EXCLUSIVE: French actress Joséphine Japy is in Cannes with feature directorial debut The Wonderers about a family navigating the severe disability of their non-verbal youngest daughter and the challenge of securing a diagnosis. The film, which premiered as a Special screening this week, takes inspiration from the real-life experiences of Japy and her family with her own sister Bertille. It also reconnects Japy with actress and director Melanie Laurent, whose 2014 film Breathe she starred in. Laurent plays the mother opposite Canadian actor Pierre-Yves Cardinal, with Angelina Woreth and Sarah Pachoud as the older and younger sisters. Set against the backdrop of a summer on the French riviera, the drama revolves around the Roussier family and its fragile equilibrium shaped by the uncertain diagnosis of their youngest daughter, 13-year-old Bertille. Her parents and 17-year-old older sister Marion live in constant fear of losing her. Disconnected from typical teenage dreams, Marion seeks escape in a relationship with an older boy. When a new diagnosis emerges, the family’s future is redefined, opening up unexpected possibilities. Bertille will live, and so will the family.
The film is produced by Cowboys Films and sold internationally by Pulsar Content. Apollo is releasing the film in France. Japy talked to the film and its personal beginnings. Check out a first clip below:
DEADLINE: Did you direct this film because you wanted to explore this personal story, or explore this personal story because you wanted to direct a film? JOSÉPHINE JAPY: I’ve wanted to direct for a long time. This film brings me full circle. I worked ten years ago with Mélanie Laurent, who is herself an actress and director. That left a lasting impression on me. It was my first leading role, and I thought, ‘This is the kind of complete artist I’d like to become.’ So, there was always this interest in directing, but I didn’t think this would be my first film. To tell you the truth, it scared me. It’s intimidating to tell something so personal and intimate. And then in the end, I realized a few years ago when I started writing that I had to start there, that it would be complicated to write anything else until I did this story. DEADLINE: How did you write the screenplay? It must have been sensitive given it’s about your own family. There’s something quite interesting about the actor’s experience. As an actor, I you take something from your head, from your brain, you conceptualize it and move it to your stomach and turn it into emotion. A director does the opposite. You process the emotion, intellectualize it, to be able to write it down. I tapped into very fleeting things, feelings, impressions, it was really a kind of mini memory notebook. The ideas for scenes came to me very quickly. I had a great co-writer named Olivier Thériault who helped me. DEADLINE: Why was it important for you tell this story? JAPY: My sister is the only character whose real name – Bertille – I didn’t change in the screenplay. When I was beginning to write, I looked into the meaning of all the names of my family, and I discovered Bertille means ‘bright in battle’. That overwhelmed me when I saw that. It took 22 years for her illness to be diagnosed. For 22 years, we didn’t know what she had. For close to a quarter of a century, we were lost. Being able to put a name to something really helped. I found it was a good cinematic idea, to have these characters who wander, are lost, but who battle every day. I thought it was an interesting paradox. I felt like I was watching ants bustling around, which at the same time, can’t really do much to change the story.
It came more from a desire for cinema than a desire to convey a message, even though, obviously, I hope that people will better understand disability, and what it’s like to be brothers and sisters in families with disabilities. There’s a term for it, glass children, children withdraw into themselves, become invisible so as not to add to the family’s problems. But I didn’t want the film to be based on a specific social or political message. That wasn’t the idea. I wanted the disability to become something cinematic. Even in the way we treated Bertille’s perception, we had fun with the image, the sound, doing close-ups, looking for textures, looking for colors. DEADLINE: How does getting a diagnosis change things, if there is no cure for Bertille’s disabilities? JAPY: It creates a different sense of reality. Once I learned the name of my sister’s illness, I was also able to establish that I didn’t carry the gene. I hadn’t really understood how much it was affecting me, this weight of asking myself whether I had the gene and what it could mean if I wanted to have children one day.
It doesn’t change everyday life, but it did change our lives. It gave us a better sense of what to expect in the future. Suddenly, the illness is no longer a ghost, a sword of Damocles that can fall at any moment. It also meant quite simply, that when you’re at dinner with friends you can say, ‘My sister has this illness’. Just being able to express that made life simpler.
DEADLINE: There’s a lot of debate today about the representation of people with disabilities in film, and whether people without disabilities can legitimately play them on the big screen. Sarah Pachoud, who plays Bertille, does not have disabilities. Is this something you took into consideration? JAPY: I wanted to try to find someone with a disability. I had a casting director who had already done a casting for a film with children with disabilities. She was extremely knowledgeable about the subject. The problem that arose very quickly, was that I found myself facing young girls who don’t speak and who couldn’t give me their consent to be on set. For me, the proviso for having someone on set is that they consent to be there, that you’re sure they’re ok with what they’re being asked to do. So, there are disabilities where it does make sense, if the actors are able to express themselves, but others where it doesn’t. Not all disabilities are the same.
For Bertille’s character I had the luck to find a young actress who is absolutely fantastic. She’s absolutely wonderful, but so much so that she’s unsettling. When my mother came to the set, she could hear the actress in the distance and she told me, “When I close my eyes, I hear Bertille.” It was very beautiful. DEADLINE: How did you get Mélanie Laurent on board?
I wasn’t sure whether she would even want to rekindle the relationship. I felt quite intimidated. I called my mother and said, ‘Listen, Mum, I’m not asking for your permission, but do you have an actress in mind who you’d like to play you?’ She said straight off ‘Mélanie Laurent.’ I met Mélanie with an almost finished script. She was fantastically supportive, and it was great to have someone who’d been there before. DEADLINE: There are a number of actors and actresses in Cannes this year with films they have directed – many with first features like you – such as Kristen Stewart, Scarlet Johansson and Harris Dickinson. What do you think is behind this trend? JAPY: There’s a fantastic clip of Orson Welles, where he says that the ultimate job of the director is to accompany a performance, to accompany an actor. He says that you can make mistakes on everything else, which can be fixed by being surrounded by fantastic crews, directors of photography etc. The only shortcoming that can’t be compensated for is the work with the actors. It’s the only area where the director can’t shirk. I think it’s a trend, but one that comes from a very intuitive place. I also think that many directors, who aren’t necessarily established actors, are still actors to some extent.
DEADLINE: Are you working on any other directorial projects, and what’s next for you as an actress?
JAPY: I have other ideas and one in particular that I’m thinking about a lot at the moment but I’m waiting to see you how this film goes down in Cannes. On the acting front, I’ve just come off the set of Mata by Rachel Lang, who was in Cannes with Our Men, with Camille Cottin and Louis Garrel. I play an agent in the French secret service. I have a few other projects in the pipeline but they’re not signed yet.
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