March 8, 2023 releases its latest, my crime with Nadia Tereszkiewisz, Rebecca Marder and Isabelle Huppert.

franceinfo: my crime comes out today, it no longer belongs to you. Is it hard to live or not?

Francois Ozon: No way. I’m happy to get rid of it.

You wanted to make a film with a false culprit. my crime tells the story of a young actress who does not get a role and finds herself accused of the murder of a famous producer whom she went to see shortly before. During the trial, thanks to her lawyer friend, she invokes self-defense. It’s a detective comedy, an Agatha Christie enigma. Is it a huge showcase for the actors and actresses that you have done?

It’s a hymn to actresses and actors in general.

It’s almost a declaration of love…

Yes, because what I like about actors is that they are only false, artificial, but nevertheless they touch us. A truth emerges and that’s what I wanted to tell in this film where there is a kind of mise en abyme about an actress who actually says a speech that is not hers, that is written by someone else. But nevertheless, she finds her own truth by speaking other people’s words and she becomes a great actress. my crime is a hymn to acting, to lying but to lie to tell the truth.

It’s true that this film continues the work that you started a long time ago on the status of women, on the relationship between men and women and in particular on the key role that the female figure represents. Was it also a tribute that you wanted to pay them?

I don’t know if it’s intentional. In any case, I’ve always liked female characters in the cinema because women, as a matter of fact, are often in society in the position of victim. So they have to fight harder, they have to find ways to get out of it. These are characters that I often find more interesting. There is the cliché of saying to themselves that a woman must use her beauty, her seduction to get by and there, what I really like is that these two young girls use above all their intelligence and their their malice to find their way.

There are several generations that are represented in this film. It is also all your work. That of showing that an actress, beyond a certain age, can always continue to play. There is a huge work of transmission. Is it important for you?

Yes. I’ve always liked to mix both the families of actors and also the generations, because I find that something happens that is often moving. To see an actor like Fabrice Luchini, who has such expertise, who has made so many films, find himself face to face with a fresh young actress just starting out, that also disturbs him. We put a sacred monster with someone who is just starting out… Afterwards, we have to accompany and make sure that it goes well because the big actor must not devour the little actor or the little actress. But I find that it provokes something that is always interesting cinematographically.

You grew up with a biologist dad, a French teacher mother, in a family of four children. What do you keep from this childhood?

I bathed in a cultural environment. There were a lot of books in my house. And then my parents were quite cinephiles, so I saw films quite early.

My dad had a Super 8 camera, he was doing the holiday movies and one day I grabbed that camera and found my niche. I had fun.

Francois Ozon

at franceinfo

You have filmed your family elsewhere!

I filmed my family, I filmed my brother who murdered my parents and my sisters. I started telling stories and actually it’s amazing for a child to find their way. All of a sudden, knowing that there, I am in the right place.

The desire to change things, to change looks too, I have the impression that this has always been the driving force of your creative soul. You were one of the first to talk about homosexuality, about shaking up established conventions.

Yes, but it’s something quite natural. That is to say, I, as a spectator, like to walk into a movie theater and come out upset in the sense that my ideas may have changed my feelings. I like this idea that the cinema reveals things to you. And what is beautiful in relation to my experience as a spectator is that often, the cinema reveals to us things that we have in ourselves, but that we have not been able to formulate. For example, when I saw Letter from a stranger by Max Ophüls (1948), it revealed something of a love story that I was able to experience.

“What is beautiful is when the cinema manages to touch us internally without us realizing it.”

Francois Ozon

at franceinfo

When we watch your films, we realize that you talk a lot about yourself, about what moves you, what suits you, what defines you.

It is true that I often had the impression of revealing myself. When I am told that I am mysterious, I say: but wait, watch my films, there is everything! Even though they’re female characters, even though they’re older than me, I feel like I’m telling something. Afterwards, it’s a puzzle, but in any case, my sensitivity is present.