Let It Rain : Interview with Pascale Arbillot



How did you come on board the project LET’S TALK ABOUT THE RAIN?
I think Agnès saw me at the theatre in “Adultères” by Woody Allen. I did an initial test with her, then another with her and Jean-Pierre. She took a month before telling me she’d chosen me. And it was a shock.

What did you think on reading the screenplay?
I immediately thought of Chekhov and I didn’t stop going on about it to Jean-Pierre and Agnès: “It’s Chekhov!” Although the screenplay of LET’S TALK ABOUT THE RAIN is very solidly constructed, it’s at the same time extremely elliptical and impressionistic, without any dramatic fireworks. It picks up on some people in the course of their lives and unravels everything surrounding that, like a scan of their lives and their times, built up of small, impalpable things and little unsaid thoughts that the actor must try and express. Jean-Pierre and Agnès deal with human subjects that they know well. I think they observe people a lot. LET’S TALK ABOUT THE RAIN poses some very universal questions and deals with subjects that are much more profound than they seem. It deals with politics, religion, and women’s freedom. In the same space-time, you see two sisters who represent two opposite poles of femininity. One has children and a husband, and is a housewife; the other one works, has no children, and is single. And then there’s Mimouna, apparently the slave, humiliated. But one of the things that moved me the most was that it’s her who makes a choice at the end of the film. What if she was the most liberated of the three?

At the end of the film, your character is the one whose future seems the most sealed, with the least chance of discovering freedom.
That’s right. Florence wants to change, but as soon as it’s a question of doing something about it, she backs off. When she says that Stéphane is weak and needs her, it’s to justify her not going off to explore the unknown, which is what Michel represents. She doesn’t want to leave her children; she doesn’t want to destroy the reassuring life she has. But it’s not simply a non-choice. I think that deep down, she doesn’t want to change her life. What she finds during the film is perhaps a moment of complicity with her sister. Florence has gained nothing from this chunk of her life, but two years down the line, I don’t think you’d find she was more unhappy than the others. I don’t feel she is condemned. Florence is maybe one of those people who finds a balance in their suffering, who feeds on it. The film also carries that message; it’s a sometimes-painful mirror on our lives.

How did the shoot go?
I can’t exactly say why I became an actress, but when I was on the set with Agnès, I said to myself: “I want to do this all my life!” We were working from a text carefully crafted around every word and we were surrounded by incredibly competent people. We were doing an exacting job without getting hung up about it. There was a sort of gentleness, concentration and amusement. I really felt in the service of something bigger than me, and that’s very agreeable. There was an utter abandonment in the director’s vision. Agnès shows absolute trust in her actors. That’s already 50% of the work done. I would arrive in the morning and if I was struggling on a scene, I knew I’d end up nailing it because Agnès was certain that it was going to happen. Agnès sees right away how to deliver a line, she understands right away when you get stuck, no doubt because she’s an actress, but above all because she’s someone with intimate knowledge of the human soul, Jean-Pierre too. Their way of working together is so natural that I don’t know exactly how it functions.

What is your reaction on seeing the film?
I was surprised. In the same way that I wanted to re-read the screenplay after reading it the first time, I have the feeling that I can’t be satisfied with watching the film only once. Generally, I hate watching myself on screen. Going back over my work leaves me with an almost morbid feeling. Here, it’s the first time in my life that I didn’t see myself, and that I wasn’t watching other actors that I know. I saw characters flowing with a story. I felt the film physically.