WORLD CINEMA SPOTLIGHT
While the film is based on Camille
Laurens’ 2016 novel Celle Que Vous Croyez,
it was also “nourished”, as the director
puts it, by a real-life incident. “The
strange thing was that at the same time
I was writing the script [with co-writer
Julie Peyr], I was going through a similar
experience,” he admits, “and I used it.”
In other words, he got catfished too.
“This came at a personal moment
at my life where my self-confidence
was rather low,” continues Nebbou. “I
was on my own. I had a three-month
conversation with this woman who
pretended she was someone else, age-
wise, but also her living conditions,
her situation... She even invented the
sickness of her dad, being in hospital.”
Adds Binoche, wickedly: “He was totally
in love and he was obsessed with her!”I
n French director Safy Nebbou’s twisty new thriller, Who You Think
I Am, Juliette Binoche plays Claire, a divorced 50-year-old
university lecturer who gets dumped by her younger lover.
What does she do? Goes all catfish on us. One invented Facebook
profile later, as the younger Clara, she’s luring her ex’s unsuspecting
roommate Alex (François Civil) into a cyber-relationship you just know
is going to end badly.Nebbou eventually discovered the
truth about Lila, his ‘fake’ friend.
“She had trapped someone else in
the profession, and this someone else
phoned me up and said, ‘I have to tell
you that Lila does not exist.’” So is he
more careful now online? “Obviously,yes,” he nods. “But I have to add that
I liked being trapped. Like she says in
the film, in this very moment of my life,
this virtual relationship really gave me
the feeling of being fully alive.”
Fortunately, his experience was
a little less dramatic than the film,
which flirts with the classic ‘bunny
boiler’ terrain of Fatal Attraction at times.
Largely it deals with the psychology
of being middle-aged and feeling
‘invisible’ to the world. “It is the story
of a woman who has been abandoned,
a woman who has stopped being looked
at, both by her partner and society,”
Nebbou says. “And she says it in the
film: I don’t mind dying but I don’t want
to die abandoned.”
Binoche compares the “complex”
role of Claire/Clara to Russian
matryoshka dolls – unearthing one layer
only to find another one underneath.
“Emotionally it was a tough one, but I
enjoyed it – it was kind of playful in a
way,” she notes. As engaging as it was
for her, for Nebbou it was cathartic –
particularly when he finally went back
through all his exchanges with Lila.
“That was very strange to look at my
text messages – it was weird to go over
what I’d lived.” Thankfully, he lived to
tell the tale. JMETA | 8 MAY / WHO YOU THINK I AM OPENS
NEXT MONTH.FAKE BOOK
WHOYOUTHINKIAM I Online obsession
makes for a French Fatal Attraction...
GONECATFISHIN’
Binoche’sClaire
immersesherself
in hermade-up
youngeronline
alter-egoCURZONTOTAL FILM | APRIL 2020 SUBSCRIBEATWWWTOTALFILMCOM/SUBS