François Ozon, filmmaker: “The character of the Virgin Mary has done a lot of harm to women”

Since he emerged in European auteur cinema, François Ozon has always been labeled ‘the French Almodóvar’. It is a loose definition, since Ozon’s cinema navigates between opposite poles, and flirts from time to time with styles that have nothing to do with the Spanish director. But there is something that both have done, and that is to offer multifaceted and complex portraits of the women who populated their stories at a time when female characters were one-dimensional.

This has been a constant in many of Ozon’s films, although his abundant work also includes numerous stories with male protagonists. He proves it again now with When autumn passesa moral tale with touches of comedy and suspense that has the peculiarity of placing as protagonists two touching old women who live in their country house. When one accidentally poisons family and friends with some mushrooms collected in the forest, a storm of quarrels and entrenched secrets is unleashed.

To turn stereotypes even further, the two elderly women worked as prostitutes to support their children, something that affects each of them differently. For the director, this film was born, precisely, from the desire to continue investigating women who are not usually portrayed on screen. In fact, the first thing he angrily blurts out is that he produced this film himself: “So that I don’t “The producers would screw me by telling me that the protagonists are old,” he says.

She clarifies that she says it ironically, but highlights the idea that what she wanted “was to make visible women who are usually invisible both in society and in cinema and who never appear anywhere.” “A woman of an age and older has a past, a baggage, many stories to tell. Nowadays there is a tendency to totally idealize older people. The perfect grandmother is shown with the grandson. Here we play to show that first appearance, but the wonderful thing is that underneath this there are several lives. They are complex women. Interesting. Not just wonderful grandmothers,” he adds.

There is also a defense of dysfunctional families in his film that deviate from classical norms, and that is something that was also clear that he wanted to show, how “sometimes the chosen family is much stronger than the one awarded by birth.” “Now new families are emerging, but the Government in France, for example, has the left very dissatisfied because a Ministry of the Family has been created, but of the family as before, that is, returning to patriarchy, to the family with a dad and a mom, and today families are different,” he says.

Down with the saints

Each Ozon film seems like a response to the previous one he has made, as if he was always looking to take a different turn. A priori it has little to do with the frivolous, playful, period prison thriller that was my crime with When autumn fallsbut he clarifies that he doesn’t think so, and that he really comes up with characters and then “the story adapts to them.” “my crime “It was the story of two young girls in the 1930s, carefree and insolent, while this film is about two older women who take care of their orchard and garden, so they have a very different rhythm,” he begins.

However, there is something common in them that runs through them, and that is that “both are a story of sisterhood.” “I am not interested in showing perfect women like those seen in the Catholic religion. I don’t want to show saints. I want to show complex people, women who are survivors, who are capable of surviving. I think that the character of the Virgin Mary has done a lot of harm to women. A woman who did not have sex and who is also a saint, that is an ideal that is too difficult to achieve. “I prefer Mary Magdalene,” he says with a mischievous smile.

A class component also appears in his film in the way in which the children of each of these women advance and treat them. One trying to leave behind the humble life she has had, pretending to be part of a class to which she really does not belong and disowning her mother for having practiced prostitution. On the other hand, the son released from prison who takes care of both women. Ozon investigated and heard testimonies from many children of prostitutes and says that “some understand it perfectly and try to make sure their mother has a good life, because a prostitute has no social security, no retirement, or absolutely nothing.” “They consider her a victim of society, but there are other children who do not understand it,” she points out.

Although French cinema is always viewed with envy, due to its financing model and defense of its productions, Ozon reveals that the attacks seen in Spain by certain political parties also occur in France: “From time to time the extreme right He sets out and attacks the French system, accusing it of paying for French productions with taxes. It is not true, because in France the money comes from movie tickets, that is, from the money from Hollywood films, which are the ones that make big box office hits, and that part of the money reverts directly to what corresponds to the ICAA (Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts) from here, which then goes to production. It is a very virtuous system. What happens is that for the extreme right it is attractive money, because it is a lot of money and there are politicians who would like to invest it in things other than culture. The extreme right does not get along well with cinema because it touches on topics that bother them.”