The writer makes her first film as a director with the masterful “Une famille”, a documentary in which she confronts certain relatives with her past and her writings, and in particular with the incest suffered at the hands of her father during her adolescence. A shocking and harsh film, but which also lets in a beautiful light.
Twenty-five years after the release of his first book, Incest, in which she recounted the rapes committed by her father when she was a teenager, Christine Angot returns, this time, to the cinema, with a work of unprecedented form and incredible power, where – helped by the experienced cinematographer Caroline Champetier and a camera – she will ask several of those close to her for explanations about this crime which has irrigated her work for a quarter of a century. Meeting in Paris with the author.
franceinfo: You had the idea for this film during a promotional tour for your book The journey to the East in 2021. Was this decided a bit at the last moment?
Christine Angot: No, not really… It was when I was finishing the last corrections to the book that I received a phone call from my publisher telling me that I was invited for the literary season, two months later, to signatures in Mulhouse, Nancy and Strasbourg. In other words the East, and Strasbourg the city of my father. And I know that I take out this book which is very precise and goes quite far, and I say to myself that it would be good if there was a camera with me, in case something happened. In case the dream of seeing my half-brother and half-sister again comes true.
When we see you, in your hotel room at the beginning of the film, looking at the route to find your father’s house, is that something both thoughtful and a little improvised?
Absolutely, and it’s all a surprise actually. The only thing that is planned is that there is someone, with me, who will see the same thing as me: a building facade, a street, a cloud above this house in which he lived my father until his death and where his widow still lives. It has to be filmable, there has to be another dimension, and not just me and the things that were experienced, that’s not possible. We need a third dimension that records, allows us to know, and shows, to others.
What follows is this incredible scene where you ring the doorbell at your father’s widow’s house: she opens the door, but wants to close the door when she sees the camera. And you force your way…
I don’t dare ring the bell at first, because I’m afraid of being rejected once again by this family, when I’m in need of a word from them. But she opens it for me, I’m super happy, I go up and she closes it when she sees the people with me. And it’s not possible, it’s not possible (she raises her voice – Editor’s note) let it close again. So that implies, when we are really determined and others want to evade their obligation to speak, a form of violence. But what is violent? Isn’t it rather this stubborn silence, for decades, on this question?
What’s also quite terrible is that when you confront this ex-mother-in-law or your own mother, you are still very alone. They show no empathy, they bring everything back to themselves, basically, you annoy them with your stories and your books…
I don’t have a problem with them bringing everything back to her. But what interests me is to know what this story means to them. How do these people cope, what is the film they have in their head on this subject, what is the story they tell themselves? This is what I am looking for, what I am asking for, to understand precisely this famous silence, what it is made of.
And that’s what the cinema tool allows: to seek out this form of truth?
Yes, that’s what I thought. Then so that there is a word that is as complete and complex as possible, and that we don’t just look at the person who was the victim of incest, that we also look at the people around. Why should we focus on the victim, is she the only one in the story? No, there is the father. He is dead, of course, but is still very present, was very protected for a long time, and his family obviously continues to watch over his memory. So there is in itself no reason not to speak with these people who are also affected.
Other scenes, with your ex-husband Claude or your daughter Léonore, are very beautiful and more peaceful, tending towards a sort of reconciliation, appeasement. Did you experience them like that?
The scene with Claude could be universal, since having lived for many years with someone and no longer living with that person, and the idea of the things we could say to each other is common to many people. Who chose to love each other, live together, have a child together. It’s indescribable, it’s so deep. And there, talking about it, allowing ourselves to talk about what has been experienced, talking about ourselves, it happens. And that’s all that can touch a lot of people, I think.