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In the northern Alps, Anne, Hélène and Suzanne take turns to look after a mountain refuge. As the seasons pass, hikers, both men and women, come and go. Stories are born and unravel, leaving each of them facing silence.
Forêt ivre is a rather impressionistic film... little is explained. The viewer gradually discovers an atmosphere and a place before a drama unfolds.
Robin Fresson : It is a project that gives a certain confidence to the places and characters. With a fictional element that is almost sufficient in itself... and it is from this succession of symbols and repetitions that the story is constructed...
I should tell you first that the film was shot based on a simple five-to-six-page document. There’s never been a traditional script for it. The project was financed on this six pages, thanks to the support for small-scale productions from the Wallonia Film Centre. Personally, I had already worked with Manon on two of her previous short films, and I was already familiar with her world. Haute-Savoie, for example, the Alps region where she shot her previous films...
And particularly for this project, this location, a refuge she knows very well, having worked there herself several times during the season. There is a very personal side to the film, which was also reflected in its production. Manon worked with the actresses using notes, monologues and dialogues, without necessarily sharing them with the rest of the team. My entry point into the film remained essentially a simple, factual description of each sequence, or a list of more "documentary" elements relating to each part. A sort of list of actions, of moments that she then distributed throughout the narrative to convey the situations, the sensations of the places, the emotions. She weaves a narrative web, in which there remain areas of secrecy, around which we can linger as cinematographers, sometimes capturing this or that element. But without necessarily seeking to know or explain everything.
There are three films in one, performed by three different women. But in a single place that brings them together...
RF : Taking into account both these three stories linked by the place and the desire to capture the changing seasons, the decision was made to shoot the film in chronological order. The experience of the location gradually guided us in the making of the film. Indeed, the gestures and habits are not the same depending on the season. The colours also change : from the soft green of spring to the yellow-green of summer and then to the white of winter.
A first session in June 2024 was done with a very small team, in documentary conditions (alone with my focus puller), mainly to discover the location and learn how to film it. These are, for example, the first sequences of the film, when the character of Anne (Salomé Richard) arrives and opens the shelter to prepare it to welcome the public. After this first week, we waited until the height of summer to return to the site and shoot a long three-week session covering both the rest of the first part and the entirety of the second, where the character of Hélène takes over (Aurélie Petit). Finally, after a break, we returned in autumn, just before access to the refuge became too difficult. This last session was scheduled to film the winter part with Suzanne (Anne Coesens). There was an element of uncertainty, with the wait for snow. Then one morning, we suddenly woke up to find 50cm of powder snow around us. The signal was given to complete the last part of the film !
Another special feature is that it is the first film shot on film...
RF : The 16mm format was chosen primarily because Manon has an handcrafted approach to film-making. Our two other filming experiences together were done this way, as were these previous fiction films. First of all, because everybody’s focus on what is happening in front of the camera. And since there isn’t really a script, we move forward step by step in the film. It’s much more a question of feeling, whether each shot feels right.
The quality of the video tap from the 16mm camera we had was really rough, and we didn’t have an external digital recorder that would have allowed us to review the work. You have to be completely with the actors on every take, through the flickering of the shutter, so that you can then decide together whether the emotion is there... Or if this or that distracts you from the scene. For example, in the documentary-style parts, the way non-actors interact with the frame. Or when I light night or interior scenes, the question of whether the lighting distracts from the mood. In fact, Manon doesn’t talk about non-actors, she talks about "natural actors", which says a lot about her relationship to directing and the cinema she refers to.
It was a very emotional way of framing, being on the lookout for the rhythm of each shot, and with the pressure of not being able to shoot too many takes. We kept track of the film, but as the film was being shot, we could never be sure we would have enough.
Even in hindsight, imagining shooting this film digitally would seem so different to me... Both in the approach and in the result.
Working from impressions that you accumulate is different from visualising things accurately in real time. There’s this feeling of filling up the film bag every day, moving forward with a lot of the unknown, without seeing what you’re capturing on it. And everyone on the film gradually takes on all these sensations, these impressions that we collect...
Did you have any references in preparation ?
RF : Manon draws a lot. These sketches are a basis for discussion, rather than plans to be reproduced as a storyboard. For example, they allow us to discuss each character’s relationship with the mountain.
The chalet that served as our natural setting (the Refuge d’Ubine) is nestled against the north face of a large cliff (Mont Chauffé). And the question that immediately arises is how to film this enormous mass that extends beyond the frame... Little by little, a path emerged, from character to character. The first protagonist, Anna, who wants to leave the place where she grew up, no longer even looks at it. The cliff is certainly present in the background, but it remains abstract, never filmed in its full height. In the second part, the character of Hélène has a more concrete connection to Mont Chauffé, which she observes with concern. This leads us to scrutinise the rocky outcrops overlooking the chalet a little more closely. We film its details, a bit like scars...
