Imagine for a moment that millions of moths invade our cities occupying streets, windows, Gardens and lamppings from our neighborhoods. The same happened in the Drôme region, In France, Some years ago. An unusual event that not only disturbed the lives of its inhabitants, but, Due to the invasive character of the species, endangered his boxwoods, One of the identity of that area of the country. With this pretext, would begin filming Pyral. Directed Roxanne Gaucherand, This piece is a curious and beautiful formal exercise that mixes a documentary style with fiction to tell us a love story. In the middle of the chaos that supposes the invasion of the moths, Two friends try to clarify their feelings. So, The life of our two protagonists is agitated to the same extent that the rest of the small community in which they live. Fear, insecurity, hope and illusion are emotions that are mixed in an intelligent cinematographic cocktail. We talk to its director to reveal some of the keys to this work who has won the 13th edition of the Media Festival, The cabin. Pyral The next 28/11 In the La Mina de Valencia room and you can also see it on the Video Platform on demand, of the movie.
Best Media Film Award, The cabin 2020. How have you received the news?
Well, I am super-feliz because it is very nice that the work we did be recognized. We start this movie three summers, a long time ago, And it is very good to see that it really works and that it is appreciated by people around the world. It helps me a lot and gives me confidence. Y, as artists, We need confidence, So it's very good.
For a start, I wanted you to tell us what is your relationship with this place where the movie takes place. On the other hand, Pyral It is a very intimate story, Is there any autobiographical element in it?
Yeah, The movie takes place in the place where I grew up. It is in a small area called Drôme, that is located in southern France. It is not very famous or very tourist, neither. I always wanted to roll there for my anchor with the people, With the landscape, with the way you grow when, later, You are in a big city and, above all, With the way you grow like a person queer in a place like this. This was something important that I wanted to count. So, When I heard about the invasion of butterflies, It was something that the bell sounded. Something was disappearing. Boj forests are one of the most popular trees in this area, So the fact that they were disappearing was going to change that landscape and I was interested in rolling it before this happened completely. That is the autobiographical part of the film.
In the case of the history of the two protagonists, In what sense did you feel that it involved you?
The girl who plays the main character, Lou, She is my best friend's little sister. It is a mixture between its history and mine. We share our experiences and create this semi-fiction character that we see in the movie. Besides, As I told you, It was very important for me to tell what it is like to be queer In the rural world, Because it is very atypical. I mean that, for me (We were two girls, The school, etc.) Sometimes it was difficult to live. How your heart feels, loneliness ... we wanted to tell this story.
When you tell a story about yourself, it may be difficult to lead actors that they will represent feelings that are very deep. In that sense, How did you work with the two main actresses?
Bueno, In principle the two main actresses are friends in real life. On the other hand, As the movie had that documentary tone I let them do and then the assembler put the sequences to create something ambiguous, something that moved between friendship and love. Those limits always explode when you are very young. The second year, We roll the fictional parts, And that's when I told them, "In this story we have decided that you are going to have this relationship", But it was something that was closest to his own acting presence, depended on what they felt, It was not something that was written very precisely. It was about changing the context from that change of friendship to love story.
About this issue, I have seen that in all the reviews about your movie they refer to it as if it were a documentary. But, for me, It is not a documentary. If it is a fiction film with some documentary elements. I mean those sequences that seem interviews or certain moments that complement the story. How did you mix those elements and why you chose that mixture of genres or formats to build your story?
From the beginning we knew it would be a mixture. It is a way that I like a lot because it is very playful. If you have a documentary part you have a background and you can change the context of the images, which allows you a game when writing. And for me it is also very playful in the sense of receiving the keys to follow the story. It is very fun and active, So I wanted to do that from the beginning. It was also a budget issue because, at first, We didn't have much money to roll. We start with very little. That is why we start with the documentary part leaving in the assembly the parts that were missing outside the image, something that I liked a lot. Then, We finally achieve some money (not much, Because it's a low budget movie), But that is why we film the documentary part as if it were fiction and the fiction part as if it were documentary.
One of the most interesting things in your movie is the way you work with the voice in off. It is curious how those lines in off From the film they tell things that we do not see and, somehow, As they complete the story, They establish an emotional feeling with the images.
Yeah, thank you so much. It was very difficult because for me it was very difficult to write a voice in off. It is not something that I am comfortable. It is something that I find very different from filming. But I included it for two reasons. The first because it was the best way to add the fiction part and join all the sequences, because those lines are written from a subjective point of view that can be real and, at the same time, fictional. So, for us, It was the perfect line to follow the movie. And furthermore, Because we couldn't roll everything we wanted because of the lack of budget. On the other hand, There are things that were too intimate to film them. For example, You can't see the first kiss between the protagonists because I wanted to maintain a respectful distance and because, maintaining the idea that they were characters from a documentary, We would never have access to those moments. Although in the end it is more fiction because we displace that fictional part, We maintain that distance from the documentary.
