2023-08-03 07:39:18
– Frédéric Mermoud, “The royal road” to Locarno
The only Romand in the spotlight on the Piazza Grande, the Parisian by adoption presents a film on the great French schools and their quest for excellence.
Posted today at 09:39Updated 14 minutes ago
His “Royal Way” will be presented on the Piazza Grande on Thursday 3 August. But Frédéric Mermoud had already had the honors of Locarno for his second feature film, “Moka”, in 2016 (photo).
KEYSTONE/Alexandra Wey
It never hurts to give luster to your title. “The royal road” thus lives up to its name, the only contemporary Swiss film which will be projected on the giant screen of the Piazza Grande on Thursday August 3, the second day of the Locarno Film Festival. Admittedly, his father, Frédéric Mermoud, has lived and worked in Paris for a quarter of a century. There is no less Swiss extraction – better still: Valais – which makes its choice to look into the eminently French system of pathways to the national Grandes Ecoles all the more surprising.
“The royal road” thus follows the course towards Polytechnique of Sophie, admirably camped by Suzanne Jouannet, who had already shone in her first film, “The Human Things”, by Yvan Attal. At Mermoud, his acting combines spontaneity and rigorous interpretation, like this naturalist fiction about preparatory classes. Or how the most formidable trials mobilize intellectual capacities less than the birth certificate: in a system where elites reproduce among themselves, the arrival of the farmer’s daughter will be perceived as exotic, even for her…
In the race to Polytechnique, competition is omnipresent. Sophie (Suzanne Jouannet, left) will quickly find out.
Emmanuelle Firman
Two feature films, two Piazza Grande seven years apart: what inspires you in Locarno?
I love this festival, which is both cinephile and general public. This is reflected in the way the films are presented: this slightly excessive projection on this square, 8000 people under the moon, it’s a rather strange bet, a suspended time which can become a moment of grace.
Or a perilous exercise: in 2016, your “Moka” had paid the price…
It’s true. It had rained downpours, something crazy. When it was time to go on stage to present the film, the rain suddenly stopped. I was in complete denial, I told myself that it was going to pass despite the forecasts. We launched the first reel, and it started again, torrential. I can still see those people hidden under the arcades, admirably stoic. It can be spectacular, Locarno!
The film that you will present on Thursday evening depicts a rather hidden universe, that of the great French schools. Why this topic?
Basically, I wanted to make a film about this moment in life when a person makes their first real choices, those that will define them, when they begin to write the novel of their life. To this somewhat abstract starting idea was added this very French arena of the Grandes Ecoles – it was my co-screenwriter, Anton Likiernik, who brought it to me. Coming from Switzerland but living in Paris for almost twenty-five years, I had an eye on the question that was both distanced and familiar. All the more familiar that, during the writing, one of my boys joined a scientific preparation! A pure coincidence.
Did it allow you to adjust your subject?
He was my insider! It was nice, but also useful: speeches, for example that of the principal, take up sentences that my son actually heard. Overall, the film was well documented, we did a lot of research, visited high schools, met students.
By the way, what result for your son?
He went to second grade.
“People outside the milieu don’t have the codes, nor the same language, they easily feel illegitimate.”
Frédéric Mermoud, director of “The Royal Way”
How do you view this system of vertical meritocracy which reproduces a form of class selection, as studied in particular by Pierre Bourdieu?
It is double-edged. On paper, it rewards merit. In fact, it benefits the elites and struggles to integrate diversity. As Sophie’s journey in the film shows, people outside the milieu don’t have the codes, nor the same language, they easily feel illegitimate. On the other hand, this system allows surprising dynamics, which achieve a fairly easily identifiable form of excellence and brilliant careers.
The film avoids falling into caricatures, where it would have been easy to portray the mean bourgeois on one side and the nice working-class family on the other.
It was a risk, yes. The character of Sophie, for example, does not come from a disadvantaged background: we wanted to avoid the stereotype of the class defector à la Edouard Louis (Editor’s note: moved from a poor, dirty and homophobic environment to intellectual spheres). Sophie’s parents are part of the middle class, they are farmers who discover the scientific potential of their daughter and will encourage her to embark on higher education. In fact, more than a question of class, it is above all a question of the center and the periphery. How to penetrate in a world of between oneself when one comes from outside.
All things considered, is that what you experienced as a Romand in French cinema?
Already from Valais arriving in Geneva! So, of course, towards the Valais it’s never very mean, always rather funny and not really condescending, but you are still often reminded where you come from. Coming from the provinces, we have all felt it at one time or another.
In the main role, Suzanne Jouannet gives the film a rather bluffing naturalness…
His power of incarnation is incredibly lucky, yes. She gives off something very accessible and moving at the same time. The moment of casting was a key moment, the main heroine is almost in all the sequences. She had to wear them.
And can also make subjects as esoteric as physics or math interesting…
It’s a real challenge to film the hard sciences. Physics is interesting, because it allows a certain dose of poetry – in “Oppenheimer”, by Nolan, the characters thus speak of equations like classical music, which you have to work on like scales but above all “hear”. In my film, Sophie has to explain why we are less wet when we walk in the rain than when we remain stoic. Or how the bubbles in a bottle of sparkling water behave. It’s more cinematic than a mathematical equation.
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