You've Got Lovely Eyes, You Know! Episode 2: Karine Aulnette about "Freda", directed by Gessica Geneus

Margot Besson: Hello, welcome to Radio RapTZ for the show T'as De Beaux Yeux, Tu Sais (You’ve got Lovely Eyes, You Know), the podcast that interviews women cinematographers about their work. We are part of the Femmes à la caméra collective and we ask ourselves: Is the female gaze a myth or a reality? A trap or a lever? For a long time, cinema has told us about the world through the eyes of men. But is there such a thing as a female gaze?

Claude Garnier: For this second episode of our podcast T'as De Beaux Yeux, Tu Sais, we are joined today by several members of the Femmes à la caméra collective. Claude Garnier and Margot Besson are conducting the interview and Valérie Potonniée is on technical support. We are lucky to have Karine Aulnette with us, cinematographer and member of Femmes à la caméra. Hello Karine, how are you?

Karine Aulnette: I'm very well. I'm honored to be in the company of all these wonderful women around me.

MB: Karine, you have been a director of photography for many years, notably for the film Le Grand Bal, a documentary by Laetitia Carton, released in 2018. For Le Cinquième plan de La Jetée by Dominique Cabrera, which will be shown on Arte from March 24, so very soon. And also for Freda, a feature film by Gessica Geneus, selected for the official competition Un Certain Regard at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. We'll come back to this film later in the program. You've been part of the Femmes à la caméra collective almost since its creation. Thank you for joining us today on Radio RapTZ. We'll start this interview with a very simple question: what made you want to make films?

KA: I think it was simply watching really good movies with my dad when I was a kid. One of the things that guided me was a subscription to Télérama Junior magazine, which recommended the movies to see each week and guided us through the whirlwind of television. Pretty quickly, I was lucky enough to see many cinematic masterpieces, and I realized that the happiness they gave me was essential. And that's it, I wanted to bring that joy to my work.

CG: Do you remember what you filmed first and your first images?

KA: I don't remember exactly what I filmed at the beginning. I think it must have been rehearsals of my high school rock band, probably. So, a bit of a documentary.

MB: And today, outside of your work as a cinematographer, do you also film in your personal life?

KA: I rarely film in my personal life. For me, the act of filming remains sacred. But I did make an experimental documentary about my family. So, yes, I find it hard to stop filming, even in my personal life.

CG: And what do you like filming the most?

KA: I would say it's faces. I am literally fascinated by the faces of the characters in the films I work on. And I also love to highlight them. For me, it's something infinitely fascinating. Yes, finding the right light for a face is something that allows you to be in a perpetual state of exploration, in fact.

CG: I've noticed, without wanting to generalize, that there are a lot of female cinematographers who like to film faces. I don't think this is the first time we've heard this. We could discuss it, but it's true that this desire, this joy of filming faces, comes up often among female cinematographers.

KA: Yes, no doubt. Perhaps we have a focus on humanity, on the person, that is perhaps a little specific to female cinematographers. It's true that some cinematographers tended to favor the setting. You can sense that their lighting is designed primarily for spaces. And indeed, I've also noticed that sometimes female cinematographers seem to consider the face to be the primary unit. That's how I feel.

MB: We just heard the trailer for Freda, a feature film released in 2021, directed by Gessica Geneus. How did you meet the director of this film?

KA: I had the chance to meet Gessica when she was looking for a cinematographer for the documentary she made just before Freda. At the time, she chose to work with a truly wonderful Haitian cinematographer named Marco Saint-Juste, but I had fond memories of this beautiful person and was very happy to work with her again on Freda.

CG: Do you think there are reasons why she decided to work with you this time?

KA: I think the fact that we both come from a documentary background was quite important to her. We got on quite well when we first met, and I often worked with her production company, so it was kind of obvious.

MB: For our listeners who haven't seen the film Freda, can you summarize it for us?

KA: Freda is the portrait of a young Haitian woman who is trying to get by and who lives in an extremely modest family in Port-au-Prince. She is surrounded by some amazing characters: her sister, who is desperate to find a rich man to escape poverty, and her mother, who is very authoritarian and tries to control her daughters, but doesn't quite succeed.

CG: What touched you most about the script when you first read it?

