Amant Double-The Double Lover 2017

Amant Double | The Double Lover | L'amant Double

Amant Double-The Double Lover-L'amant Double

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About Amant Double / The Double Lover 💬

Crafting a deliriously cinematic web of suspense, shock, eroticism, and power dynamics, writer/director François Ozon returns to master the thriller genre with DOUBLE LOVER. In the new film, Ozon reunites with two actors whom he previously directed in breakout roles, Marine Vacth and Jérémie Renier, now helming them in an intense exploration of a woman venturing into dangerous romance.

• Lives of the Twins

25-year-old Chloé (Marine Vacth), a fragile woman prone to depression begins psychotherapy and falls in love with her psychiatrist, Paul Meyer. Several months later they move in together, but she soon discovers her lover is keeping part of his identity a secret.

• INTERVIEW WTH FRANÇOİS OZON

JOYCE CAROL OATES

Q: Are you a big fan of Joyce Carol Oates?

François Ozon: I've long admired Joyce Carol Oates for her precise writing style, keen psychological observations, complex characters and smart storylines. And the fact that she's a graphomaniac has always appealed to me. When I learned she wrote mysteries under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith, I took an immediate interest in these minor novels, knowing her limitless imagination would provide great fodder for film. That's when I came across Lives of the Twins. I retained the premise of the book: a woman discovers that her psychiatrist, now her lover, has a brother who is also a therapist. Joyce Carol Oates tells the story in a far more realistic way, whereas I delved further into the mental aspects of the story, set the action in France and added the medical revelation at the end. Still, the film explores the American author's pet subjects: neuroses, sex and the dark side of split personalities.

TWINS

Q: Was it the subject of twins that inspired you to make this film?

François Ozon: I wanted to treat the subject of twins as something fascinating, monstrous and artistic. I got the idea of having Chloe work in a museum. Chloe is contaminated by the artwork she's guarding. At the beginning of the film, the pieces in the museum are fairly aesthetically pleasing, but as the film progresses they become increasingly organic and monstrous, reflecting Chloe's inner turmoil. I naturally thought of Dead Ringers. I suspect Joyce Carol Oates wrote her book after seeing Cronenberg's film, which is also very organic and preoccupied with gynecology. However, in his case, the story is told from the point of view of the twins, whereas JC Oates focuses on the young woman caught between two brothers. It was important for me to place Chloe at the center of the story, to show her stomach, swelling and hurting her, and illustrate her confusion between early pregnancy and a parasitic fetus.

PSYCHOANALYSIS

Q: How did you want to present the process of psychoanalysis?

François Ozon: For a long time now I've wanted to try to capture the experience of a psychoanalytical session on film. Initially, Chloe sits across from her shrink, monologuing about her dreams, her feelings and emotions, her family... The audience is plunged into her private life and might get nervous - will this be going on for an hour and a half? I didn't want to confine myself to the classic analytical setup represented by a neutral, static setting with predefined codes. I sought to capture something more fluid. I wanted the audience to follow Chloe's therapy the same way a psychiatrist might listen to his patients, in a floating way. The visual effects and changing viewpoints in these first sessions almost play against the dialogue. If you listen carefully or see the film a second time, you realize everything is said in these first ten minutes. But you don't necessarily hear it.

DOUBLE LIFE

Q: Does the balance of fantasy and reality allow these characters to lead double lives?

François Ozon: The Louis character can be seen as an avatar allowing Chloe to live out the desires and fantasies she forbids herself from experiencing with Paul, as though her love for Paul were preventing her from satisfying a more intense and uninhibited sexuality. My films are often about our need for the imaginary in order to cope with reality. In any love relationship, even a happy one, there is an element of frustration and a need for a mental space where fantasies can express themselves. Our partner can never satisfy all of our desires. We often need something more or different, something on the side.

A MENTAL THRILLER

Q: So DOUBLE LOVER is a mental thriller?

François Ozon: The intense subjectivity of the first ten minutes bleeds into the rest of the film. The idea was to follow Chloe in a linear way, creating narrative tension by playing with elements of suspense while staying anchored in a fluctuating reality complete with moments of mental or fantasmatic slippage. This allowed me to deviate from a purely realistic register and flirt with the character's imaginary world. I liked the idea that the outside dangers and threats Chloe perceives reveal her inner turmoil.

THE DIRECTION

Q: How did you approach directing this film?

François Ozon: After a restrained, classical film like Frantz, diving into Chloe's imaginary world gave me room to make bolder stylistic choices. DOUBLE LOVER tells an essentially mental story, and my idea was to direct it architecturally, playing with symmetry, reflections and geometry. All the sets were conceived to create the impression that something is being built, that a brain is developing a thought. I shot my last few films in 35mm but for DOUBLE LOVER, I returned to digital and cinemascope and aimed for a sharper, more contemporary image, surgical at times, but always aesthetically pleasing.

