Jean-Pierre Jeunet adapts Changing the Water of Flowers: “I wrote thinking of Audrey Tautou”

The director of Amélie Poulain came to present his new film, based on Valérie Perrin’s best-seller, at the La Roche-sur-Yon International Film Festival. And he made some revelations to the public who came to attend the session.

From Audrey Tautou to Leïla Bekhti
“I wrote the script with Audrey Tautou in mind… And then Audrey decided to stop filming – bad idea, if you ask me! Well, I understand, she had a little girl and wants to devote her life to her. And what’s more, when I told her what the film was about (Editor’s note: it’s about the death of a child), she told me that she absolutely didn’t want something like that. So we had to find an actress. I’m not going to mention the names I thought of, but at one point, my producer gave me the name Leïla, who I didn’t really know.

I do some research on her, I see interviews, I watch her films, and I come across a Kyan Khojandi show where he makes his guests eat super spicy things. Do you see? It’s called Hot Ones. And at one point, he said to him: ”Come on Leïla, it seems you know a good lasagna recipe. Tell us while crying. Go ahead.”And she does it! She has the ability to cry during each take at the same time. I’ve never seen that. There was a shot that we redid eight or nine times, and she wanted to continue! »

Originally a TV series
“Initially, Italians had bought the rights to Change the flower water and wanted to make it into a TV series. So I first wrote four fifty-minute episodes. And then they kept saying stuff out of business school: ‘‘You have to keep the audience interested, you have to have cliffhangers.”So, at one point, I said: ”But why don’t we make a film? We would have more freedom than for a series.”And the French producers said: ”Well yes, why not?”So it became a film. I was using Valérie Perrin’s dialogues but it became obvious that we had to re-dialog the script, because it sounded too literary. This is where we called on screenwriter Guillaume Laurant, who gave the dialogue a coat of polish and revised certain things. He had perspective. Usually, we all work together from the start but here, the constriction of the story was so complicated…

In literature, it is the reader who imagines the story, the characters. No two readers see the same movie in their heads. In cinema, you impose images on the spectators and therefore you have no room for error. While literature leaves room for a lot of approximations, authors can often sweep the dust under the rug. In cinema, you have to solve problems, you have to make everything work. »

Clash with Leïla Bekhti
“Leïla is a very regular actress but also extremely interventionist, I won’t hide it from you. Sometimes too much (Laughter.) She had a lot of ideas, and sometimes tried to impose them. So things got really bad between us sometimes. It sparks. But sometimes sparks can set fires and make things flaming. »

AI in small doses
“Special effects are a tool that we have always used with Marc Caro. We were the first to do video specials before digital, and the first to mix digitally with La City of Lost Children…I love technology. And here, I can tell you that I have as much fun as a child with artificial intelligence. I’m not going to let myself be replaced, there’s no question of it! But on the other hand, I make my storyboards, moodboards, ambient images with AI. It’s a new game even if it’s dangerous too, I’m well aware of that.

But in Change the flower waterthere is very, very little artificial intelligence. Almost nothing. We used it for a shot of a ladybug moving on a green plant, because otherwise it would have taken hours to shoot in macro. AI is a tool and today, we will no longer avoid it. So there are some who will leave feathers, there are many jobs which will suffer, but we cannot stop progress. So you have to use it with acuity, passion, like a tool. »

Changing the Water of Flowers will be released in theaters on December 9. With Leïla Bekhti, Matthias Schoenaerts, Melvil Poupaud… Trailer: