I wish to make a film, which is funny and melancholic, where we shall mourn the loss of a love affair (Léna), of life itself (Tim) and of the fragile limits between reality and the imaginary. The guiding line that dominates and zigzags through the whole work is born from a confrontation between Léna, the film’s heroine, and the other characters. Léna explores the boundaries between past and present by questioning her relationship to time, to memory and to what it could mean for her to be present in the world, in the here and now.
This film speaks of death, but especially of life, as I believe that it is impossible to conceive of life itself without accompanying this with a meditation on death. The film is built around blocks of time – its central axis being the house that must be emptied - juxtaposed with each other, where the spectator perceives fragments of the character’s lives and constructs their story. These atmospheric episodes, when placed end to end, bring structure to the narrative and form a play on memory itself – the memory of the characters, but also our own. This is a film where surreal presence rubs shoulders with real presence, as well as documentary footage. It is a serious yet lighthearted work, representing different attitudes to belief, magic and to the ability cinema has to represent these phenomena.
In Le Camion (The Truck), Marguerite Duras says that “everything is in everything, all the time. It is a misconception to separate the past from the present and future”. With Jon Fosse, “the present is like a corridor where the past and the future swap places”, I share this vision. Le Vent des Ombres attempts to project an experience of this corridor, notably using the sea cave as an analogy and through other channels too. Léna is constantly moving down this corridor, constantly questioning it, as the present gets mixed up with the past and future. Within this frame, we are also subjected to a strange feeling, a juxtaposition of different eras, as if our perception has become disordered; with different time spans cropping up in our heads like random thoughts. Everything is therefore in everything; life, memories of life, and fragments of the afterlife move forward together. All these times are played out in the present tense, just like death, which belongs to our experience of the living, otherwise we would not be able to apprehend it. The spectral power of the movies is ideal for touching upon these themes as it forms the backdrop upon which we reactivate the past and our own memory.