MY NAME IS MÉLODIE

The film is currently in development

France coproduction Bicéphale Production

Line Producer Development Canada Mary Armstrong

Development Assistants Florian Beaume & Alice Louste

SYNOPSIS
Arthur and Viviane (both about 30) live in Montreal. Having married young, they form a couple that appears to be trouble-free, but only if you ignore the extended family. For Viviane, this means her mother Luce and her brother Georges; for Arthur, it’s his parents. Two children—Pipo (age 7) and Charlotte (age 5) complete the family.

After a few forays into their younger days, we find Arthur and Viviane at a time in their life when the couple is going through some trying times. Yet things are far from being uniformly gloomy when laughter is added to the mix.

Viviane’s mother, the extravagant Luce, exerts a special sort of influence on her daughter. The truth be told, the old adage, “Like mother, like daughter” worries Viviane, who does not wish to turn out like her mother. After her mother is hospitalized, however, Viviane will be driven –by her own memories—to investigate her life. What is it that she doesn’t know about her childhood (among other things)?

In her mother’s vacant apartment, while her mother temporarily resides in a convalescent home, Viviane begins to write in earnest. Out of her writing, a voice emerges, and from this voice, Viviane learns that a mysterious part of her own being demands her presence in the world. Who is this Mélodie, whose words—fraught with archaic memories—are a bit unsettling ?

When Arthur loses his job and Luce disappears, Viviane begins to question the things that, up to now, had formed the foundations of her existence. Life is about to call on her to undergo an astonishing and larger-than-life ordeal. Arthur will not be left out; he will be off on his own journey, facing challenges in the distant Rocky Mountain range.

What role will Cupid play in this jumble in which the masculine and the feminine are thrown together in a strange stampede of life?e vie?

Director’s statement

For me, this film represents, first and foremost, my perception of western society in the 21st century. Everything is possible but nothing is possible for a great many people. Our vision for the future and our short-term concerns are one and the same. Should we laugh about it or cry about it? To begin with, some questions. Could this film be a romantic comedy on what women are becoming in this world, on the inner questionings of men being pushed around by worldwide materialistic values, or simply a story of love struggling to survive? And in the end, how do we tie these questions together while exploring the evolution of our inner values—values that go hand in hand with what seems to me to be the emergence of new social paradigms? Why not also mention the sweet madness of our persistent search “utopia” … where would lead us, not without contradictions, the voice of Mélodie.

Continuing my reflections on how we interpret time and space in contemporary art through the lens of physics (deconstruction of chronology and fixed space), I wanted to make a statement by blending story and archaism. In the manner of “early cinema” I went back to an imaginative world that is entirely self-contained. This imagining dragged me along, through the script, wherever it wished to go, in a melange of genres in which life experiences come face to face with mythology. Having broken free from total realism, the story seems to me to endow itself with a freedom that is characteristic of cinema in the early 20th century, a period that is near and dear to my heart.

The film borrows from this period such elements as superimposition of images, scenes of “attraction” and a voiceover, often offset from the action. I believe that I did all of this in an attempt to reach, in this period of upheaval of our values, the subconscious meaning that seems to want to well up from our social imperatives and from my own rational impregnation. And , through the questioning eyes of children Charlotte and Pipo observing adults. Often the camera borrow their look

My focus on a simple structure at the first level of meaning, but carrying multiple layers, led me to think, in my directing, of using underlying connections in the repetitions (sound leitmotifs, variations and reappearances of images or tonalities in the timing, rhythms and breaks in the shooting script according to real or imaginary situations).

I would like the sound to be primarily organic (breathing, heartbeats, footsteps, finger-snaps…) and natural (wind, rain, etc.) to tie fragmented time and space segments together at a rudimentary level. The music might plagiarize at times, on a rousing rhythm, using specific genres of music to accompany certain scenes—for example, the scenes of attraction or the final scene. The voiceover (a sort of actant and significant character) lends consistency to the sound. To develop this, I intend to continue my ongoing long conversations with a musician friend for writing music.

For the lighting, I would like to work with the director of photography to explore the possibility of emphasizing the characters’ inner sense of time using lighting, in the manner of the painter Georges De La Tour, to add a timeless touch to the visual effect. Initially I want to run with a large sensor camera, if possible with the Arriflex Alexa Cooke provided with objectives to provide warm tones to the film.

The tests will clarify the choices for the first fruits mentioned can come together in a film that wants fluid, simple and moving.

Annie Molin Vasseur