After “My stupid dog”, Yvan Attal adapts the book “Les Choses humaine” by Karine Tuil, with a prestigious distribution. A complex film, om it is about subjects in the lineage of #MeToo, around the consent and the “gray zone”.
Synopsis: A young man is accused of raping a young woman. Who is this young man and who is this young woman? Is he guilty or is he innocent? Is she a victim or only in a desire for revenge, as the accused claims? The two young protagonists and their relatives will see their lives, their convictions and their certainties shattered but… Is there only one truth?
DashFUN: Your film is one of the first to tackle #MeToo questions on the French cinema side. Was it something that particularly interested you in adapting this book by Karine Tuil, Les Choses humaine?
Yvan Attal, director and co-writer: I didn’t realize I was the first. And I may not be the first, by the way. There is no opportunism. I didn’t say to myself: “Hey, I’m going to do the first post #MeToo movie!”. Moreover, we are not post #MeToo, I think we are still #MeToo, that the movement is not behind us.
No, I was touched by a book. The subject obviously interested me. The questions asked interested me, because I live in my time. But I wasn’t looking in that direction. I came across Karine Tuil’s book, which also touched me for reasons other than the major issues of consent or the gray area.
After that, it is true that a lot of people told me “be careful! “,” Are you sure you want to make this movie? “… They failed to discourage me!
How did you approach this adaptation in order to try to find this point of balance, to understand the complexity of the story?
As I read the book, being the father of one boy and the father of two girls, I could relate to all of the characters. From there, I wanted to make the film like that, to say that it is difficult to take sides in this matter. The more difficult it was to take sides, the more it showed the difficulty of judging. This is what interested me a lot about the film.
Jérôme Prébois / 2021 CURIOSA FILMS – FILMS UNDER INFLUENCE – GAUMONT – FRANCE 2 CINEMA
Ben Attal and Benjamin Lavernhe in Human Things
Obviously, we had to try to make the film as complex as possible to serve this idea that it was difficult to judge. But at the same time, it was the whole challenge of the film. Not to make a Manichean film, but one that could betray the cause of women victims. That was what was very important to me.
But afterwards, the fact of being like that on a tangent, on the edge of something, of not leaning for one or not leaning for the other, it was a work of every moment, and especially at the Assembly. On the set, it was easier to ask the actors to act like they were guilty or act like they were really innocent, and to cover me up a bit with them.
On the other hand during the editing, we realize that it was very easy to overwhelm this or that character. So the editing was really thorough
You went for a two-step approach, then a trial sequence. This structure, different from the book, was it there from the start?
It was immediately my idea of the adaptation. I remember the first day when we worked with Yaël Langmann, my screenwriter, and talked about how we were going to adapt this book, I told him that I wanted that right away. This structure “Him”, “She”, and the process. I wanted to show how they opposed each other. We had to be attached to one and attached to the other, to show who is one and who is the other.
This is not the structure of the book, although obviously afterwards I use what is in the book. The film is very faithful despite everything.
There was also this idea à la Kramer versus Kramer. A lawsuit is one character against another. I wanted to be told, to tell her, and to find them both against each other.
Jérôme Prébois / 2021 CURIOSA FILMS – FILMS UNDER INFLUENCE – GAUMONT – FRANCE 2 CINEMA
Suzanne Jouannet and Judith Chemla in Les Choses humaine.
You cited that Kramer vs.Kramer reference. Did you have any other films in mind when making this film?
I watched a lot of trial films. There are two or three films that stand out, in their intensity, their quality like Sidney Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men. He is an absolute master. Music Box by Costa Gavras. La Vérité by Clouzot, which is a film that can be told the same thing as Human Things. Where is the truth ?
I was lucky enough to attend a trial, …