KA: What touched me in the script was the tremendous strength of character of the women in this film. The fact that each one tries to find her own path to happiness and that they all have very different tactics. Freda tries to continue her studies while her mother tries to persuade her to marry a rich man instead. And Freda's sister chooses to try to find the richest man possible to lift her out of poverty. So these three women with very strong characters are all searching for happiness.

MB: To talk about some concrete aspects of how you filmed and directed this movie, there's this first sequence in which a rape is suggested. I wondered what you wanted to defend by filming that and what you wanted to avoid at all costs.

KA: Indeed, in the script, the stakes of the first sequence of the film were very high. The funding committees had a lot of issues with this sequence, and it was the one that scared me the most, in fact. I knew I had to evoke the idea of rape in this very disadvantaged Haitian family environment , living in poverty, and that it was a dream sequence. There were many pitfalls to avoid.

CG: What were those pitfalls?

KA: I think that today, when we talk about a dream at the beginning of a film, we have somewhat clichéd images in our heads. I don't think that's normal, but there have been a lot of failures on this subject. I knew we had to do something completely different. And what was complicated was that it was a sequence we hadn't discussed with Gessica, the director, because it was very painful for her. We came up with the image for this sequence very spontaneously, trying to be very accurate. What I suggested to her to achieve this slight shift towards a dreamlike universe, while remaining very sober, was a shooting technique that I really like, which simply consists of holding a camera lens in front of the camera. Usually, lenses are securely attached to the camera. Here, I used a camera lens that I held in my hand. This creates optical aberrations at the edges of the image and gives the impression of a fixed focus because the focus ring no longer moves: it's me who, by moving forward, decides where to pull focus, and this creates something strange, completely different from the usual clichés, which is more like a sensation. That's the proposal I made to Gessica, and during filming we tried to move towards mental images, to get closer to what images of trauma might be like, even if it's impossible to fully capture that kind of thing.

CG: What I really liked about this first sequence is that it grabs you right away. And in the middle of this universe that seems like a dream, there is still an explicit gesture: one hand pulling up the fabric on the leg and the other hand pushing the man's hand back. It's a shot that says it all. I found it very powerful because there's no ambiguity. It all blends together, something dreamlike was totally explicit, it's really cool. I feel that filming these sexual assaults is a real challenge for cinema in general and for female directors and cinematographers, and that this was a powerful attack.

KA: It's really a shot we came up with during filming. We hadn't discussed at all how we were going to film this sequence. I think Gessica and I tried to be as accurate as possible. It was her idea to use the hand. I tried to get as close as possible to what this child's gaze might have been like.

CG: When we saw the film, it seemed very fluid to us, with a great simplicity to it. But at the same time, it's very rhythmic, so there's obviously some staging involved. Even though you have a career in documentary filmmaking, this isn't a documentary, it's something very staged, with quite a few shot-sequences where you follow people, but at the same time, things are very prepared. What was the choice behind that? What do you think this approach brings to the shoot, this way of really being with people and at the same time being in a very organized staging?

KA: What I really liked was that we found a way to film as we went along, in a very spontaneous, organic way. What was important to me was that, during preparation, I had managed to understand Gessica's tastes in terms of images. The essential work had been done, in the sense that I think that as a cinematographer, you need to know your director's tastes in order to be able to advise her. I had asked her to describe certain sequences to me. We didn't have time to do this for the whole film because the preparation period was quite short, but Gessica is able to describe the shots in a sequence extremely precisely. She visualizes everything in terms of shots, angles, and points of view. That allowed me to know what she liked. The second thing I knew was that the producer had told me, when he offered me the film, that it would be better if the film went to the Cannes Film Festival. He said it humorously, but I felt that deep down, he was very serious. That gave us a challenge. I knew that the staging had to be extremely radical, so I pushed Gessica quite a bit in that direction. Often, we would set up the shots as soon as we could with the actors, and quite naturally, we would find a shot that often stretched into a sequence shot. And so, we choreographed things. I pushed her to set the actors' movements as much as possible while leaving them enough freedom to improvise in the moment. I pushed her to have a fairly precise cinematic language, but in some other sequences, when we didn't have that time, we ended up improvising instead. But the work we had already done on certain other shots allowed us to know what the style of the film was, even when improvising. It's a film that oscillated between rigorous staging and very improvised, very spontaneous moments; I think it found its way and it's quite fascinating.

