by Shayley Blair
Lie With Me director Olivier Peyon conjures the memories of main character Stéphane (Guillaume de Tonquédec) – a writer, who revisits the spirit of his first love in his hometown after many years – in a dreamy, postcard-picturesque coloured regional France. “For all the flashbacks that correspond to the writer’s memories, I wanted something both melancholic and joyful, like his love story. This is why with my cinematographer [Martin Rit], we played with golden colours, both luminous and warm, something nostalgic. For this reason, we shot these scenes at the end of summer, while we shot the present of the story – the meeting of the writer and the son of his first love – in winter with colder colours,” Peyon reveals.
The story is made even more engaging through the natural feel of character connections. Lie With Me benefits greatly from the chemistry between the younger lovers. “During the screen tests, Jérémy [Gillet] and Julien [De Saint Jean] were very good, but there were other young actors who were also good. What made the difference was the chemistry between them when we brought them together.
“Four months passed between casting and filming, which gave Julien and Jérémy time to get to know each other. They are very intelligent, very sensitive and mature young actors. We talked a lot about why these scenes happened and why they had to be like that. As a result, there was an atmosphere of trust on the set, which allowed them to convey this truth and intensity.”
On how the main character’s mannerisms, attitudes, and style were able to be realistically reflected in both their younger and adult versions, Peyon shares that “the funny thing is that we shot Stéphane’s young scenes first. As a result, Guillaume de Tonquédec, who plays Stéphane as adult, asked me to watch these scenes, and I accepted because after all, these are the character’s memories; the adult actor had the right to know them. It is therefore Guillaume, the established actor, who is a star in France, who was inspired by the young Jérémy Gillet.”
Seamless time jumps between past and present create an effortlessly immersive effect. “It was a long process during the writing of the screenplay, so that the flashback scenes did not illustrate what was said in the present, and everything did not need to be said in the present because it was nourished in the past,” Peyon says. “I tried to make the story dynamic and for the past and present to be one big overall story. It was also impossible during editing to change the order of the scenes as they had been written. This is also why, apart from the colours, I staged the present and the past in a bit of the same way, so that we moved from one scene to another, from one period to the other without us realising it. I think this allowed the scenes from the past to be particularly ‘current’ and alive, and for the viewer to feel as immersed in the past as the present.”
Lie With Me is based on the novel of the same name by Phillippe Besson. When Peyon was adapting the book for cinema, he was struck by what he perceived – a love story “as magnificent as it was tragic.” What especially caught his attention was “the other part of the book which tells the story of a writer’s encounter with Lucas [played by Victor Belmondo in the film], his first love’s son. It is something that Lucas says that first convinced me: ‘You should have seen the look in his eyes. It is at this precise moment that I became certain that it had all existed: my father had been in love with a boy’.
“I wanted to tell the story of this son, who is trying to discover his father’s secrets and to make this encounter the main focus, the centre of my film. I wanted to tell the story of an appeasement – or how this encounter will allow the writer and the son to put words to the father’s silence, and to complete the puzzle that both of them were holding missing pieces to, which would heal their wounds before moving forward.’’
The viewer follows journeys of discovery experienced by multiple individuals. “The film is about choosing your life, having the courage to make choices despite fear and risks, whether in terms of your sexuality, or simply, for example, your work, or becoming an artist or whatever. The message of the film is not so much about sexuality as about the courage to choose your life so as not to miss out. But being a young gay man, even if it seems easier today, is still a challenge. There’s always that moment when you have to come out. No heterosexual has to ‘come out’. The positive point is that it makes these young people think about themselves and perhaps gives them greater maturity.
“Each spectator is different with their own background and feelings, who will watch my film from their own point of view and will find their own message that will talk to them, but if my movie could help to show more empathy and acceptance towards the difference, or simply towards the other, I wouldn’t be unhappy.”
Lie With Me is in cinemas 12 October 2023
