Image by Sophie Brasey
Janine from Film in Revolt spoke with Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond, co-writers/directors of My Little Sister which screened recently at the Sydney Film Festival.
Janine Lau: Hello! It’s lovely to meet the both of you.
Stéphanie Chuat: Hello Janine, I’m Stéphanie. Véronique is also here. Is that okay?
Yes, of course! That’s so exciting.
SC: Véronique said, “It’s so cool. She has a twin sister. I want to hear about that.”
Véronique Reymond: Hello!
Hi!
VR: Lovely to meet you.
Lovely to meet you too. Like you said, I’m a twin. I’m actually an identical twin and my sister and I were born three minutes apart. A minute more than Lisa and her brother in your film! Just like Lisa, I’m the younger sister.
How did the both of you start out as directing/writing partners and how has your process grown?
VR: We’ve known each other since we were 10 years old, we were at school together. We have this BFF thing, best friend forever. Even if we’re not twin sisters, we have a very strong bond and share countless memories together. We started out as actresses in this milieu. We both went to theatre school. Besides our training, we also created a stage duo and performed our clown acts in the streets of Europe. Then we started putting on shows in theatres. We got into movie-making by adding movie sequences to our plays. That’s how we came into this field of writing and directing movies. We loved it so much that we decided to keep going in that direction. It was a very natural process. But we didn’t go to film school. We first wrote and directed short films, documentaries, then a first feature film in 2010, The Little Bedroom. So, even if it’s sometimes a bit overwhelming because we don’t have all the technical knowledge, we manage to convey our vision to our team, our DP, editor, etc…
SC: Being a duo helps us a lot not to be scared to try things. And sometimes fail. And try again. For our movie My Little Sister, we were inspired by the German actress Nina Hoss. And fate took a hand. In February 2015, we bumped into her by chance in a boutique in Berlin. We went over to her and said: “Hello, we’re Swiss filmmakers and we’re writing a script for you. Would you have time for a coffee?” Three days later, she called us back and met us for a “quick coffee” that ended up lasting three hours. It was an incredible piece of luck meeting her this way and that she remained faithful to the project, which took us four years until we could finally shoot it. Despite all the difficulties we met until we actually could do the movie, Nina Hoss was still there during the whole process.
How do you feel a multilingual script affects the story?
VR: It’s a very interesting question because we come from Switzerland, a multilingual country. German, French and Italian are the main languages here. We are from the French-speaking part of the country. For My Little Sister, we wanted to open new perspectives, work with non Frenchspeaking actors. This wish came together with the desire to tell the story of a woman going through a midlife crisis, torn between the world of boarding schools in Switzerland and the theatre milieu in Berlin, between her family life and her own creativity. We wrote the movie in French, then it was translated in German. Before the shooting, we read the text together with the actors in German so that they could feel at ease with their lines.
SC: For me, I don’t really perceive My Little Sister as a multi-language film because it’s mostly 95% German, 3- 4% English and 1% French. It’s multi-language because of the setting in an international school that brings the English language in a German-language environment.
A clear idea that comes through in the film is that women are often relegated to their relational identity to the men in their life. How do you think the creative arts treats women, especially from the European perspective?
VR: It’s really important that things starts to move a bit into a more female direction thanks to the #MeToo movement. It gives more space to women in every field of society, not only arts. But we cannot forget what our mothers went through. Women were very much in the shadow of men for so many years, centuries. And it’s still in our sense, somehow. In our movies, we like to investigate the theme of feminism by looking at intimate relationships between men and women. In My Little Sister, Lisa at first seems a little self-effacing, mostly focussing on her brother and her family. Her inner strength is growing as the film progresses, through the ordeals she has to face. But initially, she is the wife of a successful man and has given up on her career to look after their children. Lots of women have excellent credentials but decide to put their career aspirations aside to allow their partners to thrive professionally. This is particularly true with expats, where the spouse follows her husband and looks after the children whilst waiting for her turn to come. But when the time comes for her husband to return the favour, things fall flat! Family obligations lead women to make choices of which they are still too often prisoners.
Some people may not know but the production of Hamlet in My Little Sister was a real production put on by the Schaubühne Theatre with the same lead actor (Lars Eidinger) and director (Thomas Ostermeier) as within the film. Why did you choose to incorporate the real-life company and production instead of creating a fictional one?
