“When I arrived in Cannes, I shouted so hard that I had to wake up the whole floor”: Coralie Fargeat’s fight for The Substance
The director named to the Oscars tells the many adventures of her film The Substance, before arriving on the screens of the Cannes Film Festival.
Coralie Fargeat had already expressed itself, especially for The pointon the difficulties she had to go through to carry out her body-horror The substance. She mentioned in particular the cold shower that was The abandonment of Universalthe original distributor of the film.
The final version of 140 minutes unveiled during a projection had not pleased three universal leaders, but Coralie Fargeat fought to keep her hand on her film, even if it means losing the $ 18 million funding planned to devote the studio to him. In an interview that she gives to Variety, She evokes this episode again:
“I can’t go too much on this. I think it was as simple as that: it did not correspond to what they wanted to do. They felt that the gap was too big for them, regarding the way they sell their films. ”
Even today, we do not know what has really happened between The substance and Universal. Several parties claim that Fargeat did not move an inch when it was notes from the studio, and that it led to a dead end. It must be said that the director had started filming with a well -constructed idea of what she wanted.
In any case, the film was a great success, with all Five Oscar nominationsincluding that of the best realization (where Coralie Fargeat is the only named woman) and the best film. However, she does not boast of being right to stand up to the studio:
“Basically, there was a disappointment. There was bitterness. It was painful and difficult. You do this job because you want to be loved, but after a while, the film you really want to make no longer corresponds to someone who has a studio logic ”.
After this projection, Fargeat took matters into their own hands by offering its version of the film at the Cannes Film Festival. For her, it was her chance to find a new distributor. Despite a loss of hope from the director, Thierry Frémaux, coach of films in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, announces the good news, unexpected.
“When I arrived in Cannes, I shouted so hard that I had to wake up the whole floor. I knew that everything was going to change because I was going to give birth to the film in the Temple of Cinema, a place where I could not dream better ”.
Shortly after its validation for the official competition, The substance has been Bought by Mubifor several territories. EFE CAKAREL, the director general of the company, believed so much in the film that he is the first of Mubi to make his debut in American theaters, before going out on platforms. Despite these concerns with Universal, Fargeat does not regret having stayed on his positions:
“I held so hard during the filming of the film and the difficult phase of post-production, when everyone wanted me to make it less violent, less excessive, less gore, less frontal. I knew I had written this Film for it to be more – or at least at the same level – that I denounce in the film (…) This violence is not delicate. It doesn’t smile. intensity ”.
“It was my apocalypse now”: Coralie Fargeat tells behind the scenes of the complicated filming of The substance