17 minute read
Coralie Fargeat Interview
Coralie Fargeat
Fighting the portrayal of women inRevenge
Advertisement
Interviewed by Zoe Smith There has long been problems with the way women are portrayed in film, especially when it comes to the horror genre. They have been sexually objec�fied merely for the pleasure of the male gaze, subject to horrific violence and con�nuously abused on screen for entertainment purposes. Which is why femaledriven films have gradually been rising over the years, showing just how violent and menacing women can be. In 2017, writer and director Coralie Fargeat showed the world just how ferocious, powerful yet sexual women can be with her blooddrenched first feature ‘Revenge’. Combining the gory carnage of New French Extremity with the sa�sfac�on of triumphant revenge films, she helped con�nue the conversa�on around how women are portrayed in film. We spoke to Coralie Fargeat about Revenge, the metaphors behind it, problem male behaviours and the future of women on screen...
How did you first conceive the idea for Revenge? Where did you take your inspira�on from?
Basically I knew that I first of all wanted to make a real genre film because that's really what inspires me and that's what I developed my cinephilia about. The idea really came from the idea of the Lolita character, who conveys a lot of a�rac�on and a lot of violence towards her when she seems to be the all happy girl. The par�cular character tells a lot about how women can be seen and the kind of considera�on and violence that they can get, so I thought it was a great start to create a genre story that was dealing with a deeper subject underneath.
You chose Ma�lda Lutz for that and she really helps to portray the amazing character that you wrote. How did you choose her as your leading lady?
Well in fact the story on how Ma�lda arrived on the film tells a lot about the film in a way because when we started to green light the movie, we had a different actress who was an actress from Europe. As we started to prep the first days, during the first fi�ngs and first prosthe�cs works this other actress got scared when she started to see in a concrete way what was going to be the part dealing with all the violence and all the sexual violence and all the body stuff and everything. So she quit the project and that was of course the worst thing that could happen on the first feature about to shoot and I knew that I had to find somebody else because I couldn’t postpone the shoo�ng. “ “ It’s very important to say that every woman should be able to be the way she wants
So I immediately thought about Ma�lda who was one of the first persons I had met when I started to do a li�le bit of cas�ng in the States, and I really liked her and she told me something that stayed with me - it was that she really trusted the project and that she really trusted me as a director. Considering what had just happened I knew the shoot was going to be very tough and very hard and I needed to have this strong bond of trust with the actress who was going to jump on board. I called her and the day a�er she was on a plane flying to Paris to do fi�ngs and all the prep, and two weeks a�er we were in Morocco. So that says a lot about her state of mind, she commi�ed 100% and she was excited and she was there, and I must say this difficulty turned out to be a great thing that happened for me and for the movie that you couldn’t expect. But it gave the movie so much strength and that's the story and I like what it says about everything that can happen on the film and you have to deal with it but some�mes the bad side turns out to be a good side
Definitely, and I think Ma�lda was the perfect person to portray Jen because she's a very powerful and strong character in her own right. At the beginning of the film Jen is in control of her sexuality, she’s also very a�rac�ve and she knows that. So many films don’t allow women to be sexually liberated by themselves. What was your reasoning behind portraying her in this way?
That’s a very good ques�on because it's really true that there are some kind of boxes that women should be allowed to fit into and there are boxes they are supposed to not go into, they are treated a certain way or seen in a certain way. So it was very important for me that this character at the beginning is totally at ease with her body and enjoys being a�rac�ve and seducing guys, and she needs the a�en�on around her and she plays with that and fully embraces it. For me it was really important to have that at the beginning in order to have the second part func�oning with what I wanted to say, that she is going to express another part of herself but this first part of the movie it stays with her, it transforms her and the most important thing was to say this is not because she's ac�ng in a certain way, or dressed in a certain way, that she deserves what's going to happen to her. When people were first reading the script they were embarrassed with this side of Jen and they would say couldn't she be a li�le more intelligent or this or that, and I said no, she has every right to be that way if she decides. At the beginning she is living through other people’s eyes, she wants to be seen, she wants to make it to LA, be an actress, have everybody looking at her and in the second part of the movie she gets rid of that and decides she doesn't need anybody else to exist and she exists by herself, but she s�ll keeps both sides inside her. I think it says a lot that this beginning was disturbing for a lot of people and for me it's very important to say that every woman should be able to be the way she wants and shouldn’t be judged because of that. When she starts to get a new strength she doesn't need to get dressed, a lot of people said she should get dressed and I said no, she s�ll has her same body but she uses it in a different way, her body is her strength. I like the very animal part that in a way is in fusion with all the nature elements, and so I think it says a lot about all of those rules like how a woman should be and how a woman shouldn't be in both parts of the movie.
