Marie Madeleine: the “Angel or Demon” interview with Gessica Généus

Your film constantly presents the opposition between God and the Devil, the pagan and the sacred, black magic and religion. How did this topic come about? 

I think that it’s the desire to explore our relationship with morality as a people in Haiti. This pull between good and evil, and also this constant judgment stems a lot, in my opinion, from the country’s poverty: we are always looking to find someone or something to blame for what happens to us. We’re always in this duality: either it’s good or it’s bad. And as for me, I create in a more gray area, so it was interesting to observe this dichotomy by counterbalancing it with my own point of view.

What is your own relationship with religion? 

Personally, I find it hard to stick to one type of religion or to something dogmatic because I think that it’s very restrictive, especially when it comes to our relationship with others. Marie Madeleine was one way of exploring that. To ask why there is so much interference in our relationships with others. That’s why there’s no dialogue between Joseph and Jacques [a pastor and Joseph’s father, editor’s note] in the film. We never see them face to face. In my opinion, that’s concrete proof that these two worlds never meet.

The place where we see empathy in Marie Madeleine is the brothel that you used in a completely different sense: here it becomes a safe place compared to the church…

Because there are no taboos. The film isn’t even a distortion of reality; it is reality. I’ve been visiting brothels in Haiti for twenty years now for organization-based campaigns for sexually transmitted infections, or even for purely humane reasons. In the media, we often hear sex workers say, “If I had found a real job, I wouldn’t be a sex worker.” But personally, I’ve never actually heard that. The problem is the taboo. The fact that society has decided that these people don’t deserve to be protected.

Is that why, in the film, the character of Marie Madeleine (who you play) says that she doesn’t want to be associated with a person in the Bible? Why choose this name?

I think that it’s ironic to say that we can write our own stories. Research has shown that the story of Mary Magdalene was constructed long after Jesus Christ. So, I told myself that I too can decide how to construct it. The film is one way to express the fact that she decided to create her own story. A story that is chaotic, insane, incredible, but hers all the same.

Marie Madeleine even transforms herself into more of a protective mother to Joseph, rather than a lover. You don’t introduce any sexuality between them. How does your film look at relationships between men and women?

That’s the relationship I want to transcend. I wonder if this relationship between men and women is also biased and painful because we never really took the time to look at it in a non-sexual way. In friendships, we have time to do it, because there’s no sex involved. In the end, it doesn’t matter if Joseph is gay or not. What matters to me is if there is space to explore who he wants to be. If he and Marie Madeleine speak, it’s because they want to. She needed this man to look at her differently, and he needed to find this space where there’s no taboo.

What influenced you when thinking of the staging for your film? 

I go based on instinct. I need to be right on set, because it’s all about communicating something. Everything you see on screen, whether it’s the actors, the set design, etc., it’s like a soup. The goal is that when the viewers take a taste of this soup, it makes their taste buds explode. Sometimes, when I watch a film, I close my eyes because I need to understand you. I try to understand what combination gave rise to this emotion.

Having participated in the Festival’s La Résidence, and having shared a space with other directors has allowed me to grow immeasurably because this search for freedom particularly comes from having seen so many others before me dare to do it.