Festivals - FCAD 2020 - press roundtable with the Teddy Film cast

By Mulder, Deauville, Hotel Barriere Le Royal, 06 september 2020

Our media was present this Sunday, September 6 at the press roundtable, organized as part of the Deauville American Film Festival, of the film Teddy in the presence of two directors & screenwriters Ludovic & Zoran Boukherma and Anthony Bajon and Christie Gautier.

Q : My question is quite general about the film. What were the stakes for you in making a genre film in France as a young director and, above all, did you set yourself limits in relation to the gore scenes, or considering the audience you're going to have?

Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma : I don't know if it's a question of what's at stake, but rather a question of envy. We, our first cinematographic loves were horror films, quite simply. When we were kids, we loved Tales from the Crypt, or horror films from the 80s, and we were completely fed up with them. And after our first film, which was a more realistic film, we just wanted to go back to that. We didn't ask ourselves the question of where to draw the line, I think the question was more about how to show the werewolf, because it's always a bit tricky to show a monster, it can get complicated very quickly. Technically, we are already limited, and even artistically, should we leave the spectator as imagined as possible, should we not risk disappointing by showing too much? We asked ourselves this question.

Q: I asked myself the question because I loved that transformation scene in the bathroom. For the werewolf's head, I wondered if we should put it on or not...

Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma: It's an incredible debate about whether or not to put it on. We decided to put it on because it's fun to have this plan. It made us think about a lot of things that we like. What we knew was that we wanted to show little because we didn't have enough ways to show a lot and risk disappointing. For example, in an alien movie, when we wait for the aliens we are happy to see them. We imagine a lot of things. We say to ourselves, well, that's what it was? if we don't show them, we let the viewer do the work.

Q : You were talking about how you were hyper-inspired by horror movies that are a bit kitsch, so it's more of a question for your actors. Did you give homework assignments to your actors in that movie and were there any horror movie characters who inspired you to build your characters ?

Christine Gauthier : Not at all. Their script is very precise, so the demand is very clear. And then they leave a lot of freedom in terms of what we want to build and how we want to feed our characters, so no, they didn't give us any homework and I didn't go and draw from horror films for my character.

Anthony Bajon : Without repeating what Christine just said. My notions of horror films are really quite limited and so I really wondered if I needed to see any to build my character. And then the fear of copying and pasting, the fear of looking for something that would influence me and saying, "Oh yeah, but that worked well in that film. So it didn't. For me, it was a deliberate decision not to go looking for genre films, horror films.

Q : What was the most difficult scene for you, the directors ?

Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma : The attack sequence was the most difficult because there were a lot of extras to manage, a lot of shots, a lot of things with effects, without knowing if it would work or not like the werewolf's paws. There were obviously more things on the set than what we see in the film. So it was quite difficult because we'd never done it before, a scene like that and because there were all the extras to manage, it's something we weren't necessarily used to, and if it doesn't work, we're really in trouble because it's supposed to be the heart of the film. But we chose to show what happens afterwards, and the shooting led us to think that it was better to show what happens after the massacre, rather than the massacre itself, because that's a bit of a risk of being disappointing. If we want to do as Carrie did, we don't have the means, so we shifted the spectacular dimension a bit to the result of the massacre. And that's the hardest part, it took us a week, it was quite intense.

Q : I think that the fact that you didn't have a huge budget means that the film is not just a genre film, it's also a film of sensations, emotions and encounters with people, I think.

Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma : Our references are basically very American, we grew up with very American films, but we didn't want to make an imitation of American films or an American film without being American. The most important thing was precisely to make this kind of cinema meet the rural France in which we grew up. We grew up in the Lot et Garonne, in a small village, and what we wanted was to bring that back. When we were little, it was a way to escape with these films. Because we didn't like Le Lot et Garonne at all. We hated where we grew up. Since living in Paris, we have reconciled ourselves with this place because we go there more than temporarily on vacation. Making a genre film in France was also an opportunity to reconcile these two aspects and finally film the people we knew in real life when we were kids and to integrate the genre films we watched into our own world. It was also important to have the cohabitation of genres and to have professional and non-professional actors in addition, who have an accent and allow the film to be anchored in France as it is.

Q : Christine, this is your first film, how did it go?

Christine Gautier : Yes, yes. I was particularly stressed, but it went really well. There was a very good atmosphere, conducive to working on the set, and there was a rather young but very nice crew. That went very well.

Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma : You prepared yourself beforehand too.

