At nearly 50 years old, Sylvain Desclous seems to have had fifty lives. Student in political science and literature, tennis teacher, stretcher-bearer, teacher in Laos, leader of business seminars. Late, filmmaker, with three feature films on the clock: Seller (2016), a subsidiary fiction with Gilbert Melki and Pio Marmaï, hard skin (2020), documentary about Gérard, buccaneer in Preuilly-sur-Claise. And finally, with The Campaign of Francethe municipal election held in the same village of Indre-et-Loire, which was that of his grandparents.
Why switch to documentary after your first fiction feature discovered seven years ago?
I am in the process of mounting the second, which is called The great expectations and which speaks of the broken destiny of a young woman destined for a high political office. But this project took so long that I wanted, in the meantime, to film this village to which I have been attached since my childhood. The first, which I made two years ago, is called hard skin, it never came out, especially because of the pandemic. But it will be on the DVD of The Campaign of France.
How exactly did the idea come to you?
My ties with Preuilly-sur-Claise are very old and very strong. I stayed there with my grandparents, a whole part of my family still lives there, I go there four or five times a year. The idea of filming there was, so to speak, natural. I knew I would be welcomed there. I also knew that there were movie characters there. But I had so much fun shooting hard skin, the feeling of the unknown that documentary filming gives, that with the approach of the municipal elections, I was all the less able to resist this new call.
Was it the political aspect that interested you?
Less that than a choral portrait of the village with the elections in the background. And then I realized during filming that this treatment that I had written, I will never have it in fact. It was painful to realize this but at the same time, I learned that Mathieu, the third candidate, was running for election and that he had partner Guy. And there, I said to myself “you are lost” but if you follow these two, the film will be there…
Did you know them?
Mathieu, from afar, even if we had shot a scene of Seller in her house. Guy, much better, he’s a friend of the family or rather an enemy of the family, but I’ve always had a fondness for him.
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