By Ali Moosavi.

I alternate between small films and bigger films with stars…. I have no strategy, I follow my instincts.”

The French writer-director Francois Ozon is not just one of France’s best known and most lauded film makers, but also one of the busiest. His latest film, When Fall is Coming, is his 24th film in the last 24 years; and that’s not counting the short films and music videos that he has made during the same period. He has explored an amazing range of themes and ideas in his movies; a modern retelling of Hansel and Grete (Criminal Lovers, 1999), a humorous mystery (8 Women, 2002), a sexually charged thriller (Swimming Pool, 2003), a psychological drama (In the House, 2012), a war time drama (Frantz, 2016), a poignant drama (By the Grace of God, 2018), a Fassbinder remake (Peter von Kant, 2022), and they all share a high degree of style and directional finesse. Ozon is particularly known for having strong roles for women in his films and he has worked with the cream of French and international actresses: Charlotte Rampling, Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Beart, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Jeanne Moreau, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jacqueline Bisset, Isabelle Adjani, Hanna Schygulla, to name a few.

When Fall is Coming is another delicious concoction by Ozon. Michelle (Helene Vincent), an old woman lives alone in a small town and her only joy is seeing her grandson who is brought to Michelle occasionally by her daughter, Valerie (Ludivine Sagnier). On one occasion when unknowingly Michelle puts poisonous mushrooms in a soup for Valerie, she becomes furious and tells Michelle that she will never bring her son to visit his grandma again. Valerie also feels shame about her mum’s previous occupation, a sex worker. Meanwhile when Vincent (Pierre Lottin), the son of Michelle’s best friend and former “colleague”, Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko) is released from prison, Michelle gives him a job to help her around the house and lends him money to open a bar. Vincent, wanting to pay her back, visits Valerie in Paris to persuade her to bring her son to visit her grandma gain. This visit, however, has disastrous, yet humorous consequences.

I talked to Francois Ozon at the 72nd San Sebastian Film Festival where Pierre Lottin won the award for Best Supporting Actor for When Fall is Coming.

You’ve said that the story of this film comes from a real event in your family.

I had an aunt whom I loved and was a kind of perfect granny. Once she organized a dinner for all the family and she had some mushrooms that she picked in the forest by herself and everybody was sick and some went to the hospital and so everybody asked, did she try to kill us?! Of course not!; well I don’t know actually!, but she was the only one who didn’t eat the mushrooms! I loved this story as a child because I was already a little bit perverse and I loved the idea that my aunt tried to kill all the family! So this was the initial idea which led to the film: to ask the question when you cook mushrooms for someone, don’t you unconsciously have the intention to kill that person?

Death seems to be one of the main themes of the film

Love, too. Death is part of life and it’s the autumn of life for these women who know they will die very soon but they’re still full of life and energy and want to take advantage of the time they have left, especially Michelle with her grandson. Yes, there are three deaths in the film. It’s looks like my killing movie! From very early on in my life, I’ve been concerned about death, that’s why very often my films revolve around the idea of death and ghosts, especially with Under the Sand (2000) which was about death, about desperation, about ghosts. But I don’t analyze it, that’s your job!

Your film has both very interesting and believable characters and a fascinating story and a strong narrative. When you are looking to start a new movie, do you start with the characters or the story?

I start with the characters but I knew at the same time that I wanted to make a portrait of an old woman. These kind of women who have become totally invisible in cinema; a 70 or 80 year old actress doesn’t exist anymore. So I wanted to focus on her life, on the rhythm of her life, on her face. There is a kind of obsession about use of surgery plastic for women, especially for actresses, and this time I wanted to have an actress who is totally natural and to see the beauty of wrinkles.

You recently remade a Fassbinder film and are known to be a fan of many other great directors. Was this film inspired by any particular film or director?

I’m a cinephile director so of course I’ve seen many great films. For this film what inspired me more was the writer Georges Simenon. I don’t know if you know him. He’s very famous in France and he has written many….

Maigret novels.

Of course Maigret, but the other books are also very good and it’s always the description of a small town where everything seems perfect and underneath or behind the curtain some strange things are happening. He’s very good in describing the perverse and neurotic relationships in family. So I had Simenon in mind and one of the directors who best adapted Simenon was Claude Chabrol.  If you want to make a link with other movies, I think it’s more in that direction.

Can you talk about casting Helene Vincent?

She’s a great actress and known more for theater in in France because she worked a lot with Patrice Chereau when she was young and now that she’s older, I think she’s more and more interesting. I worked with her before in By the Grace of God (2018). She played the mother of Denis Menochet and I love this actress because she totally gives herself to the film and actually she’s very close to her character Michelle, not in actual life but for her strength and she’s full of life. She’s more than 80 years old and looks like a young girl. For the shooting she was able to do all what I wanted, she was not like an old actress who can’t walk so it was perfect for the character of Michelle.

It’s the autumn of life for these women who know they will die very soon but they’re still full of life and energy and want to take advantage of the time they have left,”

One of the themes of the film seems to be aging, the art of getting old. How do you see your own relation with aging, with getting older and wiser?

