FilmProcessMarch 29th

So, inspired by all of the thinking that I've been doing over the course of the RAI Film Festival, and the amount of walking I've done around Bristol, I have come up with a LOT of ideas, and in many ways clarified the next stage of the process.

The first came from watching the film Up, Down Sideways, and I had 3 thought processes:

1. CUT to absolute silence when Anne calls Cécile's name. All the cacophony of forest sounds, heartbeats, the sea, and snippets of music will disappear in a clean cut, or dissolve slowly (not sure which yet), as if Cécile is holding her breath. Her inner world has immediately ceased.

2. Use music. French 1960's pop? What is it that triggers this memory? Is it hearing music?

3. Use sound to make the stills that Tom takes come alive.

The second was the realisation that I am no different to Otto in my different contexts. (I need to insert a table here). But by involving Tom in the process, it has become even more complex. Tom is English, nearly 50, living in Greece for 25 years with an Italian wife, and now a newcomer to Athens, taking pictures of a beach he has yet to visit and trying to pass it off as the 1950's Riviera through the viewpoint of a 17 year old French girl.

Why do I think I'm doing anything anymore true or genuine, or from her perspective than Otto?

Perhaps I need to be making this film as a film essay, instead of a short film? Perhaps it is an investigation and an academic process of research MORE than it is a traditional film? Perhaps, like Knife of the Edge, the process is more important than the result?

And then, walking around leafy Clifton with it's colonial mansions, Magnolia blossom and absence of people, spotify playing 1960's French pop radio into my ears, I am struck with a thought so bloody obvious I stand still to take it in. Of course there will always be a degree of interpretation as Cécile is a fictional character, there is not one pure view of her, and if it's the purity of vision of Sagan's view that I am trying to represent, then this is impossible. Sagan is dead. We do not live in the 1950's. The Riviera has expanded along the coast. The house that Preminger shot the film in still exists, but as a £1000 a night luxury villa. And it has been interior designed way out of the 1950's. Cécile herself, an enfant terrible, a scandal in the day, is now quaintly innocent; a symbol, a stererotype of a sulky intellectual teen, her name forgotten and replaced by the title of the book, reimagined as a phrase to sell fashion ranges, and the iconic image of Jean Seberg in red swimsuit referenced in fashion shoots.

There are so many complications around whose view this is of Cécile, that I'm getting caught up in a trap.

So, to avoid jumping into an intellectual spin cycle, I will accept that the view of Cécile I'm trying to represent is mine. And I am an English woman, who barely speaks French in 2019, and I'm approaching 50. My children are older than the fictional Cécile. What on earth makes me any different to Otto? What allows me any greater right to be closer to Cécile and to tell her story than Otto? Just because I'm female? At least he was in the 1950's and spoke French.

I go back to my original desire to make films from a female perspective - to show the view of a woman. In the midst of a sexual encounter. And (unless she's having sex with a woman or looking in a mirror), she is unlikely to see the standard image of sex in films - the face of an orgasmic woman. So, what does she see? The ceiling? The trees? The pillow? The ground? His shoulder? His neck? Nothing, as her eyes are closed? A mixture of all the above.

If the film is from inside her mind, the difficulty is whether we lack empathy because of this (Filmmakers Eyes). Would sound allow us to empathise?

Would the image of a young orgasmic male put me in the same position as Otto? Am I too old to show this? Am I voyeuristic? It's certainly not a fantasy of mine, but to show older men would be al sorts of weird....

And then I went to a talk by Cathy Greenhalgh from Central St Martins. She was talking about representation of different bodies, and talking about her upcoming documentary where she would combine cinematography with ethnographic research into an essay film.

Again, a new idea. What if Cyril is literally a cut out? He is in the novel anyway. He's a limited character. He could be cut out of all the 1950's films and comics. Cool.....