Bruno Dumont and his company of very young actors were present on September 11 at the Rialto for the premiere of the film Les Roches Rouges, filmed on the Côte d’Azur. An opportunity for the director to reflect on his relationship with youth and his particular way of filming children left to their own devices.
Presented at the Quinzaine des cinéastes at the latest Cannes Film Festival, Les Roches Rouges immerses us in the daily life of Géo, five years old, and his gang who challenge each other by jumping off the famous red rocks of the Mediterranean. Between friendship, rivalry and first romantic feelings, the film captures the wild beauty of a childhood left to itself.
Shot in five weeks with a Portuguese technical crew and entirely handheld, a first for Bruno Dumont, the film fully embraces this desire for proximity with his young cast members.
A singular filmmaker of French cinema, known for his works blending social realism and dreaminess (P’tit Quinquin, Jeanne, France…), Bruno Dumont signs with Les Roches Rouges a film financed abroad, due to lack of support in France. It will be released in theaters on September 23.
A shoot at child’s height
To bring this story to life, the filmmaker had to completely adapt his working method to the age of his young cast members. “We could work for two, three hours and then it was kind of over,” he explains. The rest of the time, the children continued their schooling with a teacher.
The days were divided into small sequences of a few minutes, then assembled to reconstruct entire scenes. A constraint that, far from hindering him, ended up nourishing his writing: “ I quickly saw that they applied themselves very quickly when I had their attention. “
Restoring a free childhood
On the total freedom that emanates from the film, Bruno Dumont doesn’t hide his position, almost militant, on the current relationship of adults to childhood: “I think today’s children are not real children. They are not free enough. Real children, that’s it, they are turbulent, they don’t obey. »
This freedom is also found throughout the film, where children are filmed almost like real adults. They drive small quads on the road, move wherever and whenever they please, under the distant gaze of the few adults present on screen, who seem deliberately to ignore them.
The filmmaker advocates for a documentary approach, and therefore shot handheld to capture this spontaneity. “It’s a desire to show how children really are. And I think they are like that,” he asserts. An approach he justifies by a refusal to judge: “Cinema is not there to say what is right, what is wrong. Cinema is there especially to tell the truth of the reality of things. »
« It’s the miracle of cinema »
Bruno Dumont also recounts how the project, initially conceived as a more classical fiction, had to adjust to the reality of his young actors. When he asks one of them to play his character, the child flatly refuses: “He would tell me “no, my name is not Géo, my name is Kaylon!”, so it was up to me to find the key to get him into his role. »
On the question of the physical safety of the children, the director mentions a shoot largely built around editing effects: “They never jumped that high, they were never in danger in any way. It’s the miracle of cinema, it’s to believe that it’s true. »
In praise of risk and freedom
Beyond the footage, Bruno Dumont broadens his argument to a wider criticism of contemporary society, which he deems too inclined to overprotect the youngest: “It’s the adult who is afraid, it’s the adult who overprotects. Life is a risk, and life is also beautiful. »
A philosophy he sums up as a conclusion, extending the metaphor of his film’s title: “I think that the rocks are that, they are children, little rocks that become human. »
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