Jess lanai

I’m doing a part two to this because I realized I forgot to describe what working for Abdellatif actually entails.

I do that a lot in writing. Express the ideas or feelings and leave out all the details.

The reason for that is I’ve only ever used writing as a tool for thinking. I have very little practicing using it as a tool for presenting those thoughts to other people.

That is the purpose of this blog. To practice. And to get a bit of a foundation in reality. Not just let things float around in my head but actually put them out into the real world. Where there can be consequences. Where people can correct me or contradict me. Where I can get real metrics of interest waning or interest growing.

Here’s a little detailed play by play of what working with Abdellatif was like day by day.

The very first thing Abdellatif does is find your weakness. My weakness for example was that I like to eat a lot.

For context I’ll state that Ophélie’s weakness was that she wanted be in shape so she didn’t want to eat a lot.

We were given opposite instructions based on our weaknesses. I was told to lose weight and Ophelie was told to gain weight.

He does play little psychological games. Games that he later explains.

One example is that Abdellatif made a rule when I first arrived. He told everyone that no sexual relationships are allowed between cast or crew during the duration of filming. That it will result in an instant firing.

After I fell totally in love with Salim Kechiouche and we were only one of many couples that formed during that shooting, Abdellatif told me directly that was his plan all along.

For people to fall in love and the best way to speed that process is to ban it.

The actual filming of a scene was complete psychological warfare.

Some days Abdellatif would wander around the set for hours and hours fixing little things with the props or cameras. Then we’d finally start shooting and he’d stop the scene.

Taking another few hours redoing every prop and camera before we could start again.

And then we’d do the same thing all over again and end up not filming anything at all after a very long day of waiting.

When we did the hospital scene I realized Abdellatif made us wait on purpose. That it was by design. Another psychological game.

Because based on how long it took to do the other scenes we were all dreading the many, many weeks it might take to do the hospital scene.

Because it was meant to be a long and complex scene.

But we filmed that in one day. Proving that Abdellatif Kechiche knows how to be an efficient machine that can just pump out scenes.

He makes people wait just to create tension and impatience. To take away the polished way an actor might want to use their skill as an actor. And instead get the real emotion of the real person.

The infamous ideas about Abdellatif Kechiche is that he shoots one scene a hundred times.

But that is only true sometimes.

A lot of scenes we did in one or two takes.

The opening scene in the restaurant was one of the scenes we finished in just a few hours.

But the more complex scenes he will shoot a hundred times. The scenes at the villa for example (I’m now writing this as though people have seen the film. So I guess, like, just see the film when it comes out) required a lot of layering.

By layering I mean there’s a lot of little nuance to capture.

In the villa scene there is the layer between me and salim. The layer between me and my husband. The layer between my husband and Amin and between salim and my husband.

There’s a lot of relationships to capture. The villa scene is so beautifully done because Abdellatif was able to show all the emotions and all the hidden agendas and relationships in one moment.

But that’s hard to do.

So we had to film that scene many, many, many times.

I spent the majority of my time there (about 9 months in total I think) shooting that one scene.

Abdellatif does explain what he’s trying to do. The scene I saw on screen in Locarno Switzerland at the festival was the exact scene Abdellatif had described wanting to achieve when we were filming the scene.

We talked for hours and hours and hours about that villa scene. He described what he was trying to achieve and what he needed to achieve it and we all came together and achieved it.

You cannot imagine the satisfaction in seeing that eight years later.

Seeing the scene that we all labored over for hundreds of hours and then waited to see for eight years, believing it would never come out, put on a big screen and coming out exactly as we had always imagined it.

That was a moment of joy and a kind of insane satisfaction that only extreme suffering can ever experience and I feel very lucky to have experienced just that one moment of seeing that scene.

Everything was worth that one moment.

Abdellatif’s methods are criticized. But people don’t realize how wonderful it is to work that hard on something. To have someone that has that much vision directing you towards one goal.

How wonderful it can be to have that much clarity, focus and trust.

How rare it is in life to have that much clarity, focus and trust.

I could trust Abdellatif Kechiche. One hundred percent. He would never let me look bad.

I knew if the film came out I would look like some kind of genius actress because of Abdellatif Kechiche.

That’s a wonderful gift.

Yes. It’s hard to work for him. But so damn what. Life is hard. It’s worth it.

The people whining about working with Abdellatif Kechiche are whiny little bitches. Period.