Visions | When a “machine woman” has emotions

Dans Visions, Diane Kruger incarne une pilote de ligne qui s’impose la même rigueur dans sa vie que dans son avion. Quand une flamme du passé revient, sa forteresse s’écroule. Discussion avec le réalisateur Yann Gozlan sur les différentes thématiques de son film.

Le contrôle

Au travail, Estelle Vasseur (Diane Kruger) n’a pas le droit à l’erreur. Elle applique le même principe lorsqu’elle est sur la terre ferme. « La discipline de fer, le régime alimentaire, la séance de sport intensif… Tout ce qu’elle s’impose est dans un souci de maîtrise de soi, souligne Yann Gozlan, qui a également coscénarisé Visions. Deux objets symbolisent cette recherche de contrôle : sa montre cardio et l’écran domotique qui gère tous les appareils de sa maison. Ils ne sont pas sans évoquer un tableau de bord, mais peuvent aussi être perçus comme un prolongement du personnage, qui est presque une femme-machine. Quand ressurgit Anna [Marta Nieto], which is his love from the past, the machine will begin to go wrong and become humanized in a certain way. Paradoxically, the emotion will derail her and she will no longer be able to control herself. »

Abandonment

“I think we all want stability, security and order in our lives, but at the same time we tend to want to escape it, to have adventures and to be destructive. It’s a duality that has always fascinated me,” confides Yann Gozlan. When Estelle meets Anna again at an airport, she initially tries to hide, but eventually takes down her number after a brief conversation. She later invites her to eat at her luxurious house and introduces her to her husband (Mathieu Kassovitz). She tries to control the situation, but her tension only grows stronger. “She really loves her husband, but it’s something more powerful, stronger; an impulse that she cannot control and which means that she is under Anna’s influence. It’s an irrepressible need in her life that she comes to fill,” underlines the man who also directed Black Box And Burnout.

Premonitions

Visions is dotted with… visions. We wonder if these are dreams, projections of the future or representations of Estelle’s fears and desires. “I wanted to talk about the phenomenon of premonition,” says Yann Gozlan. Michel Fessler, one of the screenwriters, proposed to me the idea of ​​a character haunted by a recurring dream, that of a house on a beach [celle d’Anna], and which falls on the house, as if the dream were contaminating reality. » The specificity of Estelle’s profession allows us to explore not only the heavy responsibility that pilots carry, but also the effects on their bodies. “I spoke with pilots who fly long-haul and they told me that they are always a little jet-lagged, which causes loss of bearings and sleep problems. » The director emphasizes that Estelle feels that she must perform twice as well since she operates in an environment dominated by men.

Paranoia

“Gradually, the environment and everyone seems suspicious to create a feeling of paranoia. Is her husband playing a double game? Does he know about her adultery? Does she see him as threatening or is he really? As for Anna, is she a femme fatale or just an adventure that Estelle is too invested in? I wanted us to take the heroine’s point of view and ask ourselves questions about whether or not the characters around her are dangerous. I wanted everything to be ambiguous, everything to be murky. » The two houses, the couple’s modern, almost all-glass house, then the one from another era located on Anna beach, add to the anxiety-provoking climate, believes Yann Gozlan. “The film is quite claustrophobic even though there are a lot of scenes that take place outside. I wanted these two houses to exude something disturbing. One gives the impression of being in plain sight and of being locked in a glass prison, while the other is dark with this crack in the wall which is symbolic of the mental tear of the heroin. »

The balance

The synopsis presents Anna as the trigger that plunges Estelle into a horrible spiral. Yann Gozlan believes that people who attempt to exercise great control are often the most fragile. “We see Anna as the grain of sand that will seize the machine, but I think the worm was in the apple. The balance can be very precarious. Control helps hide gaping flaws. Like a colossus with feet of clay. Estelle’s balance was already very complicated to manage and I believe that Anna’s arrival is only a revealer of the trouble that was already inside her. »

Visions hits theaters on October 20.