It’s really interes�ng that you say that, especially the part about her ge�ng dressed in the second half of the film because that was something I wondered about. I watched it with a male who men�oned that a�er something so horrific like a rape, wouldn’t you think she would put her clothes back on and even I agreed with this. However, now you’ve explained this it’s almost the opposite… why would she have to do that, she shouldn't have to hide from who she is because of something someone else did to her.
Exactly and I also wanted to keep the symbolic and metaphoric part of her being reborn with a new skin on her. You see her skin but it's kind of a new one, and that's what I like with the symbol of the phoenix; she's reborn from her own ashes. I really wanted to also keep the idea that she takes her strength from the natural elements like the Earth, the fire, the cave, the sun and she becomes a super heroine, and we get the metaphoric part of being born again.
Talking about that scene where she's reborn and it's like the rising of the phoenix. I think the first �me I watched Revenge I was a li�le disappointed that it felt like it was based on fantasy but I know that you are really keen on transpor�ng the viewer to an alternate reality. Do you ever think it could be problema�c to show this fantasy revenge when it comes to a rape revenge storyline?
For me no, because in fact the rape is not the centre of the film and not the subject of the film. It’s about how women can be seen and the place that we want to give them, all of this for me is a symbol of everything that women can to go through and the
place that everyone wants to put them into and the rape is one of the violences she is going through but there are a lot of other violences that she goes through. The way the guys talk about her at the beginning, the physical violence when the guy slaps her, the psychological violence when the rapist tells her that she deserves it, that she basically asks for it, and all the psychological stuff. Like at the beginning she's a real princess because she pleases everyone and as soon as she doesn’t act or react in the ways they are expec�ng, suddenly she becomes nothing.
For me the rape was the most powerful and simple way to get the most violence on her but it isn’t for me the subject of the film. The film isn’t about rape it’s about the place of women and how you receive women and tells through that story. It was really important to me to keep it in a fantasmagory way because it was allowing me to go very far and have a lot of fun with the genre which also enables you to go for the ride and go for the violence and be able to accept it at the same �me.
It’s choices that you make when you write, you say okay what is the movie about and when I started to write I said the movie is not going to be about how is she going to survive, how is she going to find water, how is she going to find food, I really wanted the film to be a different ride and that’s why I knew I wanted to give myself my own world for the film, and so the fantasy part you to go where ever you want and create your own rules for the film. “ “ I wanted to push everything 100%
I really like that way of looking at it and I think upon a second watch I definitely felt that myself. Going back to how you were talking about a lot of the abuse towards Jen is more psychological and one of the most disturbing things for me about Revenge is the dialogue in the film because it’s really tough to watch and hear the way they speak about her.
Well I knew that in the film there is not a lot of dialogue so I knew that with the few dialogues there was going to be that I wanted to go 100% in portraying each guy in a very violent way, but each one has his own way to be violent. One is a sexual abuser, the other is the coward, the third guy Richard is the alpha guy and he thinks he can control and mould the reality to his own needs. So I wanted to push everything 100%, like making them real bastards and I think the movie is really about black and white and going the full grade, pushing everything to the maximum. So I knew I didn't want to be shy and I knew that to make it work they had to be real arseholes for her revenge in the second part and having fun with their weakness, like the guy who doesn't want to be alone in the car, and all the li�le weaknesses that make them ridiculous in some parts. In that way I think they stay characters that we hate but some�mes they are s�ll some kind of humanity we can have fun with. That's what drove me for the talking parts and the guys parts.
They really are assholes, which is good. How do they represent the modern problems with male behaviour towards women?
