Your first feature amazes with its masterful mise en scène and its beautifully constructed shots. What was your training?
From the beginning, I wanted to be a scriptwriter, so I studied for a Masters Degree in Literature, and later studied screenplay writing. I had written a short film, "Sale Battars" and Jérôme Dopffer, who was a student producer in my year, suggested that I should shoot it myself. Then I made a further two shorts. That's how my career started.

"Sale Battars" received the César for Best Short Film in 2000, Un Château en Espagne was chosen for the Directors Fortnight, and Les Méduses screened in International Critics' Week. Quite promising beginnings, yes?
I don't know what they promised. Let's just say that they encouraged me to shoot Carnage.

You have a very singular view of reality.
What interests me, when I witness an event, is the promise of fiction. I reach the truth by hijacking it! A dog crosses a street, and I don't take the sight for granted. By taking a detour, by focusing on a very small characteristic of the dog, I find the meaning of my day. Obviously, it's often a plunge into burlesque, but I cling to humor with a certain desperation. I dive into each fragment of reality, thereby creating a world for myself. The result is often violent, absurd, and cruel. But it can be funny as well. I imagine a giant fridge: I put everything in to keep it fresh, leave it for a long time, and before writing, open it gently and see what's stayed fresh. Although to be honest, I also use the products that have passed their sell-by dates.

And with Carnage, what was the trigger for this multi-faceted story?
Actually, I think that all the paths which led me to this film come from childish things. It wasn't necessarily the first spark, but it came in part from my fascination with bullfights. When I was very young I went on holiday and saw the bullfights at Mont de Marsan. However, I feel no attraction to blood, to death: I never even pulled the wings off grasshoppers. Maybe I should have! My first bullfight affected me enormously – I was completely overwhelmed -- , but I asked myself, "Where does the bull go after he's dead?" That this was 'out of shot' interested me, and I invented a fate for him. The fighting bull is the only animal I love: he is wild and at the same time condemned from the start. He has to fight, and he knows it. Bullfighting is a matter of how to twist, to turn, to dodge, in order to stay alive.

Carnage could be summed up as the story of a dreamy little girl and a courageous bull.
Yes, it's the story of a little girl who thinks that all animals are bigger than she is. By watching a young man fight a bull, she finds the weapons to take control of her body, which, from time to time, is subject to fits. In any case, she finds a resonance with her perception of the world. And she begins to think that she can find her place in it, and create her family.

Is the little girl you?
There is nothing autobiographical in the film, even if I sometimes feel naked. In any case, the aim isn't to tell my own story. However, I knew some people who owned an enormous mastiff, three feet high, and who put its mattress in their tiny hallway. To go from the front door to the dining room, you had to pass the dog's bed. And, God knows why, all their guests stepped over the mattress, nimbly, without saying a word. One day, driving home, I said to my parents, “you do realize that they show us their sheets before their dinner plates!" For me, the craziest ones in the story were those who stepped over the mattress. The people who put it in the corridor moved me greatly.

The little girl, Winnie, has a bear's name while her dog has the name of a little boy: Fred.
The only time she takes up more space than the dog is when she has a fit. The parents don't love the little girl any less because they love the dog. I think that they adopted this mastiff because he takes up so much room in their little apartment that he enables them to touch each other. He allows games, but not those one expects from a dog. He should fetch bones, like a normal dog, but the only character who fetches a bone in this story is the father, from the supermarket parking lot. The real game is the dog's bubble bath; the parents, with the same gesture, make the animal foamy. They relate to each other through him -- it's like a turning plate in a restaurant. Even Winnie goes through the dog; by offering it Valium, she defuses the violence of her own situation. It's often like that in families.

Romero, the bull, is the link between the characters.
The bull is the only animal which kills for reasons other than food. It kills in the arena, where it understands that it is in its element. I have always said to myself that the bull is the only animal which puts man in his place, and I extended this idea to all the other characters.

