Ahead of it's UK Premiere on August 23rd at this year's Pigeon Shrine FrightFest we spoke to Writer/Director Aurélia Mengin about her weird and wonderful second feature film 'Scarlet Blue', a film that explores schizophrenia in a brand new way. She revelas the struggles she faced trying to become a filmmaker, the personal touches she brought to the story in 'Scarlet Blue' and how much she learned from her first feature film 'Fornacis'.
FC: Congratulations on the film and the upcoming UK Premiere screening. Is this your first time experiencing FrightFest? How do you feel about the reaction to the film so far?
AM: Yes, the first time one of my films has been selected at FrightFest. I am so proud and so happy that my 2nd feature film 'Scarlet Blue' is having its English Premiere at this prestigious and internationally recognized festival.
I finished the post-production of 'Scarlet Blue' at the end of October 2023. For several months my film has had a very good run in international festivals with screenings in Romania, India, Spain, Germany, Portugal. It won the Special Mention from the jury for the original treatment of the fantasy genre in Spain for the 35th edition of the Girona International Film Festival, the Best Composers Prize for Nicolas Luquet and Pablo Mengin-Lecreulx who composed the original music for the film at the 26th edition of the Independent Days Film Festival in Germany. After FrightFest, 'Scarlet Blue' will premiere in Holland and then in Italy.
The reviews in the cinema press are really very positive. All of this gives me immense joy, and brings me strength, because making it has truly been a long road strewn with heavy trials.
I am particularly touched and moved by the incredible reactions of the British press and the curiosity and keen eye of the English journalists who saw 'Scarlet Blue' in preview and who really understood the universe of the film and who were touched by the aesthetic intensity and emotional pain that floods the film. I hope that many English audiences will come to discover the film at FrightFest and I look forward to answering questions from the public and journalists.
FC: Did you always want to be a filmmaker and what films were you exposed to at a young age that may have been an inspiration for you to follow this career path?
AM: To tell the truth, not at all. As a teenager, I especially didn't want to become an artist because I spent my life seeing my parents fight for their survival and the survival of my brother and me. I grew up on Reunion Island, a small French island in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar. My parents’s house is an incredible place that feels as though it’s at the center of creation; a unique place for art and inspiration. My father, Vincent Mengin-Lecreulx, was a protean artist, pioneer of Total Art, at the crossroads of surrealism and “art brut”. Along with my mother, Roselyne, they founded and built their fantastic museum Le Palais aux 7 Portes (www.palais7portes.com) , which is the first contemporary art venue in Reunion and still to this day constitutes a real cultural heritage for both Reunion and France.
When I was young I wanted to become a mathematics researcher to invent theorems and also Minister of Culture, to find solutions to help and gain recognition for my father's creations and my parents' contemporary art venue. After my baccalaureate, I studied mathematics and economics for a long time at the University of Reunion then at the Sorbonne in Paris, then I took the ENA (National School of Administration) competitive exam. Then one evening, I suddenly decided to change my life, I stopped my studies, and entered an acting studio school in Paris. For 3 years, I learned acting and directing actors. Barely out of school, I started writing music video scripts and short films and directing and acting in them. I wrote and directed 8 shorts.
In 2018, I finished my first feature film 'Fornacis', that I wrote, directed, and in which I played the leading female role alongside the sublime Anna d'Annunzio, the incredible Emmanuel Bonami and the legendary Philippe Nahon.
With 'Fornacis' I became the first woman in the history of Reunion Island to direct a feature film for the cinema. For 2 years, 'Fornacis' made a fabulous world tour in festivals with more than thirty official selections in International Festivals and won 9 prizes in different categories, directing prize, best film prize, editing prize, photography prize, female performance prize, originality prize…In 2020, I have immense joy because 'Fornacis' was released on Amazon Prime UK. The success of this first independent feature film on a very low budget give me the chance to make my second feature film 'Scarlet Blue'.
FC: You’re from Réunion Island, off the coast of Madagascar, admittedly not a huge cinema scene there. What challenges did you experience in firstly trying to make short films and then feature films?
