Where did the story of this movie come from? Why talk about a mother who abandons her daughter?
It is a subject in particular that moves me a lot, but it is not just about abandoning her daughter, but about how motherhood is understood. It is a film that relates the lack of love, the dependence on relationships, the insecurity experienced in a love story. Marlene (Marion Cotillard) feels that she cannot love her daughter, she does not believe in herself to be better and continues to make mistakes and errors. Luckily, the daughter (Elli) has strong survival instincts. Both have many sufferings inside. The mother has an image of what a happy woman should be. During filming, I was talking to Marion about what the girl character would have been like, and this is something that allowed her to imagine even her character’s childhood.Why a mother who abandons and not a father, as is more usual?
I wanted to reverse the dialogue, and let the mother do it. There is a lot of emptiness, the daughter is many times more adult than her mother… this is a movie also about how relations between mothers and daughters are.This is your first movie, how did you deal with it? What prompted you to do it?
I have been waiting many years to make this film, it took me many years to make the decision to film, but the way the story came to me was somewhat shocking, it was suddenly. I remember that one day I was walking on the beach and the idea came to me, and I was in my apartment for weeks writing the story. When I finished I understood that it was a story in which I felt safe…In his first film, he manages to work with an actress of Cotillard’s level