SC: We come from the theatre world and we’ve also made some documentaries, so for us to show the reality of theatre was very important. We wanted to have the same actors acting around Lars Eidinger in the movie because they have performed this play so much that they are these characters. It was great to have them because it’s really a piece of reality set into a fiction film.
VR: The other thing is that we’ve known the Schaubühne (the German theatre in the film) for a long time, especially its director Thomas Ostermeier, who plays David in the movie. We’ve known him way before he was the worldwide famous theatre director he is today. We were very lucky that we could actually shoot the play Hamlet and have Lars Eidinger, who is Hamlet in the real-life production. Lars’ passion for theatre is completely true. And that meant a lot for us to have this truth in the film.
Were there any challenges in the filming and how do you overcome them?
VR: One of the big challenges was the schedule of the actors. Due to their very busy agendas, we only had one day of rehearsal with Nina and Lars together before the shooting. We went through all their scenes and dialogues. But let’s be clear, if this short rehearsal time went so well, it’s because we had talked at length with them about their characters throughout the whole writing process, that took years.
SC: And then it was the shooting itself. We did not have many days of shooting, but many scenes to shoot every day, including set changes within the same day. As we did a TV series before this project, with a really quick and tight schedule, this experience helped us a lot for the shooting of My Little Sister. Another thing that helped us on the set was that before shooting, we would come on the set during our day off, and we both first play the scenes, to define the positions of the camera according to the stakes of the scene. We would then propose a kind of choreography to the actors and it was up to them to make it their own, to adjust it, integrate it. With great actors such as Nina Hoss, Lars Eidinger, Marthe Keller and Jens Albinus, the text is already interiorized and you can quickly deal with the fine-tuning of inexpressible, non-verbal moves. It’s a great joy for us to be able to work with such fine actors.
VR: Actually, every step of making the movie was really challenging. The editing was also challenging, because as the camera moves a lot, we never had two identical shots. So we had to go carefully through all the rush to find the exact piece we needed. We knew them all by heart at the end of the editing.
That’s all incredible, especially since the both of you didn’t go to film school. My twin sister and I are both very passionate about film and want to make movies together in the future. What kind of advice would you give to us and any others who want to break into that industry?
VR: I would say, firstly, just make movies. Don’t hesitate to explore your unicity, who you both are, and what you want to express because of who you are. Of course it’s very important to listen to advice and consultants, but it’s also important to listen to your inner voice. Many people will come and tell you what they think you should do, but follow your path. And don’t lose enthusiasm through the process. What is great with Stéphanie and I is that we found out that we are complimentary in our collaboration, we have different strengths. Now we happen to figure out that one of us is better in doing this, and the other one better in doing that. So we use each other’s strength.
SC: Working alone can be very hard so it’s a lot more encouraging for us to work together. We feel less isolated. So really, enjoy having a real twin sister! It’s very special that you can be a duo because it can really give you the strength to go through the years and really do your thing.
Thank you so much for your advice. That is really invaluable and I’m definitely going to have to share that with my twin sister. My very last question (and favourite question to ask) is – What is a film that impacted you in your youth?
VC: I love The Piano by Jane Campion because there was something magic in it; the picture, the landscapes, the atmosphere, the mood. I would also mention Breaking the Waves from Lars Von Trier. It was so strong. It was the first dogma movie I saw in my life. It’s shaking camera was so close to reality, so truthful. Breathtaking. Those two movies punched me in the stomach.
SC: There was another movie called Jesus of Montreal by Canadian director Denys Arcand that we saw together when we were 18 years old and had just finished high school. I remember being transported. Maybe if we watched it again today, it would feel very different. But back then, it touched something in our hearts. Movies that you see when you are very young bring you something that you’re not conscious of immediately. But after, when you think of them, you realise that they shaped you.
I’ll definitely put all of those films onto my to watch list. I’ve really wanted to watch The Piano for a long time because it is a film from New Zealand, so I’ll definitely push it up higher on my list now. That’s all the questions that I had. Thank you so much for answering them. Your answers were really insightful and really wonderful to hear. I’m very grateful. Thank you so much for this interview.
SC: You’re welcome.
VR: Thank you and say hello to your twin sister for us!