AM: My career is truly atypical and strewn with challenges. Being a woman from Reunion Island makes it much more difficult to enter the world of cinema and it was even more difficult when I started my career 20 years ago. Even after having made 8 shorts and 2 feature films, it is very complicated to meet producers in France, because the cinema environment in France is very closed, people like to keep to themselves and are not very curious about what is happening elsewhere and even less from the French Islands. In addition my films destabilise a lot of producers and distributors in France and those in Reunion Island because my aesthetic universe and the stories that I tell and that I shoot do not correspond at all to the image that people have, of what an island women director should be.
What is surprising and invigorating is that since my first shorts my films have always been particularly well received by international festivals and the foreign press. Unlike the world of cinema in France, internationally, my Reunionese origin is not a handicap, which takes away my credibility. On the contrary, abroad my films are selected and seen by cinema lover and journalists without any prejudice. in relation to my origins.
So if I am still making films today, it is thanks to my parents, they made me grow up with an amazing strength and determination. They have always encouraged me since the first day I decided to leave my university studies to make films.
I am self-taught and have never attended a film school, however I attended an acting studio school in Paris for three years where I learned to act and direct actors. As soon as I left school, my mixed race and physique as a woman from Reunion was a huge obstacle when it came to casting. There was no role for me, so I decided to write and direct my own films and act in all of them.
Despite the low budget, I never give up. I am convinced that my greatest quality is to have a formidable capacity for work… a true mastery of my visual and aesthetic universe. I can shoot my films in a few days. I shot 'Fornacis' in 13 days and 'Scarlet Blue' in 19. I self-produced my short films, while 'Adam Minus Eve' and 'Fornacis' was produced with my parents. My father always said that we are like a circus family and that we have to help each other.
For 'Scarlet Blue' the adventure was different, for the first time financiers believed in my work and financed the shooting of the film in the Basque Country in France and Spain.
FC: Did you learn anything from your first feature film 'Fornacis' that helped to prepare you for 'Scarlet Blue'?
AM: Each film is like a coin with two faces, it carries within itself on the head side a part of accomplishment, success and transcendence and on the tail side its frustrations, its disappointments and its scars. Both facets of this piece are essential to create the desire to make a new film.
'Fornacis' gave me self-confidence in terms of directing, and comforted me in the work of creating light and composing color that I have been carrying out for many years with my short films. It also strengthened my use of the shoulder camera and the steady-camera. 'Fornacis' also led me to be more attentive to the creation of the Make-up and more to the connections between the sequences.
In terms of post production, image editing, color corrections, sound design, original music, I have been working with the same team for 15 years and we really approached the post production of 'Scarlet Blue' with the same enthusiasm, the same complicity and the same energy as 'Fornacis'. On the other hand, the post-production of 'Scarlet Blue' took longer because I had many more hours of rush and is much longer than 'Fornacis'.
FC: Scarlet Blue feels like a very personal story. Feel free to go into as much or as little detail as you want here, but is the story influenced by something that happened to you?
AM: Ever since my first short films and first feature I have explored the presence of the double, twin-hood and the ghost. There is a red line running through my filmography that highlights the confusion between hallucinations, fantasies and reality.
When I was writing this script, I had a very clear idea of two themes that would be the main focus of 'Scarlet Blue': schizophrenia and hypnosis. I also knew that I wanted to treat schizophrenia not in the classic way, such as in a hospital, but, instead, use schizophrenia as a gateway to surrealism… as the purest expression of imagination and creation. I also knew from the start what 'Scarlet Blue' would have as a backdrop In this complex mother-daughter relationship that we find between the character of Alter and her mother, Rosy.
During the writing, in the back of my mind I had teenage memories of one of my best friend’s first schizophrenic attacks when she was around 16 years old. For several years she lived through terrifying and violent experiences and, misunderstood, she was plunged into great suffering and also partial amnesia. The doctors were powerless at the time and those around him also somewhat disarmed. I tried to transcribe in my “artistic universe” the violence of the mental illness from which the character of Alter suffers; her solitude, her absences and her losses of connection to reality and the helplessness of her mother Rosy.
