"A Radiant Girl," written and directed by actor Sandrine Kiberlain, is a potent tale of Jews in Occupied France seen almost entirely from the perspective of a teenage girl, Irène (Rebecca Marder).
Studying to be an actress, Irène is almost insufferable with her theatrics — she fakes fainting to distract her brother Igor (Anthony Bajon) and pesters her father André (André Marcon) and her grandmother Marceline (Françoise Widhoff) to help her rehearse as she is hoping to get accepted into a conservatory. Irène also has a suitor, Gilbert (Jean Chevalier), whom she is not sure she likes, especially after she meets Jacques (Cyril Metzger) a dreamy assistant to a doctor she sees for her real-life fainting spells. Irène and Jacques do start seeing each other, and one stylish sequence has them kissing during a series of blackouts.
Kiberlain lets "A Radiant Girl" unfold impressionistically, creating a tone and atmosphere that subtly builds to its powerful conclusion. The filmmaker avoids showing Nazi flags but does features scenes of the family being required to stamp "Jew" on their identification papers, hand in phones, radios, and bicycles, as well as wear yellow stars on their clothing. However, Kiberlain also uses anachronistic music — songs by Tom Waits and Metronomy — to create a mood that suggests this kind of persecution could happen anytime, anywhere.
The filmmaker spoke, with the assistance of Interpreter Ellen Sowchek, with Salon about making "A Radiant Girl."
Most folks will know you as an actress. You have two films screening at the upcoming Rendezvous with French Cinema program, "Diary of a Fleeting Affair" and "The Green Perfume." What prompted your shift to becoming a director, and why at this project and at this point in your career?
I've been an actress for 30 years, and I found that when you start as an actor you are very concerned about pleasing the director, and what the director is asking of you. But as time goes on, and you become more experienced, you realize how much of a contribution the other people on the set are making — with sound, and cinematography — so you are responding to everything, not just the director. As I became more aware of what everyone else was doing, which paralleled my work as an actress, I became much more interested in what a director does.
About five years ago, I made a short film, and it was my way of trying to express myself. And one of the only ways to express myself is through cinema. When I made this short, I knew a lot about framing and shooting a film, and that was when I decided to make a feature. I zeroed in on the angle I wanted to film — the 1940s from the point of view of an adolescent girl in France. It is a unique point of view, and once I found that, it became necessary for me to make that film.
You use this narrative approach, seeing the film through Irène's point of view, as a way of making viewers consider how they might have behaved at 19 in 1942 France?
What I wanted to do is give a sense of a personal diary or a personal journal. You are seeing these things from her point of view, but we, as an audience, know what is going to happen. Irène doesn't know what tomorrow would bring, so it's a way of building up a kind of suspense, almost to the point where you feel the film is a thriller. I don't put a lot of symbols, or historical information in the film. Audiences aren't stupid. They know the period and what's in store for her. Irène can't imagine the danger; her vivaciousness and joy builds the tension.
I appreciated not having all the symbols and signposts telling us what to think.
I know there are a lot of films made about this particular period of time — many good, important films — but for me, I wanted "A Radiant Girl," to show, from my perspective, how this one young woman would have dealt with this situation through her eyes. We see her feelings about life and what is to be 19 and experiencing first love, her love of the theater. For me, this was important because it increases the sense of danger that we feel for her. The only thing that really could destroy this joy she has for living is something that is the worst. I think that by seeing it through her point of view and at her age when things are purest and strongest, it renders the violence of the Holocaust that we know is going to come even worse.
One of the things I wanted to do was tell the story of all the "Irènes," to make it timeless, not anchored to the period of time she is in. It could be to girls in Afghanistan or Iran. In doing this, it's a way I can reach some of the young people and make them aware. I remember when I was an adolescent, I read "The Diary of Anne Frank," as I turned the page, wanting to know what was going to happen, suddenly, there was nothing. I wanted to recreate that sensation, which just stopped. The darkness in the end of the film lasts nine seconds. To quote Agnès Varda, "I don't want to show things, I want to give people the desire to imagine what they are seeing." That was very important to me.
Your use of anachronistic music to create a mood that suggests this kind of occupation could happen anytime, anywhere.
