Les Intranquilles (The Restless), Or a Couple Under Stress

She tells him and she tells him again: she can’t keep going. However much Leïla may love Damien, however much they might form a nucleus with their son Amine, the lives of this family of three are not an idyll. Because in their daily lives, there is something that occupies a big place: Damien’s bipolar disorder.

It’s not so much the illness that is at the heart of this film as much as it is its consequences on the romantic bond, explains Joachim Lafosse:

By his own admission, the trigger of the illness could have been alcoholism, or cancer. But his experience guided him towards a subject that he knows well: his father, a manic-depressive photographer.

Portrayed by Damien Bonnard, the character has become a painter. The actor studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and still paints. He painted the canvasses in this film, with the help of the artist Piet Raemdonck, whose transposed workshop is one the film’s main settings.

Leïla Bekhti also influenced Joachim Lafosse’s project. Where the director had imagined a character who was subjugated by her husband’s psychosis, the actress brought her own interpretation, that of a strong and resistant woman, however shaken up by the situation.

This involvement of the actors brought Joachim Lafosse towards another type of direction, one less controlled and more involved in trust and observation, right up until the final scene, shot on the final day of filming and guided by the feelings of the two protagonists.