'Scarlet Blue' is an apnea dive into the bowels of a body and a brain suffering from depression and schizophrenia. I literally stripped myself bare to make a sincere, authentic and uncompromising film. I really wanted to make a film as powerful and as violent as this mental illness, while creating a cruel and loving film at the same time.
From the writing of the screenplay, my challenge was to stage the terrifying and phantasmagorical imaginary world that the character of Alter experiences during her crises and during her hypnosis sessions. The hallucinatory visions that punctuate 'Scarlet Blue' are, for me, the real power of the film, as if surrealism devoured reality.
I tried my best to film schizophrenia from the inside without shame or censorship. I wanted to capture the tortured soul, the chaos of bodies, the desires, the wanderings, the solitudes, the silences and the fragilities.
I discovered very late, about six years ago, that I had Asperger's Syndrome. Since my childhood, I suffered a lot from bullying at school due to the fact that other children thought I was strange, which then led to violence against myself even as an adult, because I was “different”. This makes me feel very close to Alter's character, because in the film, Alter suffers from her differences. 'Scarlet Blue' is a declaration of love to all people suffering from exclusion.
FC: Is there a specific film or filmmaker that you look to almost as a template for the aesthetics or general atmosphere of the film?
AM: I have always been drawn to my Dad’s incredible output of work. I spent my childhood in his workshops, among his monumental works. He taught me everything. He was my mentor, my confidant and my example of how to live and to create. He was always my first source of inspiration. He taught me everything about painting, color, architecture, texture, and photography. And most important of all, my father taught me the freedom to create. And he taught me to never adapt to the opinions of others but to always remain faithful to our instinct and to what our heart and our inner convictions dictate. Thanks to him I grew up freeing myself from the judgment of others, and I believe that this is one of the essential keys to creation and innovation.
I have always made films with the absolute necessity of making each sentence as beautiful as a painting, for me cinema must be a work of art and freedom. This is why I work so hard on colours, lighting, costumes, makeup, frames, props and sets. Each element is part of a harmonious whole in my films and actively participates in creating a real work of art.
Sadly, a few months before the filming of 'Scarlet Blue', my father was diagnosed with a devastating cancer. We were lucky enough to be able to share my shoot together in France because I invited my parents to join me on my shoot in the French Basque Country. Both my parents saw the film several times at different stages of the editing, but my father died on February 15, 2023, while I was still working on the sound mix. So I dedicate this selection at the amazing FrightFest in memory to my magnificent father!
FC: The female protagonist Alter is played by two different actresses. Was that always the plan from Day 1 and how did both Amélie Daure and Anna-Sophie Charron approach the character?
AM: When I wrote the script, I didn't have an idea of the cast in mind.
The first actress I chose was Patricia Barzyk who magnificently plays the role of Rosy, Alter's invasive and mysterious mother. Then I had to cast two other actresses looking identical to play twin sisters while alternately playing the character of Alter who is also played by two actresses throughout the film. And these two actresses also had to resemble Patricia Barzyk, their mother in the story. And I also had to cast, twins girl to play Alter and Ever, the twins when they were little girls. So it was a really difficult cast to find!
Alter is a single character worn by two actresses, who have such a disturbing resemblance in their faces and bodies, that once they are in make-up and in costume it is almost impossible to tell them apart. In that regard, I think the performance is very successful!
To bring schizophrenia and the split personality to life, I approached the character of Alter under two very different facets: the first facet represents Alter when she is connected to reality; the whole realistic part of the character, which is performed by Amélie Daure. The 2nd facet represents the double schizophrenic, that is to say all the sequences where Alter is borrowed from hallucinatory crises, carnal impulses, nightmares, and all the sequences involving dementia. This borderline facet of Alter's character is played by Anne-Sophie Charron.
Before the shoot, I did not know exactly how many sentences of Alter will be played by each actress, but since the beginning I knew that Amélie Daure will play the reality part and Anne-Sophie Charron the schizophrenia part.