CG: In the same vein, you mentioned that in this film, the camera was more contemplative than seductive. We felt that time was taken to envelop, to seek nuance, to give the viewer time to see something other than their first impression. We found this state of contemplation very special.

KA: Yes, and it's something we didn't intellectualize at all. Quite naturally, Gessica left certain shots long, we didn't necessarily talk about it before shooting. What's very interesting is that during editing, the editor conceptualized this rhythm. With Gessica, they decided to go for increasingly longer shots throughout the film. Gradually, the shots get longer, and although we did this unconsciously during filming, they developed it a little more during editing.

Prisca Bourgoin: In the film, you chose to film these strong women using a lot of close-up shots. Can you tell us about this choice, about the physical and bodily proximity between the camera, you, the actresses, and these characters?

KA: Well, I think Gessica and I were very much on the same page when it came to choosing these close-ups; we were both instinctively drawn to them. Again, it's interesting, because it's something we didn't really discuss; we shot these close-ups very spontaneously. In any case, what is certain is that we were both fascinated by these women's faces, and I felt that the stakes were high. We needed to contemplate these women with dark skin and magnify them. I had this feeling that we don't see enough dark-skinned faces in our society, so we needed to get closer to them, to contemplate them, almost to caress them.

MB: There is no judgment, even for the character of the sister, who completely adheres to the system. Yet the film never judges her. Is that something you felt while making the film, something you had already thought about during the preparation?

KA: Yes, what was remarkable was that Gessica was actually in each of her characters. Freda's sister is indeed very seductive. She tries to find the richest man possible to escape poverty, and Gessica doesn't judge her at all, because Gessica, at certain times in her life, may have been slightly on that path herself. In any case, it's something she was advised to do throughout her childhood. Gessica was born into an extremely poor family, and it's something she heard for many years. She loves all these characters deeply, she knows each of their reactions, and she is all of these characters. She is Freda, who wants to continue her studies at all costs, but she is also her sister, who seeks to find fortune through love, and she is also the mother with a lot of authority who tries to make her daughters happy despite herself.

CG: There's a very beautiful, very long shot at the end, where we see the mother crying for a long time. It's the kind of shot that speaks intimately to each and every one of us. How did it happen? How did you feel about it and how did it go during filming? I feel like we're given time to be with her and almost cry with her because it's so long, but maybe when you did it, things turned out differently.

KA: Yes, indeed, it's a shot that made the whole team cry in unison, but again, it came about very spontaneously. We didn't really see it coming. In fact, this shot wasn't written in the script, no one knew how the film would end. On the day we shot that sequence, Gessica finally told me that there were more shots than planned. We were running very late, and the job of a cinematographer in those moments is to announce that the sun is going down and there's not much time left. That was my role, and I did it. So we simply decided on this shot in a very short time. I didn't even know it was just on the mother's face. Gessica told me, and I announced that it was the only shot possible before nightfall. The actress did the shot: no one knew what was going to happen, and she gave us this incredible sequence. The whole team cried, at least Gessica and I did, and many others I think. At the end, I asked Gessica what she had said to Fabiola Remy, the actress. She said, "But I didn't say anything to her."

CG: It was magnificent, and it reminds me completely of what I experienced as a spectator when you presented the film at Cannes. That unique image at the end of the film, which I've never seen anywhere else, the whole team on their knees, in each other's arms, crying, that incredible shared emotion.

KA: Yes, I think most of the audience was crying that day. Fabiola Remy, that great actress, achieved something.

Archive of Rébecca Zlotowski: "The very contemporary interest in asking whether this is a women's film: there's a kind of question mark that would be to ask ourselves: can we create otherness in relation to the culture that was dominant until then? And very often we say women's film to mean a film of otherness, that is to say, a film that is unlike others, particularly in the way it treats female characters. Because we have realized that our dominant culture, the one I grew up with, which has been my source like many, many of us, is a culture that has been mainly, overwhelmingly masculine."

MB: We just heard an excerpt from an interview conducted by Lucille Commeaux from the France Culture podcast Les Masterclasses, in which Rebecca Zlotowski compares the female gaze to a gaze of otherness. Karine, does this term "otherness" mean anything to you?

