Mix-Up ou Meli-melo

Mix-up is my first film.

I knew what kind of film I didn't want to make

but howto make the film Iwanted.

l lacked confidence in myself

and then I hit upon an idea thanks to Jose Maria Berzosa,

who is the director with whom I worked as an assistant,

who told me: it's very simple Francoise,

you know exactly how you dress every day,

because you have a very unique way of dressing.

Making a film is exactly the same thing.

It's about allowing yourself to have a personality.

And so every day during the shoot, you'll know what to do.

in exactly the same way that you dress yourself in the morning.

And it's true that I listened to this advice, it gave me wings and made me free.

And every morning in my bed, I imagined the day's film shoot

and I thought about how I would film each sequence

in relation to it's meaning, what did I want to say with this sequence?

Based on this I decided on the staging

that reflected what I was trying to say.

The form and content seemed mutually appropriate.

And the team felt this, they were motivated.

There was a real ambience during the shoot...

The shooting was inspiring.

And every afternoon at five, around tea time,

we would all laugh for about 15 minutes.

And so we were forgiven

when we filmed the scene with all the pigs, it was really funny.

We were laughing, we could not control it

and the person we were filming said:

Don't worry, I know that every afternoon you laugh for 15 minutes

which of course made us laugh even more, but at least we felt at ease with her.

And then there was the scene where the little boy,

well a man in his 40s in fact,

describes a scene from his childhood.

I had the idea of asking him to put himself in the same position

as when he was a child, under the table where he heard this conversation.

I think that we are all like that,

we all have layers, inside of us,

of us as a child, an adolescent.

And just a little reminder is needed for the layers to resurface.

We are made up of all these aspects.

This is what I wanted to say in this scene.

And in all these sequences there are strong ideas.

There is also the scene with Valery, where she tells the story of her childhood,

through a noise that she should have heard...

though she was in another family without this gate.

I love these little details,

because it's the little details that reveal so much more

of the unconscious of the person I'm filming.

Much more than any speech, more than any commentary.

It's the details of the unconscious.

And for me cinema is a universal language because it starts from the unconscious.

There!

I had 12 days to shoot this film.

and it's after having presented it in the United States