Q: Anthony, I don't know you very well, I wanted you to tell me a little bit about you, your background. I thought there was something about you that was quite surprising and that I liked very much. The looks in particular.

Anthony Bajon: My background? I've dreamed of making films since I was very young, since I was 5 years old. My parents told me to take your A-levels first, that's what I did, I got my A-levels to please them. I went to film school, I stayed there for two weeks. By mutual agreement with the director, I left. And then I started casting, it worked very slowly and I started to work a little.

Q : I would like to know if you had a second life. There's something very different from other actors. There's a lived experience.

Anthony Bajon: You can imagine that I'm not going to talk about that. But yes, there are always things from childhood. There's always the old counter psychology that says that artists are traumatized, but there's a bit of that too, it's true.

Q : In relation to the characters, I felt that their stories and their pasts were quite blurred. And we, as spectators, don't really know where they come from, their backgrounds, and so on. Why did you choose to go in that direction?

Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma : You mean for the character of Teddy for example ?

Q: Yes, we don't know why he's there, even compared to his surrogate father.

Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma: What we wanted to create with Teddy is a home where we feel that there is a heavy liability, that there is something wrong and that is deeply rooted in him. And we didn't necessarily want to give the answer as to what that thing was.... We told ourselves a rather precise story, but one that we didn't tell in the film. We wanted people to understand that Teddy's past is a complicated, difficult past. He doesn't have his parents anymore, he lives in an adoptive home, etc. And that Rebecca's past is a much quieter past. She has both her parents, she goes to high school, etc. It's more of an idea this context. We made sure that we understood the environment without necessarily giving all the keys either. There was just a need to play. We wanted to play on the opposition with Rebecca, who has a comfortable, bourgeois family cocoon, and Teddy, who has a more fragile, unstable situation next door. And I think that was enough to understand the anger that animates him, there was no need to give more. And we preferred to dwell on Teddy in the present tense, with all the information needed to understand what he is.

Ludovic Boukherma: There is also, for example, the father of Benjamin's character who is Teddy's rival and who becomes Rebecca's boyfriend after him. His father is the mayor of the village, he's a local notable, he's installed, where Teddy is raised by a guy that everyone finds suspicious, who talks weird, who is not his father. So there is that kind of opposition that exists. There's just something a little bit binary like that.

Q: Speaking of oppositions, there are a lot of comical scenes in the film. How do you build a film so that there is this balance of genres, so that one genre doesn't overflow onto the other, or eat it?

Ludovic Boukherma: The balance is rather tenuous, between comedy and genre films. We slide towards drama at the end. There is a rather serious event at the end of the film and putting a lot of comedy in it is also a risk. We can also be told that it's in bad taste to laugh at certain things that are a bit violent. We, I think that during the shooting, to caricature, we left ourselves the option of a comic take and a slightly less comic take. Because we knew that afterwards, it would be during the editing that we would need to temper all that. We had editing versions where the comedy was present all along and at the end there were still a little bit of second degree touches and that's by doing several projections, showing the film and questioning ourselves that we ended up creating something where you start the film with a lot of comedy and the more it goes on, the more the comedy gives way to the drama. That's something we built in the editing and that we were able to build because we gave ourselves the option of being more or less comical in each take. And then afterwards in the classic horror movies that we like, especially from the 80s, the scenes that are not gore, or what, are often comedy scenes. For example, in Wes Craven's Freddy, the sequences between the young people are actually more comedy sequences.

Zoran Boukherma : We feel closer to this horror cinema there, rather than more contemporary cinema. Today we find that there are more serious films, when we see the Saw, it's a little more black and first degree. Our references are more like Freddy, who is very funny, it's gory, but you can't take it seriously.

Q : All the scenes in the massage parlour, I think they're superb and pivotal, you might say. There's a lot going on, you get a better understanding of Teddy, there's a lot of humor too. The transformation at that moment is also incredible. Can you tell us a little bit about those scenes? How did you think about it?

Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma: Teddy is a guy who gets beaten up on all levels and we thought that at his job he gets harassed, so he has no luck at his job either. And I think that the chemistry between Anthony and Noémie worked very well. The question of work was a real question, because from the first versions of the script, we wanted him to have a job, to be a little complicated. In the first versions, we went to a place where he worked in a gas station but we thought it might be a little bit like American cinema in the 80's, there's a side of déjà vu, where the character is a gas station attendant, etc. We wanted him to have a job, to have a job that was a little complicated. We said to ourselves, one or two months before shooting, it's not right. It's going to be a kind of American fantasy, there are no gas station attendants in France today, so we didn't want that. So we said to ourselves that a night masseur was much more realistic. We wanted to create a little surprise with this character who messes up the village, who drives fast with his car, who is dressed in black. We said to ourselves if we put him in a gas station, it's going to be a cliché. We wanted to go at the opposite of that and of the blow we are going to find him dressed in pink while massaging a guy. It's simply more original. And then there is also something with the body, with the werewolf we can suggest a lot of things with these naked bodies. There was already a scene when the version where he was working in a gas station where he was attacking Noémie because she was his superior, but the physical contact was less obvious, because there was something where he had to go and get her, where she was trying to kiss him, but the context was not obvious. There, with the massage they are already touching each other directly in the first scene where we see them together, she is massaging him. There was already this slightly physical relationship where we knew that we could play a bit like that with the spectator, telling ourselves when the genre is going to interfere in all this. There's a kind of anticipation in the genre where we want the spectator to be afraid and to wonder when the genre is going to appear, when Teddy is going to want to bite someone. We thought that if we show him massaging people on a regular basis, we're going to wonder ah is it going to be there? Or there? It allowed this little apprehension to the spectators.

Q : Then there are also moments that are most reminiscent of an American film, in the set and in the spirit.

Zoran Boukherma : Yes, it's pop, with the pink neon lights and so on. And Noémie, whom we climbed quite a bit, by the way.

Ludovic Boukherma: It's also to break up the rural side, the side that's a bit too Ptit Quiquin, a bit rural, which we also like a lot. We said to ourselves that we also wanted something a bit different.

Q: Anthony, you're just starting your career. I wanted to know if you really want to play in all the different styles of movies, not just one? It's kind of like what you see, you play a farmer's son in The Name of the Land, or in The Prayer where you play a recovering drug addict in a Catholic institution and then you play a werewolf. Is it a desire on your part not to play in only one style of film, not to confine yourself to only one type of film?

Anthony Bajon: Well yes, because the problem with making a film is that behind it you are offered the same film fifty times over. So there are two solutions, it's either to accept and say there's work to be done until 10 years from now, it can be cool, we're safe, but... the filmography is a bit the same, it's just the names of the directors and the titles that change and the titles of the films. Or we can go, at least that's what I choose to do within the limits of what I can do, to go towards very different universes each time, to have directors who have a precise idea of what they want to do, but above all who don't have the same story. When Ludovic and Zoran say that they were fed to horror films and all these stories, when I worked on In the Name of the Earth just before, it wasn't like that at all, it was a farmer's son who grew up on a farm. We're not in the same universe at all and that's really interesting, because there's a total discrepancy between what each director proposes, each scenario, each character. That's why it's interesting to be an actor, that's my opinion.

Q : What are your current projects ?

Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma : We're writing the next one, we've been working on it for a few months now, we hope to shoot it next year. But we can't tell you more, we just want to be able to shoot it quickly because it's been a rather difficult year. We want that it resumes quickly.

Christine Gautier : It's my very first film, for the moment I'm doing some tests and I'm waiting for some answers.

Anthony Bajon: I've just finished Sandrine Kiberlain's film (Une jeune fille qui va bien). I have Mouloud Achour's film that is about to be released and Stéphane Brizé's. I have a film called The Third War with Leïla Bekhti and Karim Leklou. I have my own short film that I'm going to direct, which is in production, and my feature film, which is in writing.

Synopsis :
In the Pyrenees, a wolf stirs up the villagers' anger. Teddy, 19 years old, without a diploma, lives with his adopted uncle and works in a massage parlor. His girlfriend Rebecca is about to graduate from high school and has a bright future ahead of her. For them, it's an ordinary summer ahead. But one full moon evening, Teddy is scratched by an unknown beast. The weeks that follow, he is taken by curious animal impulses...

Teddy
Written and directed by Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma
Produced by Pierre-Louis Garnon, Frédéric Jouve
Starring Anthony Bajon, Noémie Lvovsky, Christine Gautier
Music by Amaury Chabauty
Cinematography: Augustin Barbaroux
Edited by Béatrice Herminie, Ludovic Boukherma, Zoran Boukherma
Production companies : Baxter Films, Velvet Films
Distributed by The Jokers (France), WTFilms
Release date: January 13, 2021 (France)
Running time : 88mns

It was a pleasure to share this press roundtable with our colleagues from Zickma, Fou de théâtre and 21st century women.

Transcription ans translation : Boris Colletier