The Royal Way is the third feature film by Frédéric Mermoud, Swiss director of several films, TV films and short films. Released on August 9, it follows the journey of a breeder’s daughter, Sophie (Suzanne Jouannet), who, thanks to her excellent academic results, leaves the family farm to join a prestigious high school in Lyon. There she discovered the world of scientific preparatory classes for competitive entrance exams to the Grandes Ecoles – Polytechnique, Normale Supérieure, Mines and other engineering schools. A challenge of social ascent that she faces not without pain and questioned.
You are Swiss and studied philosophy at the University of Geneva. What led you to take an interest in the French system of preparatory classes for the Grandes Ecoles?
Frederic Mermoud: I wanted to tell the story of young people who are at this pivotal moment of first choices and first experiences: first loves, first political commitments, choice of a profession. I find this “age of possibilities” exciting and very cinematic. It’s a key moment when you become an actor in your life and where you assert yourself.
My co-screenwriter, Anton Likiernik, had the original idea of plunging this character into the world of scientific preparatory courses that he knows well – he completed two years of preparatory class in France before joining the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines d’ Ales. We said to ourselves that the preparatory classes constituted a fascinating, very singular closed-doors, which crystallized facets of French society, in its ambitions, its excellence, and also its contradictions.
The social ladder and meritocracy are not so simple to apply in practice. Moreover, there is little diversity in the best schools. Finally, I was also fascinated by the capacity for work and concentration of these students. They make me think of top athletes or professional musicians who tirelessly repeat their scales, relentlessly.
Your heroine discovers the competition between students, social endogamy. Are these features specific to the higher education of the French elites?
The sociological observation according to which the dominant classes tend to perpetuate a system which favors inter-self and social reproduction is undoubtedly not a French exception. But what is striking is the exacerbated way in which this is taking place in France, despite a virtuous desire for things to change. There is too little diversity in the preparatory classes and the Grandes Ecoles. Diversity of social classes, cultural diversity, geographical diversity, urban diversity. In some sectors, moreover, we are far from parity. I have the feeling that some countries have found strategies to more proactively stimulate this diversity.
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