Another of the things that stand out from Pyral is that the story is a love story and, at once, It has elements of a fantasy story. I don't know if you agree with this or it is for my part an error of perception.
Yeah, One of the first things we thought was that it could be a kind of horror or fantastic documentary because the invasion was unreal and, at the same time, It seemed surreal. No one knew when these butterflies were going to attack and, When it happened, It didn't seem real. I wanted to maintain that feeling in the documentary to return the fears of the town inhabitants in something real in the film. Because when we talked to the inhabitants of the town they went crazy, They gave you those incredible views on why that was happening, Or what was going to happen after. Some believed they had been launched from airplanes, It was crazy. I wanted to keep that tone in the movie and that's why I built those fantastic environments.
When you watch the movie, You think about The birds de Alfred Hitchcock. In fact, One of the characters mentions it. What other referents inspired you?
Yeah, I was quite impressed when I saw the movie Flores by Jorge Jácome, which tells a fabulated invasion of flowers in the Azores. I was very close to what I wanted to do. I really like this movie. There is also another movie that is Phenomena From Dario Argento who tells the story of a girl who talks to insects. It is another references that inspired me.
For me the story tells us about that fine line that can be between the beautiful and the disturbing. As well as, In love, Things can be very beautiful and, at the same time, suffers for it, The presence of these moths is, at once, beautiful and disturbing algo.
Yeah, Of course. It was one of the things I wanted to show. The first time I heard about a plague of butterflies ... You usually think of butterflies as something beautiful related to love, Something positive, But at the same time it was something I could kill, Something really violent. And I wanted to work on that duality that, for me, It turned out to be a surprise. Besides, I think it helped me navigate in that field between what can be good and what is bad. I think it is good to analyze what we are living now. For example, In the case of Pandemia, We perceive it as something destructive, But that doesn't help. We also have to live with it because it is part of nature, So we must see something beautiful in it to understand why it is happening. For me, It does not help to see only the bad part of something that is happening, You have to know why it is happening. In these cases it is not enough to be afraid, We have to understand it to find solutions. Something like this happens with butterflies. It is no use going crazy, We have to understand why they are there and the beautiful of this too. That was one of the ideas.
One of the most interesting elements of the film is the use of music. I think it is very remarkable in the way in which this part is worked when adding certain emotional layers to the sequences, not highlighting what shows the images, but functioning as a counterpoint that adds different meanings. I think you can't understand what the movie is counting without music.
We started working music by supporting us in some references. How it was a false documentary, We didn't want there to be too much music. We wanted me to work in a very free emotional way. Thus, We are looking for references that will not only express positive feelings in a more or less remarked way. Sometimes music is only put in the fictional part of the love story to express a mood, so that it would allow us to navigate between those emotions that the film expresses. Regarding references, We use a musician who is very like that is called Masayoshi Fujita, that works with a vibraphone and makes noises, causing certain saturations. When we were filming, The presence of butterflies was overwhelming. It was something that saturated the atmosphere and wanted music to work at that same level. I have worked with a very talented musician named Daniel Bleikolm, that has created a rare instrument similar to vibraphone for the film. Besides, Alban Holol [Sound engineer] has created noise, The flutter we add to the musical composition to approach what the moths do. So, We recreate the sound of moths, Because the original is very difficult to listen, creating something that is at the same time between the suffocating and fascinating.
Another fundamental element is the use of light and color that, as with music, Add another layer of meaning to the film.
The photograph was directed by Marine Dricot that, Like me, He met the moths for the first time. She didn't have too much budget, So he worked with small lamps. It started like this and then we wanted to maintain that style throughout the film to be able to unite all the sequences we roll over time. In the end, We realized that this made sense because the moths were attracted to the points of light. This fact naturally gave us the guide towards that aesthetic. I also worked with Edwige Moreau and Raimon Gaffier [camera operators], with those that I have always been and with whom, even, I have made musical videos, And we find this type of light, This aesthetic not too realistic very interesting for that documentary form, To give it an unreal distance, While we gave him a certain pop touch.
Y, to finish, How do you go to moths?
(laughter) We train them for months and months (laughter) No, We simply attracted them with the light because they go directly to it. They are very friendly animals that immediately stick to the skin, to the point that, sometimes, It was something suffocating, Because they put on you all over the face. People called us to tell us where an invasion had occurred and we were going there. We spent a lot of time going from one place to another, Where the moths were going, And so we shot them.
