by Gill Pringle at the 71st San Sebastian International Film Festival
If female filmmakers have nimbly broken down the patriarchy, then actor turned director Xavier Legrand offers an uncomfortable examination of how a father’s sins are passed down to the son, thereby perpetuating the problem.
The Successor follows the triumph of a newly-crowned artistic director of a famous Parisian fashion house. As his models strut around a circular catwalk, this should be a joyous moment for Ellias – portrayed by Marc-André Grondin – although, instead, he clutches his chest. The anxiety is almost too much. And then the police arrive …
Ellias’ corporate bosses want to know if this is a situation which might affect the fashion house, but then we learn that the police are here, in fact, to inform him of his father’s death. In the past decade, Ellias has done everything he can to distance himself from his biological father, leaving his family home in Montreal to re-invent himself in Paris.
But, with nobody else to bury his father, he is forced to return to Canada, which is where The Successor really starts to morph into something altogether.
When we meet with writer/director Legrand at the 71st San Sebastian International Film Festival, we cannot help but be curious as to his relationship with his own father.
“I’m not going to speak about my father’s relationship, but I did grow up in a patriarchal family. That’s true. And that’s what it’s about. And that’s why I make films really. There you go – my first session on the couch. How much do I owe you?!” he laughs, acknowledging that he has sidestepped the question.
“After my first film, which was a film about violence against women,” he says referring to Custody, his drama about a broken marriage which prompts a bitter custody battle. “After that, I started wondering about the term ‘violence against women’, which I used when I was promoting the first film. It’s kind of a hypocritical term, because with violence against women, you forget about the main one – the man.
“So, then we have to speak about the violence of men – and how to translate this symbolically? Men’s violence, how patriarchy destroys women and children – but also men.
“It’s ingrained in our culture. Men who have lived with violence will perpetuate this culture and perpetuate the patriarchy. How do we start the process to stop this? That’s what this film is about. How men’s silence gives wings to the patriarchy and makes patriarchy go on,” argues the French director.
“First and foremost, The Successor focuses on male violence. How is it that men are also their own worst enemy? It’s fairly easy nowadays to see how patriarchy subjugates women and children, but what perhaps isn’t as obvious and more difficult to admit, because it is handed down and trans-generational, is that it also crushes men, brothers and sons. We regard blood ties as sacrosanct and therefore unbreakable in the eyes of our society. The axioms ‘like father like son’, ‘from father to son’, ‘in the name of the father and of the son’ are deeply entrenched in our minds.”
For actor Marc-André Grondin, who plays the main character of The Successor, the film set was such a dark place to inhabit after initially getting into character by studying French fashion designer Olivier Rousteing, creative director at Balmain since 2011.
“But that was only just to understand a little bit more of the context of the beginning of the movie, but I really didn’t see what was coming next. I mean, I read the script and everything, I knew what I had to do, but I didn’t expect it to be as deep and demanding and dark as what I went through,” explains the popular Canadian actor.
“I think my primary preparation was to be confident in Xavier, and trust him 100% and do whatever he wanted me to do. I had to open up and try to let go of these layers of protection that you can have as an actor, where you know what to do, but sometimes you need to not know what to do. And it was a very demanding and tiring shoot, shooting nights. It was a lot of breathing and crying and so it kind of tires you emotionally and physically and makes you open up to get where you don’t usually go so easily,” he says.
With the film, Legrand leans heavily on Greek tragedy and Shakespearean themes. “There’s Oedipus and then there’s Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but always the ghosts of the father were so important in this film. All these characters are trying to cure themselves – but this attempt really is disastrous. Hamlet tries to avenge his father, and he kills everybody except the right one. Oedipus runs away in order not to sleep with his mother and not to kill his father.
“Same with The Successor. Ellias has done everything not to be his father. But destiny forces him to do exactly the same as his father,” he says of his film, which appeared in the prestigious Competition section at San Sebastian.
“To create the lead character of Ellias, I drew a great deal of inspiration from tragic figures such as Oedipus, Orestes, Icarus or Hamlet. What they all have in common is that – each in their own way – they attempt to find a form of healing, which fatally leads them to disaster, so crushing is the weight of the patriarchy,” he adds.
