The debut film by Frenchman Camille Vidal-Naquet cannot leave anyone indifferent. Backup introduces us to Leo, a man of 22 years dedicated to street prostitution. Léo sleeps on the street and, between chance encounters with all types of clients, He seeks the affection that gives him back his humanity.. Using this character, Vidal-Naquet opens the doors to a sordid world, where people are reduced, as in the case of Léo, to a piece of soulless meat. Leo, however, He doesn't seem to want to leave that world.. He doesn't ask to be saved, he only seeks to be loved, that they wish you. Vidal-Naquet answered questions from the press after his presentation. SauvageIt opens this Friday 14/6 in Babel cinemas.
Let's start at the end. The film ends with your protagonist fleeing from the future (we won't say which one). Was there another alternative closure or were you always clear that it was going to be like this?
The most important thing in the script was to imply that the protagonist discards the new life that is offered to him.. My character really sells everything, sells his body, your love, But the only thing he doesn't sell is his ability to make his own choices.. In the film it is seen that no one makes decisions for him. This is seen from the first scene with the fake doctor, when [after a “service”] demands a kiss. He asks, do you kiss? He says: Yeah. Do you kiss me?, he asks. and he says: no. It's your decision. I have been asked many times why in the end he runs away from this new life that is presented to him and I don't know if it is right for him to abandon this.. Actually, I don't think anything about this. In any case, this final choice is their choice and this is what makes the character strong. He is seen alone in a forest and the film, in any case, shows your last choice which is the place where you are going to sleep. I have no idea why he chose this place., but he does know.
The film is shot in Strasbourg, but in the credits you thank the people of [Wood]Boulogne. Because?
Strasbourg is a city in Alsace, east of France, border with Germany. And Boulogne in Paris is the place where all types of prostitution are carried out massively., men, women, transvestites, transgender, etc. It's gigantic, It's like a prostitution supermarket. It is very sectorized, besides. To make the film I spent two and a half years as a volunteer in an association that works with people who prostitute themselves on the street.. They had a delegation in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris dedicated to male prostitution. I was sure that the entire film was going to be shot in the Bois de Boulogne, but to the region of the great east of France, where is Strasbourg, They were very interested and decided to finance part of the project, and hence it was filmed in that region. I was a little disappointed and afraid because I had never been to Strasbourg, but in the end it was great to film there because in Strasbourg you can shoot two or three films in one year, while Paris is a maelstrom of filming. To block a street in Paris you have to request it and wait two or three months, but in Strasbourg you order it in the morning and at twelve you are rolling.
Why did you decide not to tell the protagonist's past??
I think there are two clues of information about his past. The first is when the doctor asks him if he has a relationship with his parents and he doesn't answer., with which it can already be assumed that there is a relationship problem with them. The second is when a man asks him to read a page of a book and he says: I don't read very well. That gives rise to imagining a certain itinerary. My purpose has not been, in no case, analyze the mechanisms that lead someone to prostitution or this type of life. That would be a completely different movie.. In general, the sociologists, when talking about male prostitution, the question they ask is that, how do you get to it, How does someone become a prostitute on the street?. In any case, I intended to offer what everyday life is like., the daily life of a sex worker without explaining the reasons why it comes to that because I think that whenever we see a sex worker we wonder where they come from, how did it come to this, as if we should find a justification. I wanted to show this daily life without analyzing or reflecting on the reasons for it., but to share it or live it with them. There is an expression in France that has no translation that refers to when a prostitute has a sexual act with a client who is: make a step or take a step. It doesn't mean anything, The important thing is that it is a euphemism not to name what they do, not to say fuck, when these men's job is to fuck five, diez, twenty times a day. And I wonder what the day must be like for someone who fucks ten times a day, and that's what I show in the movie. The film tries to show what the life of someone with whom no one spends much time is like., only moments.
The film has a very organic structure, far from the classic model. How was the transition from the script to the final shoot??