I was very precise in the way I wanted to use the music in the movie. The music you hear is contemporary with Irène's life, so Charles Trenet's song "Que reste-e-il de nos amours?" is one he wrote prior to 1942, so it would be contemporary. With other scenes, I didn't have that same anchoring, of a piece of music from that time. For the romantic scene in the stairway, I wanted the music to be very cinematic, something you would associate with a love scene in a film, and not from a specific time period. Music that when you are 19 and you hear it, it transports you. I wanted to create that emotion in the audience watching it. But then we go back to scenes more contemporary to her life, those scenes I wanted music that was contemporary.
One could argue that there is a threat all around Irène, but she almost doesn't see it because she is so focused on herself.
In response to your thought of her knowing that there is something there, she sees what she wants to see. But at the same times, on another level, she knows something else is going on but it's not being expressed. Her spells of fainting show she feels things deeply, but it's not put into words. She is as aware, or perhaps, more aware, than her father or grandmother are. On a certain level, she is more tuned in but has chosen not to focus on it but on moving ahead and focusing on what she wants.
On that same note, the film also features subversive behavior. This is a story of great change and fear. Marceline is adamantly resisting the occupation, while André cooperates. Jacques presents Irène with a bicycle to ride freely. What observations do you have about how people coped during traumatic times?
What I really wanted to do was to show all of the ways people would react in this position. The father who is very protective, and wants to protect the family at all costs, is something I experienced in my own family, although not exactly in the same way. The grandmother who is much more free in her way of thinking, and she has the soul of a resistance fighter in her. Igor her brother flirts with the enemy in a way that is seen almost as fashionable to go along with the Occupiers. It is different ways different individuals have with dealing with the different situations, The two grandmothers, this was what Irène would be like when she becomes an older woman, that she would have the same sense of freedom and liberty. The grandmothers read the definition of fear. They don't think they have fear, but when the read [the definition], they realize this is exactly what they are experiencing.
The film presents Judaism in a very specific way — these are secular Jews, who celebrate some rituals. There are supporting characters who like Jews, and others who do not. What prompted you to present the religious aspect of the characters in a deliberate way?
I think that the scene with the grandmother, she insists they don't pray and in the next scene they are praying. It's an idea that many people have — yes, they are born Jewish and remember the traditions, but while they saw themselves as being Jewish, they are not religious Jews. They are not practicing, observant Jews even if they respect the rituals or celebrate the holidays. Everyone has their own way of relating to their past, and where they came from. I relate to this in my own family; we do not practice on the micro-level of knowing all the holidays and traditions. Everyone develops their own way of observing the Sabbath. Then, there is the neighbor, who learns the rituals, and the cultural aspect of it. People are not ashamed of culture and origins, even if they are not practicing it. That is what I wanted to capture in the scene of Irène lighting Sabbath candle because it's a ritual that is important to her. It is not important religion because requires her to do it, it is for herself personally.
What informed your approach, visually and tonally, to telling this story?
I wanted to highlight each situation and what was happening in them. I wanted the love scenes to be very active — so there is the business with the glasses and drawing. She has this energy, and I wanted this action to be a reflection of that. The scene that takes place in the light and darkness, in the light, they speak things the audience can hear, but they are banalities, but when in the dark, they are intimate private moments, so we can't see them. That contrast was a way of doing it cinematographically.
Why do you think stories about the Occupation, the Holocaust, and antisemitism still resonate today?
One of the best compliments I get is when people Irène's age say how much they identified with her and felt her experience — they have that same sense something is happening but not being able to put a name on it or understand it or knowing what the future will hold. What we experience from being with her is something that touches them too, on that very intimate level. I wanted to have a very strong point of view of this year. She is like many other girls. Seeing her getting up to dance and there is the yellow star on her jacket, we are seeing that she is just like all these other girls, but now she's been forced to become different by the yellow star, and that is something that resonates today. The supreme injustice is that that because people are different, that makes them bad, or they are wrong. That was an aspect of the timelessness I wanted to represent. We are all different, but at the same time, we shouldn't be identified by and called out for being different by this type of injustice. This is true for everyone in every place and in every country in the world.
"A Radiant Girl" opens in select cities (New York, Santa Monica, and Montreal) on Feb. 17 and will expand to additional cities in the coming weeks.
