Interview of the Gazelles Audrey Fleurot, Camille Chamoux and Mona Achache

“Unlike Bridget Jones, single people don’t wait for love while watching series!”

The Gazelles will be rebroadcast tonight on TFX. When it was released in 2014, First had met its director, Mona Achache and two of her actresses: Audrey Fleurot and Camille Chamoux, to learn the secrets of a successful romantic comedy. Note that this program is a good one: Chamoux is currently starring in the Peace Process, which she also co-wrote, and it’s “an electrifying comedy”which Première recommends.

First: Good. If I understood correctly: down with the Bridget Jones, long live the vodka and ciao the Häagen-Dazs in a 10-litre pot?
Audrey Fleurot : In any case, the horizon of happiness is not necessarily to meet the husband.
Camille Chamoux : Yeah, the ” Prince Charming “.
Mona Achache : And then, it was a bit the will of the film, not to anchor itself in a register, or a category of films that we know – that we can like moreover – but where women are only treated like figures. We wanted something more realistic.
CC : Unlike Bridget Jones, single people don’t wait for love while watching series, between their cat and their pot of ice cream. They go out and have fun with their girlfriends while drinking vodka, and incidentally while going hunting. What do they take care of? They don’t say…
AF : …“I am in parenthesis”.
CC : So ! If I have to wait 7 years to find a man that I love, who loves me and who suits me, I’m not going to hang around in the back of my room with my cat and my pot of Häagen Dazs. No no no ! On the contrary, I will live, accumulate experience that will make me richer, stronger, more fun when I meet the man of my life in 2 months, 7 years or 2 and a half years.

Istill chances Prince Charming?
CC : Well, already, he’s not a prince because we are in the 20th century. Strictly speaking, it could be a “charming young man”.
AF : This is the paradox. We’re bordering on cynicism because we’ve met several Prince Charmings, we’ve broken our faces several times, we’ve gotten back in the saddle, re-broken our faces. Suddenly we lost this notion of absolute that we could have had during the first love. And yet, we are dying to believe in it again… suddenly, we are forced to reinvent the romantic relationship. And we are lucid.
MY : I prefer that to cynics! The question that the film asks is above all that of the fear of disengaging, and what we must do to get to the bottom of this question: “What do I really want? “. It takes nothing away from our desire for Prince Charming. Even if, in this adventure, we go through experiences that are sometimes pathetic, sometimes humiliating, sometimes enjoyable, sometimes painful. In any case, incredibly alive and with very little cynicism.
CC : It’s something we all share: you can’t be well and find Prince Charming if you haven’t found yourself. I have the impression that you can’t please someone if you don’t like yourself a little before. To please yourself, you have to be proud of what you do, of who you are and this film is about that too: how to free yourself from a lot of things to find who you are.

“You say when, you say who, you say how” : the mantra of the 21st century woman?
CC : Yeah !
MY : It was a way of showing that there is now a form of equality between men and women. A woman can now be the driving force in seductive relationships.
CC : On the large geopolitical map of “Who picks who? », today everyone can be victim and predator. Hunter or hunted.
AF : We are all someone’s bearded man!
CC : But there ! That was the expression you came up with the other day that I loved! We’ve all broken someone’s heart and we’ve all had our hearts broken.

Les Gazelles: more than a girl’s movie, a great generational comedy (review)

Is this true equality?
CC : We rebalance. My character gets rid of the commitment in which she had locked herself and that of Audrey refuses to get into a relationship. She refuses to take a loaf in her face.
AF : She is happy in her celibacy, she is the queen of the night. She is good in this balance that she has found between her son, her friends, the guys she fucks and her job. But, under cover of being the most determined character, claiming her celibacy, she is the most fragile. It is a handicap of the feeling and the love relationship. There is the fear of leaving what you know, but in one direction or the other: whether it’s the couple or your life alone. Another difference of our generation is the absence of “priesthood” what our elders could have. From the moment we no longer find ourselves there, we prefer to stop. In our defense, we are in a society of the cult of personal fulfillment above all. Lots of selfishness, personal development, experimentation. And we find ourselves saying: “I don’t want to miss out on my life, I want to embrace as many experiences as possible”.

Eventually, The Gazelles is more than a women’s film about women, is it a real generational film?
AF : Definitively.
MY : What the characters ask themselves is whether they are living their own desire or whether they are following what others want to impose on them. It may be exposed by women in their thirties, but everyone can identify with these issues.
CC : It also talks about the courage it takes to leave a comfortable situation. From all points of view. At the beginning of the film, I’m exhausted, I have a comfortable situation but which no longer fulfills me. We can have comfort even when it is no longer a vector of fulfillment. And, in the same way, Audrey, who is the queen of the night, does not want to leave this somewhat free and exciting comfort of life to reengage with someone. So I think the film is about what risk taking is today. Our generation grew up in fear. The fear of AIDS, the fear of the crisis… And fear freezes our lives a little. We no longer live, we are satisfied with things. And the film is about what it’s like to not just be content but to experience something.

Is girl power Beyoncé or Simone de Beauvoir?
The three together : A bit of both !
AF : And many more !
MY : Every woman must remain free to express what they want as they want. So it’s as much Beyoncé as Simone de Beauvoir or Veil or others…
CC : If Beyoncé wants to express herself by showing her ass in the clips because it makes her happy and it’s not necessarily for the man, but because it makes her like it…
AF : … in addition she did a lot of sport, she has the right to make a profit…
CC : Yeah ! Well she does! I don’t have a problem with that. We have the freedom to express ourselves through our ass, our brain, whatever you want!
Interview by Perrine Quennesson