His body, cut into pieces, is distributed to each character. We follow his journey, from the arena to the butcher's yard to a plate in a restaurant.
I always told myself that this bull, even after its death, must force the characters to confront themselves. I thought: the bull’s eyes will help them see clearly, his flesh will say what the pregnant woman has in her belly, and so on. He will penetrate the intimate lives of these characters discretely. From the beginning, the couples are already involved in a fight, and a little piece of meat will topple them, will accelerate - often with a certain irony - their passage towards the truth.

More than a stage, you have created open spaces for your characters.
The most difficult thing is to find one's place in a space. The arena expresses this idea with a brutal simplicity: how to find one's place in the world – socially and physically? In bullfighting, they say -- find 'el sitio', the right distance between you and the bull, in order to create something with it, and to stay alive.

Each character has to take his place in his own arena: the sitting room for Winnie, the swimming pool or the skating rink for Carlotta and Alexis....
All these places are, in a way, circles which one must enter to find oneself. I realized while writing it that in the course of the story, everyone was going to have his own fight, and each character would have to confront others in order to conquer his/her own space and learn to love him/herself.

In her first scene, Chiara Mastroianni is forced to find her place in the centre of a circus ring - she has to fight. It's a violent scene from which she emerges battered but still alive. She will return 'to the bull' later, but voluntarily. The only one who is paid for this combat from the start, who risks his life for it, is the bullfighter. He could hide behind the little barriers around the arena, but instead he enters the circle. He is not unaware; he is in fact very courageous. He does not hide behind the wooden barriers. We see this decision to fight, for example, when Carlotta says to Alexis, "You want to come into the water with me? But you have to be naked".

It's an initiation, a self-birth, for each character. Each one finds himself, at a given moment, face to face with the bull, with his own “bête noire”, having to battle it, in order to exist.
Certainly, the whole film is an initiation into birth. But 'bête noire' could imply 'enemy' and there is no enemy in the film. The one you kill, in the end, is the one you can't love in any other way. Whether it's Luc who impales his father while offering him the horns, or whether it's the bull and the bullfighter. It's in this way that even people who don't like bullfighting can appreciate the film, for the bull is never portrayed as an enemy. To be a bullfighter is to have an appointment, to look at the bull and to make him understand: "I have to kill you".

It's a battle of love.
Yes, to some extent. I'm thinking about the most obvious combatants, Jacques and Betty. They share a space, the bed and the corridor. What interests me about Betty's pregnancy is that she can't be embraced face on. There's this protruberance which forces Jacques and Betty to cross each other when they embrace. I like this avoidance; it's at the same time very choreographic and very awkward. It recalls what happens between the bullfighter and the bull. Each story has its own choreography of combat.

Your characters are very engaging, despite the fact that we know little about them. They're free of all sociological or psychological references.
We don't exist fully when we follow the dotted line. Carlotta is very carnal, very physical, and discovering her naked very early on, with her bandages, we project on her our own story. I like to think that each bandage that remains in place is a promise of a fiction. The viewer imagines his own scars there. Carlotta imposes herself, immediately, she exists in the simple desire to inhabit her body. We know nothing about her except that these beauty spots have left "little roots throughout". It's also, I believe, a film about filiation, about bequeathing. "I am a free woman", Carlotta says, when she takes off her goatskin after a performance. Even if we discover that there is another layer beneath -- bandages. There is no desire to wound in any of the characters, rather, a wish to heal. I'm not looking for any exuberance in suffering, in self-destruction. It's funny, because Romero (the name of the bull) means 'rosemary' in Spanish – which is a plant that is said to heal all ills.

You appeal to all the viewer's senses.
The stories all follow an obvious structure, but what interests me is an "underground structure". As if thousands of bonds are woven together under the surface and suddenly we notice them, in a fraction of a second, through a gesture, like the hand on the window. In this brief visual action, the stories correspond, and the little workers go back under and re-knit the bonds which will express themselves again in a new act. These bonds are made at the level of sounds, sensations, and barely felt caresses which answer each other. The sequences which place themselves next to each other, do and don't move the story forward. They are part of a single energy, where one responds to the other, announces the next one, and so on. The viewer takes part in a sort of gymnastics where, effectively, all the senses are made constantly alert.