When I started to think about them, I said they have to be violent with her, each in a different way. I think it's exploring that different type of toxic behaviour that you can face and some�mes you don't even iden�fy it because you are so used to it. The first one Richard, is the alpha guy, his character goes with power, money and the guy who succeeds. He's so used to having all he wants and controlling everything he wants like his business, life and the world had to answer every need he has. He enjoys whatever he wants to enjoy, when he wants to enjoy it and Jen is like that for him. He has a marital life which is boring and she is the escape girl and he praises her, but as soon as she starts to threaten his stability and public life, she suddenly becomes nothing and he thinks he can erase her. We’ve certainly seen in recent history that that type of behaviour really goes with power and they can build a system where people think they are above the law and can do what they want. So that was the case for Richard. The second one is the weak one, the guy who wishes he was Richard, but he's not as rich, he's not as smart, he's not as beau�ful and he didn't succeed as well. So he’s jealous and frustrated, and he thinks he deserves to get everything Richard gets because the
Photo: M.E.S Produc�ons
girl is nothing and the fact that she’s gonna reject him is the fact that leads to the rape. That's something that when I had actresses reading the script, all the girls said this is crazy because the discussion on the bed they said this happened to me so many �mes - a man makes you feel uncomfortable but you don't want to be rude, you don’t want to be too loud and you don't want to vex him... so we try to be nice to this guy who is really heavy, but his frustra�on makes him become violent and at the end he is the weakest, the coward, the one who is going to fall apart totally. The third one is the one who sees and doesn't do anything, who covers his friends and unfortunately it's also very true that you can have people who are witnesses or see things and they don't do anything, which is also a great violence. You can not ac�vely do something but if you do not interpose it's very violent too. So I like to have the three of them as incarna�ons as very different types of being violent and it's a good trio to have for her to have to fight in the end.
It’s a fantas�c portrayal of all those different things, and there are certainly some things in the film like the conversa�on in the bed where more than too many of us have been through that, like you said. Revenge is o�en categorised alongside films like I Spit On Your Grave, Thriller: A Cruel Picture and Irreversible. Do you feel rape revenge is a sub-genre important to cinema?
I wasn’t even really aware that rape revenge was a genre before making Revenge when I started to write, my inten�on was not to do a rape revenge film, but just a revenge film. I have never seen seen I Spit On Your Grave, I’ve seen The Last House On The Left and Irreversible, but I think it’s a bit different because in Irreversible the rape is really centre of the story, its the act that is going to destroy the life of this couple and I think the fact that he shows the rape jus�fys because it is the movie and it’s super violent, it’s unbearable, but it’s the movie and what it says in a unbearable way. But in Revenge I knew that I didn’t really want to show the rape because it wasn’t really the centre of the film and I thought it was even more violent to show it out of frame with the sound and the guy covering it with the TV. For me was even more violent and made it more of a symbolic way to portray this violence. I recently saw The Nigh�ngale from Jennifer Kent and this is such a brutal movie and I really love the film; it's super violent and the violence towards women and also the aboriginal Australia is really the centre of the movie and she goes 100% to portray that violence. I knew it really wasn’t the rape that was the centre of my movie, it was more the character of the woman and the symbol of the woman, what they are, how they can be seen, in a more metaphorical way. That’s the way I conceived it and I didn't ask myself if this was a rape revenge… I didn't really know it existed before the movie was out.
Photo: M.E.S Produc�ons
“ “ I think the genre is a great way to show all your imagination
It's a strange genre, but it's fantas�c to see films like Revenge which are u�lising it in a way to show strong women in cinema. What would you like to see for the future of horror and cinema and how do you think the genre can improve its portrayal of women?
I think that the genre is a great way to show all of your imagina�on and fantasy and everything. We come back to the rape revenge genre and because they were made by the majority of male filmmakers, we only had their perspec�ve on every genre. It’s true that male filmmakers are going to make his imagina�on, his way of living the world, his rela�onship with society, his fantasies, and that's what the world is going to see and digest. I think what is great to have more and more women filmmakers expressing themselves, is that now you can have the other part of the world, the other part of humanity expressing their way of seeing the world and their way of dealing with society, their way of what scares them and their imagina�on and some�mes it can be the same thing as a male filmmaker but some�mes it can be a total different way of telling a story or pu�ng out your vision. I think we need more of those points of views because that's where we’re going to be exposed to, and I think the way you build a society is made of what you look at and if you only have the same reference and imagina�on you miss something. Pa�y Jenkins said recently it's great there are more and more women filmmakers but we also need to allow those filmmakers to tell their story the way they want to tell it. I think that is a point that is super important because we're ge�ng back to the first ques�on, when I'm portraying Jen as super sexual the first reac�on is always ‘Oh no she's too much this and she's too much that’ but it's my way of wan�ng to tell this story and I think we need to preserve that. There are a lot of habits like reading and viewing habits, where we are condi�oned to think in some kind of way and I think what we really need is to have those very different points of views and free the imagina�on of filmmakers in different genres. Some�mes it surprises and some�mes at the beginning it's going to be cri�cised and not understood but it doesn’t ma�er, it exists and in �mes you o�en read again what is created and finally embrace it.
