Film Process 6th July

I have been away a lot. And have not done any writing, or anymore working on the film. But I have been thinking and talking about the film. In one conversation, I said that when I started wanting to make the film, I felt very much in Cécile's mind, but that as time has gone on, I now find myself more empathetic to Anne. I'm older than her for a start. As a mother of teenagers, I know this stuff, more than the teenage lust filled moments. It occured to me, like a bolt of lightning, of why Anne might be irritated to find Cécile in the forest.

Of course, in the book, the suggestion is clear; Anne reacts in a rather over the top way (at least in Cécile's mind), clearly making the assumption that Cécile and Cecil are lovers and that she may get pregnant. It's easy to jump to the conclusion that Anne had herself become pregnant at a young age and had had to deal with the consequences, so impassioned is her response. She doesn't have children now, so maybe this is her heartbreak. That all makes sense, but what doesn't quite make so much sense is what Anne was doing there in the first place. Why had she been walking in the woods? Was it coincidence?

Anne is trying to make amends with Cécile. My role as a mother for the last 18 years has been filled with this sort of experience: I get an idea of something I could do for one of my children, like make a cake, or buy them a present, or take them out somewhere, and I imagine it being a surprise, and I imagine that they will like it. And almost always, this has ended not in the way I had imagined. My children aren't ungrateful, but they either don't turn up when I have expected them, or they're not hungry, or what I've bought them is the wrong colour, or they don't want to go out with me because they've got something else much more pressing. I get this. And I know this is common because I talk to other mothers. Other mothers have been used to this over the years, so that by the time their children are teenagers, they know them well, and know that 'planned surprises' almost always don't develop the way they imagine. But Anne has not been a mother. She had a small period of time when she was looking after Cécile in Paris, but Cécile was 15 then, and there's a big difference between 15 and 17.

I like to think that Anne had made an effort to do something nice for Cécile, a dress fitting(?) a nice dinner (?) and that Cécile had ignored the request to come home early, or somehow had not been told, or something. In any case, when Cécile hadn't turned up, Anne went to look for her, and seeing her so wrapped up in Cecil and with such disregard for herself maybe made her react with more passion than she might. She's trying hard to be the mother, and insecure about her abilities, Cécile is ignoring her attempts and indulging in her own emotional life. Fair enough.

To make this clear, I thought it would be good to get all the clips of Anne waiting, watching, thinking and have these playing alongside Cécile.

This might not work. The other options are casting it and filming it. And collecting archive footage of women preparing surprises, although I find this quite wrong.