KA: Indeed, I think that's what cinema brings us: otherness. In other words, cinema reaches out to others and helps us discover them. And I think that the female gaze is necessarily different, since cinema has been predominantly created by men throughout history. The female gaze is the component that has been hidden from us, that we may have been missing for a long time, and so it is necessarily deeply cinematic.

CG: You're making a connection that we don't often make: you define cinema as a place of otherness, so the female gaze is almost at the forefront of this cinema. I'm provoking a little, but...

KA: In any case, I greatly appreciate the work of female cinematographers and often find it even more surprising than the work of men, on average, even though one should never generalize. But yes, I think that the female gaze, which has long been neglected, is much more original today because we've had less access to it, in fact. I really believe that. Just like the perspective of Gessica Genéus, who is a Haitian woman born into extreme poverty. It's a perspective that tells us a lot about our world, and it's the one that the selectors at the Cannes Film Festival wanted to see. It's one of the most interesting perspectives on our world today.

CG: We've talked about the female perspective, but as a female cinematographer, when you're called because you're a woman, how do you feel about that?

KA: When I'm offered a film because I'm a woman, I understand the issue: many female directors have told me that they felt uncomfortable with cinematographers, that they sometimes felt they lacked a little respect. I think that in our society right now, relations between men and women aren't sufficiently peaceful, and that a female director may feel more listened to by a female cinematographer—that's a reality. Sometimes I am offered films in which the female characters need privacy. For example, I have had the opportunity to film migrant women, sometimes even during their appointments at the maternity ward. And here again, I believe that for the moment, a woman feels much more comfortable with another woman. What's sad at the moment is that, as a general rule, people tend to trust a male cinematographer more, and it's on this kind of subject that we can see what a woman can bring to the table. For now, that's where we are. But in any case, I think that in our society, being a female cinematographer can be an asset.

MG: It can be an asset, but don't you sometimes feel trapped by this idea of the female gaze?

KA: In any case, there remains a major problem, which is that at the moment, there are perhaps around 10% female cinematographers, and that figure is scandalous. For now, we are extremely discriminated against, and the ideal situation would be for us to be called upon no matter what, even when the films are not intended for women. That would be ideal, but that's how it is. For now, I understand that we might be called more easily for certain films. I would just like women to be trusted as much as men in our society, but that's going to take a while.

CG: When we talked about traps, we were also referring to a situation you didn't mention, which is when you're called because you're a woman by a director, male or female, who may have preconceived ideas about what the female gaze is. That's what we're exploring in these podcasts: what do we feel in our practice? What is projected by society? There are certainly some among us who have been called because they are women, by men who are not at all extremely feminist, but who have this idea of the existence of a female perspective. Is that something that speaks to you?

KA: I really believe in the richness of the female gaze. It's something I feel in my work as a cinematographer. Women have been oppressed enough in our society that today, a woman who picks up a camera has a subtlety and richness of vision that goes beyond the dominant clichés. That's a reality. I think that as long as women are oppressed, the female gaze will bring something extra, just as the gaze of a Haitian woman brings something very rich compared to that of a Western woman. So yes, I really think that the female gaze has something extra.

CG: When we started talking about the female gaze, some of us said that since women as a whole have spoken much less than men, they have had, from generation to generation, much more time to look. And so, inevitably, all that time spent looking, at some point, is expressed somewhere. It's something I also believe in very much, this ability to spend time looking at things very closely—which is not necessarily something that men are denied; there are men who can look, of course. But here, it's true that even in our own lives as little girls and teenagers, there are lots of moments when we express ourselves less and just look.

KA: Yes, absolutely. And we have this ability to question clichés. I think that, on average, a male cinematographer will continue with the kind of dominant aesthetic that he has always been comfortable with. A woman will want to question all that. She will want to represent things differently. She will clearly want to move towards aesthetics that are outside the dominant clichés.

Prisca Bourgoin: Do you think that because you are a woman, your relationship with your subjects, whether they are actresses or documentary subjects, is precisely non-judgmental and therefore more attentive, and that there is something more that can be conveyed by the actresses or your documentary subjects? Do they feel freer to speak because you are also non-judgmental?