Through all these physical emotions, the viewer gives substance to the story. She takes charge of it, and she is thoroughly implicated through her emotions.
Yes, it's not at all intellectual. And I don’t intend to play or manipulate. The film is a prism, and not simply five interlinked stories which become one. It's rather a crystal ball which you turn in order to see the reflection of the other, upside down. Little by little, a single story appears at the ball's centre. How do you meet yourself?

These emotions impart a very sharp rhythm to the narrative.
The characters never talk about their feelings, and we don't have time to pity them. This feeling remains on the surface, and when a new emotion arises, you dive into it. The accumulation provokes a waiting, and always with a little more emotion to be affected by. I don't think I could have told this story in any other way. The editor, François Quiqueré, also followed this path. It's not at all a way of seducing the spectator, just an invitation to the combat, a need to tell the spectator not to leave me all alone. I'd like the spectators, in any case, to be along on the journey!

And there's an almost optimistic resolution!
I think that the epilogue is full of salvation, once the bullfighter has half-opened his eyes. The end of each story is a bit like a game, a mise en scène. From the moment when Jacques, the character played by Jacques Gamblin, is at his father's house with the little girls, we have to benefit from this return to life, this new community, this sort of Eden - which is clearly not really an Eden at all, given that Betty (Lio) is still pregnant! There is a survivor, and other lives to come. And Jacques is not afraid of confronting a teddy bear which attacks him. He smiles - a victory. It's enough for him - the monsters have been appeased. It was enough for him just to deal with his own piece of meat and remake himself. I like to think that the characters, throughout the film, are searching for a missing member (in the literal sense, or a family member).

In an astonishing scene, a choir of burn victims sing the words, "There are many lives.” Is this in a sense the film's leitmotiv?
Yes - how to live after the fight, after the secret is revealed, when the surface is laid bare. You're no longer quite the same. And although you are still singing, it's now to your own rhythm. That's also why the choreography between Chiara and Clovis at the skating rink has to be completely askew; they have to stick together, at whatever cost, or they'll come crashing down. That's what is important. At least to accept that. The song also says that, after a while, you will notice an organ growing beneath the lava. In other words, "make room for your own organ". It's clear in the case of the young bullfighter when he receives a liver transplant. It's also to say that everyone, at a given moment, must make room for what is pulsing inside them.

The act of looking occupies a very important place in your film. The bull - blind in one eye; the way little Winnie watches the spectacle of the bull's death; the "philosophical skater" moving forward like a blind man; the child playing marbles with Romero's eyes; Alicia always in shades...
My world is never born from what we see at first glance. Jacques says it: "the deformed body is palpable". Never take what you see for granted! I am fascinated by what you don't see in others. Not by the secrets which reveal themselves, but by the bodies which hide a trace, whose shadows possess secrets. Winnie's gaze is a federating look. She doesn't have a magical connection, it's not an artificial knowledge, but her gaze sees beyond reality.

There is a great energy, even a violence, in your mise en scène, without its seeking strangeness through mannered framing, sets or hysterical acting.
Yes, there is an energy. It's life which grows from inside and which pushes things forward, closing wounds, and healing. Violence is propelled by a breath, by a nerve. Life dominates each violent scene, since each time it opens on a sort of liberation, it's never filthy or sordid but beneficial, remedial. It's our own violent need to live. The film's violence is not a provocation, and death, when it comes in a very brutal fashion, is not demonised. Even when Angela crashes into the police car, we're surprised but, deep down, we have been warned from the start. It's not a shock effect to somehow electrify the narrative; it's a logical progression. I like to think of the film as a banquet. A doorman would announce "and now... Death", and Death would enter, take his place at the table with a little gesture of the hand - without conflict, without surprise. After all, he's been an invited guest from the start. From time to time, he would leave the table returning to sit and finish his meal.

