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| Piere Le Gall on shooting night scenes in Flesh And Fuel: 'I wanted to go back to our animal nature somehow' |
Catching up with Le Gall after the film’s premiere, he recalled the inspiration for his romantic drama, which sees a French trucker (Alexis Manenti) fall in love with a Polish driver (Julian Swiezewski) after a one-night stand leads to a deeper connection. But the fair find it tricky to see one another because of the constant demands of the job.
“Everything started in 2020 during Covid when I was lucky enough to stay at home and protect myself from the virus,” recalls Le Gall “I was always watching TV, listening to the radio to know what was going on in the rest of the world and I found out that many other professions could not really have that privilege, they had to keep working and to move around.
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| Pierre Le Gall: 'We always think we are stronger than capitalism and we can oppose that but actually we end up always being subjected to it' Photo: David Maurel |
“I was not used to really thinking about that because when you’re living in a city you don't really see truck drivers because usually they move through the city during the night while you're sleeping. I was really touched to think about these men and women who are on the road five out of seven days, away from their family, from their loved ones, from their children. I was touched by this sacrifice that they were making with a lot of pride, because they were really proud of the degree of usefulness they can bring to their country.”
That interest sparked a lot of research on the part of the director, who has previously written for film – including TV movie Le Fantôme des Saintes – as well as theatre. Beyond documentaries and books, however, he really wanted to get a feel for what life on the road was like.
“At some point, I had this friend, a gay truck driver, and I started travelling with him and we went to the UK, to Italy, to Switzerland. I wanted to experience the route basically and I wanted to understand deeply what it meant to sit in the truck for hours, how the sense of time changes, what it was like to drive, what gestures are typical, what it was like to be inside this very confined space. Also, what it's like to unload in warehouses, what it's like to shower along the highway. This really allowed me to then recreate a very accurate and precise environment. This, to me, is paramount for any filmmaker, to be very accurate in the kind of story they're going to tell. And from a number of these small details, I created a big love story. Which was set exactly in this context.”
He was drawn to include a Polish character as a way of challenging what he sees as a lot of misconceptions in countries like France about Eastern European countries. As in Britain, there’s the old canard that Polish plumbers take the jobs of domestic workers.
“There's still a lot of prejudices of stereotypes that are mostly very stupid and don't match reality,” he says. In Warsaw he adds he was “surprised to find a sort of temple of capitalism, because yes, there was the historic part of the city but it’s mostly lots of malls, skyscrapers, as if economy was seen as something that would save the city or the country, so that to me was very interesting and I thought it would be interesting to finish the film there”.
He adds: “I found it really interesting to have a Polish truck driver who was supposed to steal the French truck drivers’ jobs. And in a way it's really happening because Polish truck drivers are more competitive, they're cheaper, but it's not their fault, it's the way the economy works in Europe so it's the fault of European Union and I wanted them to relate and to create a sort of brotherhood because they are brothers on the road basically.”
The pitfalls of capitalism are something the director is keen to articulate, saying its a subject that is “hidden, a bit like the Horse of Troy” within the film.
“We always think we are stronger than capitalism and we can oppose that but actually we end up always being subjected to it,” he adds.
Our desire to light everything all the time is also a byproduct of capitalism, says Le Gall, and one of the reasons he wanted to shoot a lot of scenes at night.
“We live in a society where night almost doesn't even exist any more because we tend to put lights on all the time. Now we have more environmentally friendly lighting but still it's as if it’s light. I associate light with the economy and it’s as if it never stops and we don't really get a chance to appreciate the night any more. But the night has something that is linked to our animal nature, to me, to our passion. I wanted to show these things, to go back to our animal nature somehow. The night is also important in terms of work because truck drivers work day and night, that's their job. So the cinematographer Antoine Cormier dealt with the night scenes sometimes in such a way that passions would prevail, and at other times, to make you feel trapped inside this cabin, depending on the scene.
“From a production point of view, it was not very easy because night scenes are more expensive. You have to pay people more and so they always ask you to make fewer scenes like that. But I really insisted because, to me, it was fundamental for the beauty of the film to have these scenes.”
Among the other challenges was shooting in the confined space of the truck cab, which is where we see the two men make out. Le Gall says it was “one of the first scenes that I had in my mind”.
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| Alexis Manenti and Julian Swiezewski in Flesh And Fuel. Pierre Le Gall, they 'reassured each other and supported each other and it was beautiful to see. |
Finally, we talk about the casting, which began with French rising star Manenti, who also featured in Too Many Beasts at this year’s Cannes.
“Alexis is always someone who has interested me – and I thought it was really suitable for this character – because of his physical appearance,” says the filmmaker. “He’s quite a solid man, he’s quite big, he has some belly, so he looked like a good truck driver to me. Also, his face is very enigmatic so you never know quite what he’s thinking about. He also has, and I think this is something great, this inner child that you can still see inside him. I think this is something that is a good sign of virility, to accept your inner child.
“Then when he accepted the role, we had to find someone in Poland – but someone different from him, a bit more mischievous, a bit crazy and magnetic.”
Swiezewski had previously explained to us that he was recommended to Le Gall by French star Victoire du Bois. Le Gall says it was this photo of the actor sitting on a toilet clutching a dog that sealed the deal. “She showed me this picture on Instagram and I thought, ‘Okay, it’s absolutely him’. I literally fell in love with him right away.”
It took a further nine months to meet the Polish star and convince him to take the role, since he was a bit nervous about having to act in French.
“I brought Alexis to meet him in Warsaw and immediately something clicked,” recalls Le Gall. “Alexis was very reassuring with him about the language and Julian reassured Alexis all the time about the nude scenes because Julian was much more used to those in theatre whereas Alexis wasn’t. So it was like with a good couple, you reassure each other and support each other and it was beautiful to see.”
Flesh And Fuel will be distributed in the US by Strand Releasing and in the UK and Ireland by the BFI
- Read our conversation with Alexis Manenti on Flesh And Fuel
- Read our conversation with Julian Swiezewski on trucking, gay romance and the power of normality in Flesh And Fuel