MARINE VACTH

Q: You worked with Marine Vacth before on Young & Beautiful. Why did you cast her for this project?

François Ozon: In a sense, Young & Beautiful was a documentary portrait of an up-and-coming young actress. In it, Marine embodies a taciturn, opaque, mysterious teenager onto whom the audience projects their own interpretations. In this film, Marine has done the work of an accomplished actress and truly created a character. The secret is within her, she's seeking the key to unlock it, and we're right there with her on her quest. We get inside her head, her fantasies, her stomach.

JÉRÉMIE RENIER

Q: Did you feel the same about Jérémie Renier, who you have also worked with before?

François Ozon: This is the third time I've worked with Jérémie, after Criminal Lovers and Potiche. In my mind, he was still the teenager I met in 1998, so I wasn't convinced going into the screen tests. I assumed he wouldn't have the necessary maturity for the roles, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover he'd acquired a strength, a virility. And when he tried out a few scenes with Marine there was a real erotic chemistry between them. The starting point for playing Paul and Louis was simple and binary: good guy, bad guy. But as Jérémie infused complexity into the characters, it quickly became apparent that the trickier of the two to tackle was actually Paul. He's the more mysterious of the two, the one who's hiding the most. We can project more onto him, he triggers our imagination. We worked on the costumes, hairstyles, physical differences, the way they carry themselves, the way they speak. In the beginning, we imagined a deeper, more imposing voice for Louis, then realized that if they have the same voice the situation feels even more disturbing. Like Chloe, there comes a point where we no longer know if we're with Paul or with Louis.

PAUL/LOUIS

Q: Can you tell us a bit more about these two characters and how they are portrayed in the film?

François Ozon: I wanted Paul to come across as a good psychotherapist whose exchanges with Chloe ring true. Louis, on the other hand, transgresses all the rules and framework of psychoanalysis. He makes outrageous claims and interpretations. In their first session, he gives the impression he knows Chloe, leading the audience to wonder if he might actually be Paul. It's as though Louis were saying out loud everything that went unsaid with Paul, and saying it brutally, with no taboos or superego. Everything relating to the brothers is conceived in mirror images, especially the decor. Paul's consulting room is comfortable and inviting, with leather furniture, plush carpeting and warm colors. Louis's consulting room is glacial, with marble accents, cold colors and fake flowers. As for the mirrors themselves, Paul's are horizontal and Louis's are vertical.

THE MOTHERS

Q: There is also an interesting focus on these characters' mothers...

François Ozon: The three women in Chloe's life can all be seen as mother figures. Myriam Boyer, who plays the neighbor, is the intrusive, slightly grotesque, devouring mother, a bit of a witch with her taxidermy cat. I've always loved Myriam Boyer's voice. In no time at all she establishes her character, the only one in the film who brings a little humor and lightness to an otherwise disturbing presence. Jacqueline Bisset is the real mother, the absent mother Chloe mentions at the beginning of the film during her session with Paul. In her fantasy world, this maternal figure becomes Mrs. Schenker, a nurse-cum prison warden who cares for her incapacitated daughter at home. Jacqueline Bisset was an obvious choice, with her Anglo-Saxon charm, feline beauty and resemblance to Marine in her facial features, skin tone, freckles and piercing eyes. Dominique Reymond is the clinical mother, the scientist who gives Chloe information about her condition kindly, but without emotional attachment. I love the combination of coolness and empathy Dominique brings to the role.

THE FINAL REVEAL

Q: What can you tell us about the final reveal?

François Ozon: It was while doing research on twins that I discovered the existence of parasitic twins. That was a eureka moment in my adaptation process, because it provided a path back to a reality even more fantastical and monstrous than what we'd seen up to that point. This final resolution plunges us into the abyss of what nature is capable of doing to our bodies. There's a serenity at the end of the film. Her condition has been diagnosed and treated, things seem to be falling back into place. But all is not resolved. Chloe still feels the emptiness inside. I don't see this ending as either positive or negative. It is brutal and unrelenting, like sexuality, the subconscious and desire.

Amant Double / The Double Lover Movie Details 🎥

Directed by

François Ozon

Writing Credits

François Ozon (Screenplay)

Philippe Piazzo (Collaboration)

Joyce Carol Oates (Freely adapted from the novel ''Lives of the Twins'')

Starring

Marine Vacth

Jérémie Renier

Jacqueline Bisset

Myriam Boyer

Dominique Reymond

Music by

Philippe Rombi

Cinematography by

Manuel Dacosse

Genres: Drama, Romance, Thriller

Countries: France, Belgium

Amant Double / The Double Lover Official Trailer

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