Finally, when the character of Suzanne arrives, winter also arrives, and we suddenly discover Mont Chauffé in all its glory. Of the three women, she is the one who is not from here ; and so she discovers this refuge, this mountain... And learns to feel at home there.
It was exciting to try to find the best way to position the camera each time, in the valley or in the refuge, to bring this relationship with the mountain, with this place, to life on screen.
It takes time. And as you walk along the paths, you realise that just a few steps can suddenly change your perspective and your relationship with the landscape.
The film was shot with a fairly long focal length... Isn’t that the most effective when you’re surrounded by mountains ?
RF : I filmed everything with an Angénieux 7-81mm HR zoom lens, often favouring 20 to 25mm. I agree with you : when you find yourself facing the mountains, you quickly realise that extending the focal length gives the image a third dimension. For this film, I hardly ever went below 12mm, to maintain a certain sobriety in the look. The question was to find the right distance between the camera and each of our protagonists, knowing that we were on our feet the whole time.
As for the emulsions, I would have liked to simplify things and start with fewer choices, as we were a very small team. But in the end, I used a stock of 50D for all the wide exterior shots. The idea was to have maximum definition and detail when the characters were "caught" in the landscape. I think using a large aperture in the daytime exterior sequences would have been counterproductive for this film. On the other hand, it was necessary to allow the eye to search for depth, to read the landscape as much as the character. So I often shot at f5.6-8, maintaining the greatest depth of field I could. I remember asking my camera assistant very often if Mont Chauffé was in focus behind our actresses...
The rest of the shoot was done in 250D, both for daytime and night-time interiors, so as not to create a big difference in grain. Only a very small stock of 500T was taken along for safety’s sake, but in the end it was hardly used. We very quickly decided to use day for nights. And speaking about those scenes, it was an interesting challenge for the film : in the sense that we had to accept a certain artificiality, even though we were taking a naturalistic approach during the day. But what made it coherent was that these night-time moments corresponded precisely to the scenes where the characters found themselves alone. They were no longer interacting with others, but connecting with themselves, their stories, their secrets. This inner solitude justified, in a way, a more assertive visual approach.
And in terms of lighting ?
RF : In a refuge, the windows are small and the walls thick to protect against the cold. And in this one, the interiors were covered with dark wood. Added to this was the rocky outcrop overlooking the refuge from a height of 400 meters...
So, from the outset, it was necessary to light even the interiors during the day, while maintaining consistency with the naturalistic approach of the staging.
In the third part, the arrival of a strange traveller played by Yoann Zimmer disturbs the tranquillity that had settled between the character of Suzanne (Anne Coesens) and the place. The film takes a new direction and becomes much more dialogue-driven, sometimes even filmed in shot-reverse shot, with these two characters gradually discovering each other. The complexity for me was shooting almost all of their scenes in the same space : the main room of the refuge. I’m thinking in particular of the final night scene between Yoann and Anne, where the characters open up to each other. They sit next to the crackling stove and talk to each other in the darkness of the room. I had to support this fictional element without betraying the naturalistic and documentary style that had fueled the film from the beginning. I had to find the right balance by highlighting their faces without the artificiality detracting from the feeling of being in the refuge.
This is where the Light Bridge lights really helped me to create a sufficiently soft and directed light. The idea was to give the impression that it was the ambient light from the bulbs that we had seen throughout the film above the tables in the refuge, but without over-illuminating the white wall against which Anne was leaning. Using a combination of a Dedo LED bouncing successively off two Light Bridge reflectors, I achieved sufficient softness and level to light her and support this final, important and powerful monologue. We also had a slew of Astera and Nyx bulbs to complete the setup.
We had carefully considered the weight and size of the lighting kit beforehand, knowing that we would have to bring everything back down on a sledge once the snow came and the roads became inaccessible during the third session. A generator installed in the refuge allowed us to recharge the batteries and ensure a minimum power supply on site.
I must admit this refuge, with all its wooden beams, was ultimately very conducive to various attachments and allowed us to reproduce fairly natural atmospheres. Even with 250 ISO film. The only constraint was the need to film and live self-sufficiently for about ten days in the setting that served as our accommodation. Dismantling and then reassembling installations on a daily basis between shots and the team’s daily life.
It was a rather peculiar experience, in the middle of the mountains, almost cut off from the world...
(Interview by François Reumont for the AFC)
