Noemi Merlant. “I left my partner one night to seek refuge with friends”

In the middle of the conversation, Noemi Merlant throws her head back on the couch and bursts out laughing. Life flows from him, now more than ever.This precious moment happened during the TV show Madame Figaro, Conversations. The actress was there to discuss the film, which was released in early September. Emmanuel, By Audrey Dewan.

We then promised, given the liveliness of the discussion, to meet again to discuss another great film of the year, Women on the balcony in which he stars and which he also directs.” The common point Emmanuel And Women on the balcony. It’s about women who no longer have desire and want it,” she deciphers when we see her again. This second interview, however, almost didn’t happen.

Free speech

When it was time to make the appointment, Noemi didn’t answer anymore, she was in the hospital. we are not revealing medical secrets here. he revealed on his Instagram account. And then, finally, one Friday evening, just before finishing this edition, he invites her to his house, a small house hidden in one of the eastern suburbs of Paris.

When asked how she is, and if this hospital stay is fortunately nothing serious related to the stress of the film’s release, she simply replies, finishing making black rose tea, it’s time to stress, right Noemi? Merlant, and we admire him, has this rare ability to say things with clarity and precision, always keeping an eye on the facts.

Gore, comedy and love

Tonight, therefore, she gets to discuss this unique film she made. Feminist themes intersect with raunchy, outrageous comedy, and plenty of ghosts boulevard of death by tarantino Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, By Almodovar, some Korean movies, but also Santa is trashBy Jean-Marie Poiret and patio window by Alfred Hitchcock.”

Is it too much for one movie? My theme is the emancipation of my female characters. I could only do it with a mix of genres I wanted to allow my heroes everything. And I like horror movies, they are very cathartic. There is an outlet that allows you to release all the violence that has accumulated inside you.”

City of Women

Therefore, the film focuses on three women in their thirties; two of them live in a shared apartment in Marseille (“I lived there and fell in love with Marseille, the light, this messy life, crazy and poetic, and the sea.”) One wants to become an author, tell a love story, the other cam girl – she hosts erotic shows on sites designed for the gaze of others, especially men, who wonder where they’ve seen her in real life.This makes for one of the funniest scenes in the film, when the cashier seems to recognize this face. If it is his body.

The question of the body

The body, this is one of the big questions of the film. Elise, the third woman, played by Noemi Merlant, arrives at her friends’ house, arriving in a red dress and a Marilyn Monroe haircut, all of which will unravel and disappear to make way for this woman’s real body at the end half-naked in the port of Marseille. Meanwhile, there will be much harm and violence (murders, rapes, etc.), and ghosts of wandering men, ectopics without heaven because they never recognized the evil they did to women.

Naomi’s ghosts

By a strange coincidence, The Ghosts of Noemi Merlant comes at a time when the excellent text by American Claire Cronin is being translated into French. Bloody screens (Éditions Le Gospel), where this author poetically and intensely investigates what drives and enables his attraction to horror films and TV series.

The exploration of this exactly echoes the study of film. Ghosts of Marx (Éditions du Seuil), where the thinker theorized in 1990 his idea of ​​”hauntology,” or how invisible traces of the past influence the present; Women on the balcony fully evokes this idea of ​​what constantly haunts the present; the ghosts of the film are the dark signs of the past, which is always active and painful.Listening to Noemi Merlant, it all starts with reality, her reality.

The patriarchal view

“It all started with a physical sensation four years ago in detention. I have a lot of panic attacks, and I’ve come to realize that it comes from always having to please others before knowing what I want, whether it’s at work or in the privacy of my romantic relationship.My body suddenly became aware of all this, as if it had reached a limit. Then I left my partner for the night to take refuge with friends. Left with nothing, no business, I lived with them and gradually realized why I was attacked, realized something, but also my role in all this, why I was playing this game, I knew that then I felt a great physical relaxation. Above all, there was no patriarchal gaze around. Our speech was free, there was special listening among women.

Freedom to be yourself

Which repeats one of the most striking sentences of the film. “We can only be among ourselves.” What does that really mean? Noemi. “Good question… Elise, my character, feels it very strongly when she says it, but also has a sense of sadness. Because she would always like to be herself, with everyone. This is also my case. But at least he can be himself with his friends. What does it mean to be yourself? It means not to think about other people’s eyes anymore. In the film, my character changes his body as much as he does with his friends. He dares to take more space, he dares to say what he thinks.”

The romantic couple, construction?

To hear that, we understand that this pressure felt by the character comes from his experiences. “I couldn’t help but feel pressured. This comes from the notion of a romantic couple, as society says it with the notions of jealousy and possessiveness taking up a lot of space. Spouses are the center of everything, while friendship has its place, jealousy and possessiveness must be channeled, things must be done. without the other. The concept of sexual performance too. they insist that a couple should make love all the time… These things exhausted me, the sexual duty of a couple, I couldn’t take it anymore and I couldn’t find a person who understands that love is not that. Until I met a person who cares about me like And apply it.”

Marital rape and the concept of consent

At the heart of the film is a very realistic scene of a couple in a hotel room. “This is one of the first scenes I wrote. I’ve lived this scene so much since my youth, from my first relationship, that it came out in a hurry, very quickly. I knew it had to be in sequence because I didn’t want to cheat the viewer, without editing, I wanted to show to give everything that happens, and it is one of the only ones I should not have thought about. It comes from my experience, and I realized that my around, whether it’s my 18-year-old cousins, my 70-year-old aunt, my friends of the same age, or even sometimes some men, many people have this situation. Not everyone likes the concept of marital rape. It refers to the concept of the consent of the couple, in these terms “wife” or “girlfriend”. I had to shoot this scene, show it, so I could discuss it later. Filming this, he says, was perfect. “It calmed me down. I think it calmed me down.” Even if, he quickly admits that everything is not resolved. “I feel like I’m releasing something, and then I come across new knots…”

Own room

More than tranquility, we understand that by seeing her at home like this, Noemi Merlant seems to have achieved what her characters seek from Virginia Woolf’s own room. I feel like you need to be in an environment where you feel safe, in a space to be fully present with your body and the body of others, not having sex is where one pulls the other’s hair, but that it is decided by both, and not ended without deciding. We need a healthy and safe space.”

A quirky and punk peplum is in the making

Faced with this, we want to know what will happen to these fictional women in their balcony.We would imagine the continuation of their strange adventures. Noemi Merlant did not think about it, she works on something else, as if to go somewhere else, but still remains in this turbulent environment. , it would be peplum, but I think this word is not very happy, it has too many connotations. So let’s just say it’s going to be a weird and punk peplum.”

It is also with this light and serious thought that at a time when the world of men is arguing all over the planet, we leave ourselves saying that tonight, just a few days before the release of this film, this conversation taught us: more than one thing, and above all about me as a boy, about us in front of him, about this woman who lives beyond his balcony.

Women on the balconyWith Noemi Merlant, Suheila Yaqub, Sanda Codreanu, Noemi Merlant… Released on December 11.