What did you want from the film's mise en scène, or rather, "mise en flesh"?
I worked with the characters, starting with the actors, with the D.P., Crystel Fournier, whom I knew from la Fémis. Carnage is also her first feature. In Lio's case, it's without a doubt in her nature; one must always confront her face on, as she incites it. She always provoked in me the desire to look at her whilst moving around her. Also, with that enormous belly, I wanted to stalk her quietly, like a delicate animal. Something very small which could not be approached openly, directly. Chiara is a physical person, funny, almost carnal. I wanted to show Carlotta all the time, head on, without the least timidity, as a permanent challenge. Whether at the pool or selling chorizo, she is often at the centre of absurd performances. She is very, very funny. I also worked closely with the composer Eric Neveux on the texture of each story, on the place of music both within the structure and in relation to the fate of each character. We only discussed the music's substance, its flesh, its role as an underground spider's web, never taking the characters' emotions hostage.

You chose to shoot in scope...
Yes, first of all to capture Winnie's gaze. And to be very close to the faces. Scope also allows the characters to move more from left to right. Spaces only interest me when they show the whole path a character has to travel – for example the scene of Carlotta getting out of the car gains in suspense, in cruelty. Also there are many circles in the picture, and a circle in a square is obvious. But in a rectangle, circles are cut; that in itself is violent in relation to the space you're presenting. It establishes even further a place of confrontation.

The narration is constantly blown apart by counterposed genres. The absurd, the burlesque, exist side by side with realism and drama. We feel a strong desire to laugh.
Humour and the burlesque exist in each of the stories, because if each one is above all a story of birth, it's also, "how to get by before dying". Humour is there, every time, if you accept death a little more, without battling against it, but by tricking it, by changing direction, remaining lucid all the while. It's the energy of despair, and it's very often hilarious. Even for the bullfighter, the only one who confronts death face to face, there's also a possibility of laughing at death, when his three friends visit the hospital. For Luc and Rosie, every time they speak of the possibility of their father's death, it's with a joke. The leitmotiv "But your father's dead, imbecile", it's the only way Rosie can say, "Never abandon me". That's my world too. "How do I say I love you?".

How did you choose your actors?
Antoinette Boulat and I worked under an extraordinary shared momentum. I think that I cast those who were going to leap into the world of the script, but each in a very different way. The story of the film is also the story of my relationship with actors: it was a fight, a joyous, loving, patient struggle. I think that I provoked them to attack! Thank God, they didn't kill me. Although I wrote the script, it's the thing I have least respect for. It's there simply in order to communicate with the whole crew, and with the actors, nothing more than an idea of the film. My dream was never to direct the film. I have never dreamed of realising my dreams, but rather of discovering new ones. The film went beyond the script. I left the fridge door open - I have a lot of faith in blasts of fresh air.

The young bullfighter is played by Julien Lescarret, a young matador from The France.
It was important to say to this bullfighter, "One - it's going to be watching you, this one thing, it's the camera". Even though he is used to playing out his life in the arena, in front of thousands of people. He was really still a young boy. He carried with him a certain fragility which overwhelmed me. He had never been wounded by a bull when he agreed to act. Shooting the scene where he leaves the arena to go to the first aid room was hard for him. Afterwards, he told me, "I'm really happy, now I know the journey between the sand and the infirmary". It's a sort of baptism, the first time, which helped him when he was gored by a bull at the end of November. Cinema should do that -- prepare you for life.

Carnage is not about massacres, but about meat, about flesh.
The word reminds me of 'mirage'; it also shares some of the devilish connotations of "ravage". Words that end in 'age' are beautiful. It's almost a magical formula, something a child would say to frighten himself. But it's also reassuring. When you call a film Carnage, you're saying that, in the end, whatever happens isn't going to be too serious. You don't need to fear flesh which has healed.

To make a film is to take the bull by the horns!
I love making films. What saves me is not the desire to direct the script, but to put myself in danger every day by imagining something else. I say to myself "This scene is too timid. It has to go further. “Go into the arena, expose yourself more". I did not protect myself.