The script has been very long to write, like three years to finish it. There is a lot of tendency to think that it is a very documentary film, practically without script and in which things really happen. I think it's one of the hardest things., write a script and direct a filming to make the viewer believe that everything happens naturally. Every word spoken was in the script, and the actors had to respect every word, the commas, the points and intonation that I had intended to be pronounced. It was really difficult for the actors to be required to look very natural and, at the same time, They will be stopped every time to tell them, no, This is not exactly how you should say this expression.. It must be taken into account that many of the actors were not professionals. Regarding this way of doing the script, I refer to the cinema of modernity of the years 60 y 70 where scripts begin to be written that are not the traditional way of writing where everything is explained based on psychological reasons. Remember Los 400 blowsby Truffaut. It's a movie in which there is a boy who runs away in the end and we don't know what is going to happen.. This gives a lot of freedom because you don't have to justify or explain each scene of the film., but, just show and share, live a piece of life. One thing that was especially difficult when writing was trying to tell a love story in this brutal world.. There was a first version of the script without a love story that, on the one hand, It was too gloomy and, besides, Nor did I realize the capacity for tenderness and love that I have found in these young people who prostitute themselves.. On the other hand, In some version if this love story was developed further, but it immediately overwhelmed everything else and was a danger I didn't want to run either.. I had to make many versions until I found the balance I wanted.. When we think about people on the streets, we always think about their suffering., in their miseries, but not in his feelings. Many times it is thought that it would be inappropriate to talk about street people as people who have their love stories.. They are human people like anyone else., who have all kinds of feelings, of anguish, scary, of love too.
You talked about Truffaut and Los 400 blowsand I wanted to ask you what motivated you to make this film?. What was your main interest? Reflect this world or show that desire for freedom that pulses throughout the film??
More like the second. I have not left the matter, I didn't consider, start, make a film about male prostitution. At first I thought of a free character, strong, that was thrown into the street. I haven't left the topic, of the argument, if not the character, and it is this character that has led us to the plot. For me the most important thing in the cinema is not so much to speak to the people of a subject, how to make them live a story, that you can only live through a character. For example, this very violent scene in which Léo is with two clients who sodomize him with a large dildo. Through this you can read how sometimes clients can be very dangerous, how they use the prostitute as a toy to which anything can be done. You could write an article about this or spend an hour talking about the possibility that certain clients can be violent.. The other possibility is to present this scene, which lasts four or five minutes. By the reactions of the spectators, I have seen that they have perfectly understood what is said through this scene.
In relation to this first scene of violence, there is a second, which is announced several times, what is that of the pianist, of which only the consequences are seen and, however, It is very violent. Tell us about the treatment of violence and how cinema can show it with clues.
I couldn't film this scene with the pianist because I didn't have time for it., but it was in the script. But then I think that, even if we had filmed it, it wouldn't be in the movie. Cinema can also work through suggestion and that is what happens with the pianist scene.. When the character gets into the pianist's car it is a terrifying scene, especially with the precedent of another previous violent scene. Might be too redundant, after the first scene of violence, show the second, and it is very justified by a question of dramaturgy. A film is a question of balance that is sought over months and months. There are many people who have told me that they are very excited by the scene in which Léo hugs the doctor and they tell me that they would have preferred to see scenes like this and not the violent scenes from before.. And I answer them that, if you hadn't seen the violent scene from before, you wouldn't have seen the subsequent tenderness. You have to be very attentive to the game of balance. When you put something you have to take something from another place, when something is removed, This is going to make something appear somewhere else..
The film raises class differences, a barrier between the protagonist's world and the outside world. Was it a conscious approach?
I don't know if it's exactly a class difference., but it is undeniable that there are all people who live within a society with its codes, and every other part that lives outside of society and outside of these codes. Regarding the scene of the two violent clients, is that there are human beings who may think that they have everything allowed because they pay, and since they pay they can do anything. I don't know if this answers the question, but I was very interested in showing a character who does not care at all about things and material comfort.. He is a character who lives on the street and does not perceive how horrible this is because he does not consider any other alternative., is what you want, It's your option. We are in a time when everyone is focused on themselves. Through mobile phones, of social networks, people are constantly waiting to be photographed, to analyze, to look at yourself and don't think about anything else. Here is a character who completely forgets himself, that even goes unseen and, therefore, he doesn't feel sorry for himself, refuses to have a telephone. When he is offered a cell phone, he rejects it because it doesn't make sense to him.. Many people ask me why they don't have a mobile phone because nowadays prostitution is carried out with applications on mobile phones.. It's funny to me that people ask me this and don't ask why they don't have a house..
