Body switch, identity, and male gaze: Interview with Arthur Harari

David Zimmerman is about to turn 40; he’s a photographer, but no one knows that. Even though he hardly ever leaves the house, some friends drag him to a crazy party. There, he spots a woman in the crowd, can’t take his eyes off her, and follows her…. A few hours later, David wakes up and he’s in the strange woman’s body.

How did you go about working on this adaptation of a graphic novel?

It took me some time to get a handle on my own vision, as initially, it was my brother Lucas’s story. I realized that the power of the narrative could be multiplied tenfold through the use of realism. Even though what’s happening is impossible, I wanted the film to function like a trap where you end up feeling as though it’s entirely possible. I eliminated anything that undermined that plausibility or that sense of reality, right up to the end of the editing process. And also, the ending is different.

“I wanted the ending of the film to be as unsettling as possible, to be beyond words.”

This realistic aspect is also reflected in how the film is staged…

I wanted to do a body switch, which is a genre in its own right, tending generally to the comic, into something more realistic. The staging allows you to go a very long way with this and elicit physical sensations — feelings of anxiety and dizziness — that were incredibly stimulating for me, and to film locations, too. It’s a film about people and their bodies, but also about urban spaces, how places change over time, and about people who eventually end up looking like those spaces. I’m very interested in the urban environment, and a city is all about transformation, layers of history that disappear before our eyes. As soon as you get outside the city limits, there’s a kind of erosion that can sometimes be a little disturbing. I grew up in the suburbs, and watched as things gradually disappeared, building by building. It’s something that I am really moved by.

At the start, Niels Schneider is unrecognizable. My impression was that you had transformed him into your brother…

Yes, it was partly a conscious decision. I didn’t think he would look so much like my brother. In fact, the photos of the character’s father in the movie are photos of my brother. We knew we were going to transform Niels, and he himself wanted to become someone else. Then he had to become this young woman, but also accept that the body he was inhabiting was no longer his own. There was something very powerful about that, as if it were a journey he had to take. With Niels, we worked on certain things, but there was no plastic surgery, no fake noses… we worked on his hair and weight loss. Beyond that, it was all about physical transformation. I was amazed by his ability to become someone else — he really went for it. I think even he was very unsettled. It was difficult, but he used that difficulty to his advantage.

If we talk about Léa Seydoux, there’s a scene where David, who is now in this new female body, examines every inch of her with a small mirror. What issues did you have to consider when filming this sequence?

Actually, it’s me, a man, filming a woman. This woman is playing the role of a man looking at this woman’s body, and she’s looking right at it because she’s looking at her own nakedness, right down to her genitals. For me, it wasn’t about shying away from the male gaze. There’s even a dual male gaze, mine and David’s character’s. Except that we ran everything by Léa. It was a kind of co-direction. We didn’t film anything she didn’t want to do, obviously, and she was the one controlling the mirror. I then showed her these scenes during editing, since we had agreed that she needed to approve everything and be able to reject anything she didn’t want to show. I think it’s a scene with a male gaze. I can’t deny it, but the idea was to put that tool in the actor’s hands as much as in the viewer’s and the character’s.

What aspects of these body transpositions — and what they reveal about gender and identity — resonated with you?

It’s exciting to explore the idea of changing bodies. It’s about changing bodies, sex, and gender identity. Through fiction, we were able to question what kind of impact a shift like this could have, to answer the questions that children sometimes ask themselves: Why was I born into this family, to this mother and father, in this body? Why am I here, in this city? What if I were somewhere else? What if I’d been born a woman? In the end, none of it makes sense, it’s all really weird. The fiction enables this shift to happen, and it’s extremely productive. My hope is that the film will move people emotionally.