Monia Chokri has as much style in front of as behind the camera. A crazy chic, and an outspokenness that is hard to resist. Moreover, I have the impression that she is having a blast as a filmmaker. After being seduced by My brother’s wife three years ago, I was pleasantly surprised by Baby sitter, his second feature film, adapted from the play by Catherine Léger, which is released in theaters on Friday. Surprise in the sense that I liked being manipulated like that, without at all knowing where, as a spectator, I was being led.
Posted at 6:34 a.m.
I especially laughed a lot with the two films of Monia Chokri. In my humble opinion, there aren’t enough female filmmakers in Quebec who dare to take up comedy. “It’s true, I hadn’t noticed,” the director told me, met during a day devoted to the Quebec press, when she had just returned from Paris where she defended her film and received a nice reception of the French press.
Discussions were more difficult with theater operators. As Monia Chokri plays a lot on clichés by diverting them into Baby sitter, some were destabilized. “It’s a lot of old men who own the cinemas in France,” she said. I met some who didn’t see the second degree, and I said to myself: phew, it’s going to be difficult to make them understand that this film has potential…”
We are still lucky in Quebec. In France, I felt like I had taken a time machine and was in the kindergarten of feminism.
Monia Chokri
Baby sitter gets off to a flying start when Cédric (Patrick Hivon) makes a mistake during an outing with his friends. A little drunk after an extreme sports match, he kisses a journalist who is doing his topo live. The excerpt goes viral on the web, all of Quebec judges his gesture, and he is suspended from his job. His brother Jean-Michel (Steve Laplante) suggests that he write a mea culpa in the form of a book in which he will write letters to women. Meanwhile, his wife Nadine (played by Monia Chokri) is in the throes of postpartum depression and rather crestfallen to see the two guys getting excited over this project. It gets tougher when the couple hires Amy (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), a baby sitter pretty and sexy, which will hypnotize them all, but nothing will happen according to what we are used to seeing in this kind of plot.
Originally, the playwright Catherine Léger was inspired by this heartbreaking fashion in the United States where men attacked women journalists live by shouting “fuck her right in the pussy”. Monia Chorki explains to me that they have toned down Cédric’s gesture because mentalities have changed. “That’s what’s great about awakening consciousness,” she notes. I told Catherine that he couldn’t do that today because nobody was going to have sympathy for the character. What is interesting is that he is not aware that his gesture is unacceptable, like many men who are in denial. This is no longer accepted in our society. If it doesn’t deconstruct, it’s going to be cheesy. »
Cédric’s book project is, to tell the truth, a little ridiculous, hence the comedy of the situation. “Why make a book of letters to women? You haven’t even done any thinking and you’re already in the process of putting yourself in the picture. What I like about Catherine’s play is that she never goes to the extreme, it’s not Manichean. Even me, even today, when I see the film, I ask myself other questions. For example, I am ambiguous in relation to Jean-Michel. He is bonafide and at the same time he is super heavy. »
Monia Chokri specifies that she did not make a film on #metoo, but on power relations. We can see that we have integrated them into our gaze, especially the one we put on the baby sitter in question who will not act according to our expectations. “For me, the cornerstone of the #metoo problem in particular is this way of conceiving human relationships in this abuse of power. We no longer agree, this is no longer how we want to be treated, that we want to interact. This is what must be deconstructed: the relations of domination. »
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE PRODUCTION
Nadia Tereszkiewicz embodies the babysitterr from the film by Monia Chokri.
And Monia Chokri does this with her inimitable style, of great originality, where she plays on the codes with great pleasure, borrowing from the imagery of the tale and even that of the horror films of the 1970s, hyper aesthetic, like those of Dario Argento.
A journalist from Inrocks didn’t like the movie. He thought it was full of clichés. I think you can blame me for a lot of business, a lot of icing, because I put it in this film, but clichés? Precisely, we take a classic structure, with a baby sitter, one has the impression that she is going to be in rivalry with the woman and that she is going to seduce the man, but she does the exact opposite of that. I find it extraordinary, it’s so unusual.
Monia Chokri
As for the critics who criticized her for doing too much on a visual level, she quickly brushes aside their arguments. “My plans should have been more ugly, right?” That I hold back on my visual choices? But I can’t, that’s all. I decided to go in a line, I’m not going to abandon it in the middle to breathe your need to see a plan that does not destabilize you. You can like it or not, it doesn’t matter. I also like that you don’t have to understand everything. But we are not in a time like that. We are in an era of ready-to-think, we must not get lost in art. Still, it’s fun to get lost. »
What I admire most about Monia Chokri is that, like her friend Xavier Dolan, she wants to make a cinema that does not take the viewer by the hand, full of paradoxes and gray areas, all wrapped up in an aesthetic endlessly amazing. A cinema like Buñuel or Fortier, totally unpredictable, which constitutes a true cinematographic experience. “It’s funny that you’re talking to me about Buñuel,” she told me. I went to Paris to see his film The criminal life of Archibald de la Cruz. It’s so free! It dates from 1955 and in front of certain shots, I wondered: when was all that lost? When did cinema stop being a place of exploration? People go less and less to the cinema, we have to ask ourselves questions. I find it very important to have this reflection. The cinematographic image must be specific to the cinema, and the only place where one can see it is in the cinema. So what makes it cinema? »
Baby sitter will be presented in theaters on Friday.