(Paris) “Justine is completely obsessive”: nominated for the Césars and the Oscars for her work on Anatomy of a falleditor Laurent Sénéchal tells AFP the other side of the making of the film with an extraordinary destiny.
In a good place for the Oscars (March 11), with 5 nominations, after winning the Bafta for best screenplay on Sunday and two Golden Globes in January, Justine Triet’s film is one of the big favorites for the Césars on Friday.
Among its 11 nominations, that of best editing. A prize which honors a shadowy but essential profession, to which producers ofAnatomy of a fall agreed to dedicate 38 weeks. An exceptionally long time by industry standards.
“It’s a luxury to be able to make a film where editing is so important,” recognizes Laurent Sénéchal. “Justine is completely obsessive, editing is one of the most essential places for the staging” of her film, he smiles.
Eight months of filming during which the director and her editor, both aged 45, exchange ideas, work together and complement each other.
130 hours of rushes of a project initially conceived as a series, what will ultimately remain is a feature film lasting 2 hours 32 minutes, cleverly constructed around a trial and flashbacks of the life of a couple that explodes.
“With Justine, this is the third film we’ve made together. The more we practice, the more we know ourselves, the more certain things become obvious,” Laurent Sénéchal, who also worked on all the films of the director’s companion and co-writer, Arthur Harari, tells AFP.
“We’re going to the market”
During editing, “some directors work with a first draft”, a sort of rough draft which allows you to form an initial idea. With Justine Triet, on the contrary, “everything goes through acting. She starts from the shots, and the material, to see where it takes her. »
“It completely derails her when she sees something played wrong,” he jokes. “So we go all the way together, which takes a lot of time” editing.
“We go to the market looking at the rushes and we cook from this market,” he illustrates. “It was a lot of work, a lot of action, but we were never lost. It was joyful.”
As complex as it is fine, the film examines the relationships of domination within the couple, gender issues, the workings of justice, the view of society, that of children… But to realize is also to give up, explains Laurent Sénéchal.
“We had a lot of extra material,” he confides, for example on the role of the media. It was planned that “the press would be like an additional character, with journalists filming”. “We really reduced that, because it was becoming too complex.”
Happy to see his profession highlighted, Laurent Sénéchal nevertheless thinks that the editor should not leave “his signature” on the film: “it’s a profession of adaptation, we are story tellers, midwives who accompany ” filmmaker.
Is he afraid of being replaced one day by artificial intelligence? He admits to having been amazed by the small sequences automatically generated by his phone from his videos and thinks that the tool will be used as an assistant within ten years without us being “anymore surprised”.
But nothing will replace humans, he hopes: “If we entrust the rushes ofAnatomy on a computer, we won’t have the same film! »