KA: Yes, absolutely. I've often felt in documentary filmmaking that the fact that I'm a woman calms things down a lot. There's a tension that eases, because there's, I don't know how to say it, less tension. Women generally make people less stressed. Not necessarily for the right reasons, but it's an asset in documentary filmmaking.

CG: Has your perspective changed over the course of your career?

KA: Yes, I think my perspective is constantly evolving. What's exciting is that each filmmaker takes us into a different world. So, yes, I feel that each film nourishes me and gives me additional skills. One thing I question a lot is the representation of actresses in cinema. Like most cinematographers, I tend to glorify actresses perhaps a little more than actors, or at least to erase any small signs of aging that might appear, to be very attentive, to show them in the most flattering light possible. I question this because it's an aesthetic that has been promoted by Hollywood cinema for a long time. I wonder how to do things differently. In any case, I feel that I am evolving in this regard. What is certain is that I tend to try to enhance both men and women equally. I try to restore justice in this regard. I still need to evolve to find a happy medium for showcasing these women, because for me, the face is still the reflection of the soul. But perhaps I need to accept certain imperfections, certain signs of aging that we have been taught not to show. I still have a long way to go on that front.

MG: A few years ago, the Me Too movement changed the way... Well, the questions we ask about the representation of women in cinema, the way they are filmed, among other things. Do you feel that there is a before and after? Is this something you have felt in your practice or not?

KA: Yes, absolutely. Me Too has allowed us to be much more vocal in our demands because we've realized how serious the situation is. We wanted to change things more quickly, to assert ourselves, to dare to speak out, to denounce. Me Too helped speed up a lot of things. And it's true that the Femmes à la caméra collective was created in the aftermath of Me Too, in fact.

CG: Absolutely, absolutely. Which work embodies the female gaze for you?

KA: For me, it would be Éric Zonca's La vie rêvée des anges (The Dream Life of Angels), whose director of photography is Agnès Godard. It's a film I love to watch again when I'm preparing for a shoot. It inspired me a lot, especially for the love scenes. I find it very interesting how she films love scenes in very bright light, with a lot of humanity and a sense of detachment. In fact, it's not just about sensuality or desire. She contemplates these beings, she lights them in a slightly too raw way, with a little too much light. She really questions what love between a man and a woman is. These sequences are truly absolute references for me. In general, in the film, she has a way of lighting these faces that makes the title of the film completely obvious: The Dreamlife of Angels is a heavy title to bear, and Agnès Godard, through her lighting, through the way she sublimates the faces of these two women, achieves something universal and deeply human.

MG: Thank you. There are still very few female cinematographers when you look at the film industry as a whole.

CG: 10, 11% for a very long time.

MG: Yes, that's not very many. How do you see the future in this regard? Are you optimistic?

KA: I'm extremely optimistic. I think there will be more and more female cinematographers because women are becoming more and more free in their minds. I know that when I wanted to be a cinematographer, at no point did I consider the possibility of being discriminated against. I then realized that there was still a huge glass ceiling, but I was naive enough not to see it coming, and I think many young women will continue to pursue this career. Many future female cinematographers will believe in it and, naively, they will try and they will succeed. A few decades ago, there were very few female cinematographers in France, but today there are more of us, even if the percentage remains ridiculously low. Today, young women are becoming more and more liberated in their minds, and naturally they will become cinematographers without question.

CG: Thank you, thank you Karine for your wonderful encouragement. That's great! We're here both to say that things are going badly and, above all, to say that they're going well, and I think that the future is indeed open. It's difficult, but it's not closed. It's nice of you to say that, it makes me feel good.

KA: Yes, I sense that in this new generation, which is increasingly free and which points out to us that all our cinematic references are full of clichés, Godard's films and others. They point things out to us, so I think they'll be cinematographers.

CG: Well, thank you for this fascinating interview. We would also like to thank Radio RapTZ and Pierre Petiotte for allowing us to record it. Thank you to Valérie Potonniée for providing the technical support. Thank you also to Prisca for her contributions, who has integrated superbly into our team. You can find all the episodes of T’as de beaux yeux tu sais on the Radio RapTZ website. Don't forget to follow Femmes à la caméra on social media and see you soon for the next episode.

MG: And a thought for Emilie Dequenne, who passed away yesterday.