Yves Caumon Director of The Bird (L’Oiseau)

The film explores a sensitive topic in a very subtle way. I appreciate that it did not fall into sentimentality. How do you make an unsentimental film about child loss?

This is a very good question. The idea from the beginning was to avoid making a psychological portrait. It was not my aim to tell Anne’s story, but to tell a story – one that could be anybody’s. I did not want to focus too much on feelings either, so I pretended to be indifferent. I figured that if the director is impersonal then the audience might take the lead and participate. When I was shooting, I simply did not care. I was making fun of my characters, trying to keep a certain distance from them. I would film them in the same manner I film asparagus or buses going by. Clearly this indifference is fake, because the truth is that I do watch and study my characters - a lot. You said that you did not find the film sentimental; if you had told me that you did, I would also agree with you.

You mean the film is open to interpretations.

Perhaps. What is the most interesting though is that we can have this dialogue and that you are sharing your opinion. It is important for me to understand what I did and not just stick with the memory of what I wanted to do.

How do you perceive the film now?

For me the film is very lyrical in a very limited way. It is as if the characters are being divorced from the universe; you can feel it as you develop a need to find peace and unity with its cosmos.

You have captured this cosmos in an exquisitely looking manner.

Thank you. I was not after any abstract sense of beauty though. I was more into the kind of beauty that you feel and you want to touch. It seemed logical to me that since the film was a drama, the world had to be beautiful. This was very important and here lyricism contributed to making the world look desirable. When the world is so beautiful just in front of her eyes, Anne seems like a person in total anaesthesia. I find this very poignant. And I wanted to show my character that what is out there is totally worth it. Whereas if the world was crap and she was going through this tragedy, she would not have any reason to reach out, right?

There is a scene in which Anne seeks emotional refuge in a movie theatre. Is your relationship with cinema of a similar kind? How do you respond to films?

I totally share this idea. In the past, when I watched films I used to study them. Even when I was dreaming, I was dreaming of shooting techniques. This phase of my life has reached closure and I am back to being a child again. The older I get the more vulnerable I feel when watching films.

Apart from being a filmmaker you are also a professor at the University of Toulouse. Is filmmaking a craft one has to study?

I do not think it is necessary to attend film school. After all, filmmaking is a sort of do-it-yourself job. What you can learn is the practical side of it, but also how to behave around actors. People in universities often forget to teach the most simple of things. I tend to teach my students the very basic stuff – elementary psychology is one of them.

By Eftihia Stefanidi