Addressing schizophrenia in this way makes it possible to naturally and viscerally create the inner fracture of the character of Alter which materialises on the screen by two different actresses, thus making it possible to truly touch the syndrome of memory loss and personality dissociation.
With this approach of sharing the character of Alter between actresses, we truly touch on a sort of “mise en abîme” of schizophrenia, because like Alter the actress Amélie Daure cannot remember the episodes of the schizophrenic crises that the character goes through, because she did not experience them, since it was the actress Anne-Sophie Charron who was immersed in those moments.
The casting happened naturally because Amélie and Anne-Sophie have a very different approach to acting. Amélie comes from a more realist background and was not at all familiar with the fantastic, surreal, aesthetic and organic approach of my filmmaking; the world of 'Scarlet Blue' is very far away from what she was used to. So, she approached the character of Alter not so much with her body but in a more cerebral way. For all these reasons, we worked with her very closely on Alter's mental state; on the closed body and face; the lack of communication as she played the character when connected to reality.
I met Anne-Sophie for the casting of 'Fornacis' and although I didn’t choose her for a role, I was convinced that I would work with her on another project. I was really connected with her and the relationship she has with acting, which she approaches instinctively through and physically with her body. I explained all about this complex approach I had and playing a character who only speaks with her body and who has no dialogue but a lot of nudity. I explained how she would have to act in all the sequences of madness, fantasy and desires, that her main costume will be her own skin.
It was crucial she felt capable of shooting her nude sequences, because the body and thwarted phantasmagorical femininity are at the center of the film.
Throughout the filming, I was carried by Anne-Sophie's confidence and impressed by her freedom of play and her control of the body and totally letting go. She is an incredible actress, who, on set, follows her instincts. She is powerful and deeply human and humble. She managed to absolutely embody the schizophrenic part of Alter's character and all of the madness and sexual impulses. There is this naturalness, spontaneity and strength in each of her sequences which were really not that easy to shoot, thus giving a real life to schizophrenia shaped by the imaginary and nightmarish world of Alter. Anne-Sophie also had this incredible humility to agree to play this mute side of the character, and through her humility she was able to deeply embody the mental illness. She also plays the fish woman, this sort of ghost who follows Alter during the film, and, without hesitation, she had to eat a huge raw fish for two major sequences in the film.
FC: What’s your thoughts on where the French cinema industry is right now? Coralie Fargeat and obviously Julia Ducournou are very exciting voices right now.
AM: I am obviously happy with Coralie Fargeat’s success and I can’t wait to discover 'The Substance'. These two directors, with very different worlds, have succeeded in imposing their films and their personalities in fantasy cinema, which today still remains predominantly male. I hope that their example will make producers and distributors aware that fantasy cinema today also involves women and that women directors will have a real impact on the future of cinema.
FC: Are there any plans to release 'Scarlet Blue' theatrically or is streaming a better option and can you tell us anything about any future projects you’re working on?
AM: 'Fornacis' was released on Amazon Prime UK after two years of festival touring. Today 'Scarlet Blue' does not yet have distributors and very few distributors have seen it. For independent films without a distributor, festivals play a vital role in allowing films to be screened in cinemas and seen by the public and journalists. I am convinced that festivals allow many art-house films to subsequently find a distributor or a release on famous platforms such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, and others.
I do not oppose the theatrical release to the streaming release, I would be very happy if one day 'Scarlet Blue' could be distributed in theaters but just as happy if it was released on a renowned platform. The most important thing is to show the films, whether at festivals, in cinemas or streaming. I am looking for French or foreign producers for my 3rd feature film. I very much hope that the positive and enthusiastic feedback on 'Scarlet Blue' at festivals and in the press will help me meet producers to finance my next film.
FC: Many thanks again Aurélia for being so kind and generous and best of luck with 'Scarlet Blue' at FrightFest. We're looking forward to seeing what you do next.
'Scarlet Blue' receives it's UK Premiere at FrightFest '24 on August 23rd.
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