Wiser? Not always! I think it’s fascinating. Cinema is about time and for example for me it’s very touching to work again with Ludivine Sagnier; We worked together 20 years ago (in Swimming Pool). I left her close to the swimming pool in bikinis and now she’s a 40 year old woman and a mother and it’s very touching to see time passing. As the director, I’m not afraid of old age. In this film, for example, I’m quite fascinated  by the everyday life of this woman, the rhythm and the fact that she lives by herself, she has some routines, she goes to the church, she works in the orchard.

The movie obviously has tragedy in it, death, but also humor. For example, the scene where the old prostitutes come into the church, everybody in the cinema was laughing. How important is it for you to have humor in such situations?

It’s obvious, life is not always a drama. You can have time and distance and it’s important. What I like about the scene with the prostitutes is that it’s funny but it’s very tender too. It explains many things about the solidarity between all these women. I didn’t know people laughed at this scene!  I think it was more smiling than laughing.

More of affection for them than laughing at them.

Yes, I’m very happy when people laugh, especially when they laugh with the film, not at the film, but it’s part of life. I think I have maybe too much sense of humor in life. I like to laugh about everything.

That’s good!

Yes, but not always, not in all situations! But it’s a way to protect yourself too, to always keep a distance from difficult things.

Were you using the mushrooms in an allegorical way too?

I love mushrooms because it’s amazing when you see these things come out of the ground. It’s quite miraculous and what I like is that it shows the beauty of nature but at the same time it can be dangerous and toxic. That’s why I wanted to feel beautiful in appearance and nature in a small city in Burgandy but underneath there are toxic things that can somehow come out on the surface.

When Vincent comes back after visiting Valerie and confides that she has died, we’re not sure whether he was responsible for her death or not. You left it quite ambiguous.

I wanted to give the freedom to the audience to imagine what they want. Was it an accident? Was it suicide? was it murder?  I didn’t shoot what happened and the actors don’t know what happened but I know what happened but I won’t tell you! I had the scene in the script but I think it was more interesting to have it out of the frame, because Michelle doesn’t know what happened and I think she doesn’t want to know exactly.  When Marie-Claude is dying and she says my son was not in Auxerre but in Paris, Michelle could have asked what did he do, did he meet Valerie? but she preferred to sweep it under the carpet. It’s a way to survive and I like this idea that sometimes you kind of make do with lies.

You are one of the most productive directors in cinema today, making films at the rate of almost one every year. With all the complications in film financing that’s quite impressive. What is the current state of film production in France?

This film is low budget, it’s not a huge budget, it’s not a blockbuster, it doesn’t have big stars. Everybody was totally involved in the film and I had enough money to make it because I have made many films before which were successful, especially after The Crime is Mine (2023) which was a big hit in France. I think casting old actresses is easier today because of the Me-too movement and the fact that place of woman is stronger. I think maybe twenty years ago it would have been more difficult. Today people are concerned about the place of women and for me to say I want to make a film about old women, it is politically correct. So it’s good for me because I have the budget to make my movie. I produced the film myself because it’s a small budget and I don’t have to argue with a producer and I’m freer after that. I’m usually free but this time maybe more than other movies. But I think the situation is quite difficult for the medium budget movies in France. If you make a film with a very small budget under one million Euros, it’s quite easy. If you make a blockbuster with big stars, big subject, it’s not that easy but it’s possible. But for the films that fall in the middle, it’s more and more difficult today because of the streaming companies, because of the TV series, people want to go to cinema to see something exceptional not something they can see on television, so it’s quite difficult. For me, it will be harder and harder. I think the fact that I alternate between small films and bigger films with stars helps. I have no strategy, I follow my instincts. This story is close to the story of The Crime is Mine, it’s two old women and it’s about crime, guilt.

The characters in the film, some have done crime and went to prison. Others have done things in the past which in the eyes of the people were shameful. But we don’t dislike any of them, we understand all of them.

Yes and they all have their reasons.

Can you talk about when you’re writing the screenplay, how do you paint these characters?

I think everybody is complex and ambiguous but they have two sides, it’s not black and white, it’s more complex, and that’s what I like about these characters, especially the character of Vincent. He is touching because he loves his mother, he wants to help, but as her mother said, he wants to do good but very often he does bad. That’s the problem of many people.

Could you see yourself making a large scale movie with much bigger budget down the line?

If I have the story for it, but each time I have had an offer from US with a big star, it takes so much time to shoot and for me it’s impossible to wait three years for the schedule of a big star to be free. I like to make movies, there are amazing actors in France, I very often have the budget I want in France, so why wait? what’s the point? I don’t want to go to the Oscars, to make all this promotion of film which takes so much time. What I like is to make movies.

Could you would you say something about your process of writing? How do you come up with your stories and write your screenplays?

I dream a lot about it. When I have a problem on the script, I think about it very strongly before sleeping and very often when I wake up I have the solution! So the unconscious works a lot! The process of writing is a question of time. For me it’s impossible to go every day and say write between10 am to 2 pm. I need to think, to speak about it with friends. Very often I have a script doctor. I tell him my ideas, we talk about everything, the other films we see, about life, about news, and it provides ideas for a film.

Ali Moosavi has worked in documentary television and has written for Film Magazine (Iran), Cine-Eye (London), and Film International (Sweden). He contributed to the second volume of The Directory of World Cinema: Iran (Intellect, 2015).

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