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Director's Statement
The initial idea was to shoot the film entirely in the Méjean calanque (creek), near Marseille, which has always made me think of a theatre. The colourful little houses built into the hills seem to be no more than façades ... A viaduct overlooks them and its trains look like child’s toys; the openness towards the sea transforms the horizon into a backdrop ... like painted canvases ... especially with the winter light, when everyone has gone. It becomes an abandoned set – melancholy and beautiful. In this open-air ‘bubble’, a few brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, friends and lovers exchange tons of past love and love yet to come ...
All of these men and all of these women share the same feeling.
They are at a time of life when they have an acute awareness of time passing, of the world changing ...
The paths that they’d opened up are gradually being sealed off.
They must constantly be maintained... or new ones must be opened up.
They know that their world will disappear with them...
They also know that the world will go on without them...
Will it be better, worse?
Thanks to them, because of them?
What will be left of them when they go?
In this situation, suddenly, something happens that may radically overturn all of these thoughts, a kind of Copernican revolution: child survivors from a wrecked boat are hiding in the hills. They are two brothers and a sister, like an echo of Joseph, Armand, and Angèle, and that brings a sense of fraternity back into play, since they decide to keep these children with them.
I believe in this encounter. There is something about “globalisation” that naturally relates to the future.
Though I exaggerate, I’d say that I couldn’t make a film today without talking about refugees: we are living in a country where people are drowning at sea on a daily basis. I deliberately choose the word “refugees”. I don’t care whether it’s due to climate change, for reasons,or because of a war – they are coming in search of a shelter, a hearth.
With these three little ones arriving, perhaps the calanque will be revived? Angèle, Joseph, and Armand will stay there with these three children to raise, and they’re going to try to make the restaurant, the hillside community, and their worldview survive ...
And keep up the connections between a few people... and in that way, maintain peace.