Mathieu Amalric has always claimed to be a director, before being an actor. His pleasure is making films, and his latest feature film, which hits theaters on September 8, Hug me tight – without hyphen, like words isolated from one another -, in its construction, in its form, to a suspended mobile, always in motion. This is a work that haunts us and takes us into multiple stories, and not for the pleasure of getting lost. Adapted from a play by Claudine Galea, I am coming back from far (2003), the film follows a woman (Vicky Krieps) who apparently leaves. One morning, she packs her bag and leaves her companion (Arieh Worthalter) and her two children. But maybe it is something else, we will find out on the way.
Mathieu Amalric tells the World the long journey of this work, the editing of which he constantly modified, in order to convey not only the pain of a woman, but her playful and loving imagination, like a force of survival.
“Hold me tight” opens with a scene of separation, but the rest of the film opens up other avenues…
Yes, we can talk about it, the secret is not the nerve of the film. In his room, I am coming back from far, Claudine Galea tells the story of a woman who, apparently, has just left her companion and her children. We enter Camille’s thoughts, the piece has a shape in progress / enchanted. We only find out at the end what really happened: in fact, this woman lost her husband and children in an accident. If she invented this story of separation for herself, it is to imagine them still alive, far from her. She said to herself: “If I am going away, it’s because they stayed! …”
“I wanted to share with the spectators all that she invents in her head, this playful side, in love”
What made me cry is this reversal. Claudine Galea found something as simple as a myth. Starting from this reading, I went to draw, like an archaeologist, words, objects, present in the room. Movie references came to me, the main one being Rain People (1969), by Francis Ford Coppola, with this grain of the image that I wanted to find. I also wanted to change the character’s first name: her name is no longer Camille, but Clarisse, in reference to The man without qualities, by Robert Musil, a woman who leaves, fascinated by madness. This book has obsessed me for three years. For the theatrical release, I even wrote a “Letter to Clarisse” intended for exhibitors, as if to inquire about her. What has become of her today, is she still driving her old car?
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