French filmmaker Olivier Babinet fondly remembers his time at the Abitibi-Témiscamingue International Film Festival last fall. “I really liked the atmosphere, the small town under the snow, the cafés, the bars and the people who come to see the films,” he says from France, where we are joining him.
His most recent feature film, Normalhad received a warm welcome in Rouyn-Noranda. This slow-paced work, halfway between American independent cinema and the social film of the Dardenne brothers, is being shown in five Quebec cinemas starting this Friday.
It’s the story of Lucie (touching Justine Lacroix), a 15-year-old teenager who takes care of her father, who is handicapped by multiple sclerosis (Benoît Poelvoorde, unrecognizable as a depressed old rocker who spends his days and nights smoking joints in front of his video game console).
The mother died in a motorcycle accident. The atmosphere is heavy between the single father overwhelmed by events and the young girl in the throes of adolescence, who live in a small dilapidated house in a soulless suburb. The main attraction of the city is the car wash where teenagers come to party on Saturday nights.
To kill boredom, Lucie invents stories. She and her father watch zombie movies. The feature film oscillates at times between fantasy and realism.
“I like to show in my films that imagination allows us to cope with reality,” says Olivier Babinet.
Sinister suburbs
His own story inspires the filmmaker, who grew up in Strasbourg, in eastern France. “I left school very early, before the baccalaureate, and I did a lot of stupid things when I was a teenager. I hung out late in the streets with kids. We sat on a bench, we laughed, we made up stories to fill the void,” he says.
The film was shot in the commune of Chelles, in the Paris region. This suburb is made up of neighborhoods delimited by zones of “emptiness”. The electricity pylons stand like guardians of the place. The small town, almost in the countryside, reminds the filmmaker of the special atmosphere of his childhood.
Olivier Babinet evokes the classic Playtimeby Tati, who showed in 1967 “the standardization and Americanization of the world”. Cities all over the planet look alike with suburbs becoming “non-places” populated by sinister industrial parks.
This slightly Gothic decor recalls the aesthetic ofEdward Scissorhandsexplains the filmmaker. Lucie’s boyfriend looks like the hero of Tim Burton’s film. “He’s very eccentric, he wears makeup, he’s different from all the other teenagers around.”
The Poelvoorde touch
Benoît Poelvoorde (completely crazy in It happened close to youin 1992) gives a very personal color to the character of the father, William. The 59-year-old Belgian actor is unrecognizable in the skin of this man who does not pay for mine. His Longueuil haircut (a mullet, as they say in France) makes the guy even more pathetic. And endearing.
Olivier Babinet hesitated to hire the Belgian actor with the inimitable face, whom he found “intimidating, sometimes”. “I didn’t want an actor who pulls the covers towards himself and does his act, even if his act is great. I said to myself: ‘I won’t be able to make him enter my world'”, says the director.
The flamboyant actor finally impressed the film crew. He listened. And was generous with Justine Lacroix, who was only in her second role, after That’s lovein 2018.
Heroic Antiheroes
The filmmaker was inspired by his ex-brother-in-law for this loving and dysfunctional father. Seriously injured while repairing a tractor (which fell on him), this friend raises his daughter in joint custody. Like William’s character, he smokes weed while playing zombie games.
“I myself wondered how I would cope if I had to take care of my children while I was sick,” says Olivier Babinet. “I admire William’s character. Some might think he’s not a very good father, but I think he does a good job. He experiences moments of complicity with his daughter.”
The director of a series, three fictions and a documentary makes social cinema (but not only). His documentary Swagger entered a college in Aulnay-sous-Bois in 2016, a small immigrant town described by the far right as “one of the most dangerous places in France.”
This suburb is far from perfect, Babinet points out, “but when you spend time there, you see all the richness and complexity of a place like that. I was very touched by the humanity of these kids during the two years I spent there.” Normal also delves into the humanity of a gloomy environment.