Petit Bulletin GRENOBLE - Cinema Grenoble: A woman of the world - Cécile Ducrocq - Laure Calamy: "Prostitution without misery or glamour" - article published by Vincent Raymond<

Before Une femme du monde, there was the short La Contre-allée where we find almost the same prostitute character. How did you slip from this short to this first feature?

Cécile Ducrocq: At the origin of films, there are always encounters or images. La Contre-allée started from an image, of black prostitutes that I had seen in vans near the Stade de Gerland, in Lyon. And it was a moving image, which haunted me for quite a long time because it was both tragic—because you can imagine everything behind these girls who are thrown on the sidewalk—and very beautiful at the same time, because these women were very beautiful, very made up, lit with candles. There was a very strong cinematic image.

So that gave rise to the short film, and when we did it with Laure, we met prostitutes, including one — Marie-France — who works rue Saint-Denis in Paris with the photo of her son in the above his bed. The image also marked me. I asked her how she raised her children: “Like everyone else: I am a mother, I raise her like any mother”. From this meeting and the desire to work with Laure again, and to carry the character further, the imagination took over and I wrote this story of a normal woman, who raises her son normally, in situations of the daily life, and who has this little peculiarity of being a prostitute. A job like no other, and that in any case she claims, she chooses it.

Laure Calamy: There is something about care in this job. I'm a big fan of Grisélidis Réal — she's not the only one to talk about it that way. They have a lot of respect for the customers — because there is a loneliness, a sexual misery. It happens that a bond is built over time, and that there are confidences, smiles, tenderness - sweetness, you know. It refers to what we are subjected to in our sexualities, for both men and women, by the way.

Did the image of the prostitute in the cinema interest you?

LC: Yes, yes! Mama Roma is really a film that I saw as a teenager that impressed me a lot. Well I love Anna Magnani and Pasolini. And afterwards, I discovered Les Nuits de Cabiria, which also marked me a lot, and then Mistress by Barbet Schroeder, whom I also adore. The figure of the prostitute also fascinates me for this kind of pageantry in which she presents herself, a bit like armor; a place of fragility which in fact is going to be a place of strength and mastery, in fact, of both the representation of the feminine and the masculine.

And that actually goes back to a general problem for women: I do what I want with my body. And if I want to make money by prostituting myself, that's my basic right.

CD: Of course, you have to draw a very clear line between free prostitutes and those who are in the networks, that obviously has nothing to do. But for those who are activists within the STRASS [syndicat du travailsexual], it is hard to imagine how free they are, but renting – and not selling – their bodies is totally possible. And that's what I wanted to show in the first scene of the film. We imagine that the prostitute is submissive; most of the time, no: guys are intimidated and she's the one running the show.

How to pass foreign language class : 1-Look Dumb. 2-Learn to say "sorry" and "I don't know." 3-Hope you have a pushover for a teacher.

— Ryan Mon Nov 14 17:52:46 +0000 2011

LC: They are the ones who have the cards in hand and who are the masters of the game. And precisely when the arguments of certain abolitionists are to say: "They are not totally free, since many have had abuses in their lives that make it not a choice”. First, not everyone who has been abused prostitutes themselves; then, not recognizing that it could be a lifestyle choice means making them suffer a second humiliation if there have been very hard things before, it's infantilizing them and it's unbearable. Do we ask the medical examiner why he is going to dissect the dead? We can look for reasons in lots of jobs. Gynecologist, embalmer, soldier… When you are going to kill people or risk being killed…

The staging composes with the aesthetics of the night, which refers as much to the thriller genre as to sensuality. How did you prepare it?

CD: What was important in the aesthetics was not to fall into super creepy miserabilism, nor to glamorize à la Verhoeven - like "it's super nice to be a whore", but rather to be in the middle. For the brothel, it had to slap. The one I had visited in Germany (and again, it was soft), had a EuroDisney cardboard side. The girls put themselves in the scene, play a role. But in the room where they wait in bathrobes drinking their Red Bull, the light is harsher. I also wanted to take up the codes of thrillers, the night, the car, wet sidewalks, because it's still a woman who is looking for money and who is going to steal it. Hence her golden raincoat, which she never takes off and which — apart from the fact that it's very practical for fittings — also gives her a slightly superheroic side.

Is it just as easy to try on more frugal or immodest costumes?

LC: My modesty is not there, as you may have understood (laughs) I say it jokingly, but it's true. I have less shame in showing my ass than in, I don't know, saying "I love you" (laughs). Even in the cinema. Because for us, in principle, it is false since it is written, it is a fiction etc. But we are real when we play. So for me, it's life.