Nathalie Najem: “Bastien Bouillon was my first choice before doubting it”
The powerful in the coming days stages the grip of a man on his two successive companions. Its director tells the first one the choice of her performers: Bastien Bouillon, Zita Hanrot and Alexia Chardard
For your first feature film, you sign a relentless and chilling story about the domestic violence through the support that Laura, a young woman and mother of their son to the new partner of her ex Joachim, victim of the same hold. How was the casting of the central trio of your first feature film built? What is the first piece of the puzzle?
Nathalie Najem: The very first one I thought of was Bastien Bouillon. Because I had been lucky to have already worked with him on a medium-length film Baby love Who already told a story of destructive passion. And it had been an artistically very strong meeting between us. But the writing of the scenario was long, especially because I worked on other projects as a simple parallel screenwriter. And in the final stretch, on one of the last versions of the scenario, I suddenly had a doubt. I wondered if we were not going to redo the same thing in less well, since the two characters gave off the same disorder.
What brought you back to him?
I had to find the interpreter of Laura, the ex of Joachim, the mother of their child, first. The one who has been able to extricate from her grip and will help her new partner Shirin to get out of what she could escape. I chose to entrust this role to Zita Hanrot. She’s an actress that I’ve been for a long time. But she had particularly struck me in The party is over by Marie Garel-Weiss and her role as a young woman trying to free herself from her dependence on drugs, by her ability to embody this duality between the deception and brightness that I was looking for for Laura. I needed that we could feel that Laura could now be light, bright and alive, while understanding that she had experienced the harshness of life. And the chance of life also made Zita became a mother a year before filming and that it still strengthened the maturity essential to her character.
And why did you come back to your initial idea of Bastien Bouillon to embody Joachim?
Because I finally convinced myself not to flee the evidence. Bastien spontaneously embodied what I was looking for for this character: a fragility which makes him endearing but which, in a snap of the fingers, can arouse fear. And I also knew that I could rely on the confidence born of our first collaboration. And that at the moment when necessarily – and it was the case – he was going to worry that his character appeared too unfamatic or even hateful, he would abandon himself because he would have confidence in my gaze.
It’s alexia CHARDARD who embodies the third member of this trio, the new partner of Joachim, gradually taken between his claws. Have you chosen it by casting?
I had already seen Alexia play in Mektoub My Love of Abdel Kechiche then at Valéria Bruni- tédeschi in Almonds. But it was my casting director Marion Touitou – who has also always been that of Valéria – who suggested that I meet her. And what Alexia proposed in hearing immediately convinced me that she was the ideal interpreter of Shirin
In the coming days: a first long striking (critic)
Once your actors have been chosen, how do you work With them upstream of the shooting?
I organized a reading with all the actors a few days before the shooting to see who was already in the right place and having an idea of the work I had to do with others. But I do not organize on the other hand any rehearsal upstream, including with the technicians. I only do it once on the set and we film this rehearsal before changing the plug -in scene. It is a way of transforming the lack of budget. I would have liked to have a little more shooting time but knowing that it would not be the case, I told myself that letting go would be able to be born in the discomfort and in the risk taking of each. A choice that we find that in the fact that we did not always have the authorizations to turn in the streets of Nice. In the station scenes like those of the Promenade des Anglais where we have neither blocked the streets, nor warned passers -by. And I immediately felt that the actors liked it. It created an intensity that fueled the film.
Uncertainty is also necessarily created by the presence of a child in the casting of this film, in the role of the daughter of Joachim and Laura. How did you work with Maya Hirsbein?
It all starts to play during the cast. I chose a child that I really felt solid and who gave off something healthy, who had not been damaged by life because her character was going to go through a number of difficult trials in history. Then I made sure to have a permanent connection with her on the set because I immediately saw that when I gave her indications, she was very attentive and followed them all. He is a very intelligent, very cinegenic and very hardy child because she knew her text on her fingertips. The assistant of the casting director was her coach, took care of her between the scenes. For my part, when I understood that it was difficult to give too many indications from one socket to the other, I chose to direct it inside these by talking to it. Then, between the catches, I observed it when she played and I regularly decided to integrate these games at my story, to ask her to redo them in front of the camera. Which gave him a lot of naturalness by making him do something of his age.
Of Nathalie Najem. With Bastien Bouillon, Zita Hanrot, Alexia Chardard… Duration 1h40. Exit July 23, 2025.
