This interview has been edited slightly for clarity.
In his new film, Other, co-writer / director David Moreau takes us on a psychologically disturbing journey into paranoia, surveillance, and abuse. Alice (Olga Kurylenko) is forced to come home to her estranged mother’s estate after she dies suddenly. As Alice learns more about exactly why her mother wired up her place with an intricate surveillance system, she digs deeper into her past, and her relationship with her mother. She also learns that something strange is stalking the grounds. It’s a monster of some sort, and it might have ill-intentions toward Alice.
It’s a moving film with plenty of twists and turns. The audience’s paranoia is heightened by the fact that, although there are several supporting characters, we never see their faces. Only Alice’s is visible.
I was incredibly excited to ask director David Moreau a few questions about his movie.
1428 Elm: I’m very curious: was there anything specific that inspired Other for you?
David Moreau: Yes. Actually, some personal family stuff. Not family issues, because the story of this poor Alice is nothing regarding mine. But, I have somebody in my family who is different, you know? I mean, we are all different, but when he’s going out in the street, he’s more different than other people. I saw with time passing that the way people were looking at him changed not from disturbed to okay. But I found that there was something very interesting in questioning how people were looking at difference, and that sometimes it’s a way you’re looking at things that are uglier than what you think it is. And it’s something that was in my mind for several years. It’s a very special movie for me for that main reason.
1428 Elm: I think that Olga Kurylenko was absolutely perfect as Alice. How did you come to cast her, and how did you know she was perfect for the role?
David Moreau: Alice has been put under the light for beauty, which is something that I find kind of awkward with kids. This little pageant stuff that you can see all over the world. I always find it a bit disturbing. And I knew that I would have a deep resonance with an actress who had actually been through -- not beauty pageant stuff, but someone who in a way has been put under the lights. And Olga started her modeling career when she was fifteen, sixteen, something like that. So she knows about how you have to leave your childhood for adulthood. She was taken as a beautiful woman -- that she is, you know -- a bit too soon. And she really got connected to the character because of that. And I wanted a model or a young actor, and the producer spoke to me about Olga, and told me she might be interested. And we met and got along very well. I met her mother, and her mother is the most gentle person I’ve ever met, but she has some connection to the character that for me was very important.
1428 Elm: After filming your last movie [MadS], in one shot, what was it like transitioning back to a more traditional form of filmmaking?
David Moreau: I try always to find a little idea for these movies that I love so much. Even if this one is more traditional, I wanted to find an idea that actually is going to help me to find my path as a director and to have a clear idea of how I think things should be going. The fact that you just see one face except at the end, and I’m not going to spoil it here, was it for me, in a way. You know, in MadS I knew I could tell a story in one shot. And in this movie, I can tell this movie with just one face. It was, for me, a way to get the difficulties I need as a director to find my path. It’s just my way to direct. I think I need to have difficulties, and this one had its difficulty because I knew it was important for the story.
1428 Elm: In addition to Alice’s face being the only one we see, we get all sorts of distortions in order to hide the faces of other characters. What made you want to play with this idea of distortion on so many levels?
David Moreau: To get as close as possible to her character. I needed to feel that she was surrounded with people that you actually cannot really see. And this is a little bit how she sees the world before understanding her own secret. That is, this is deforming your way of perceiving reality. And I think that the fact that everybody’s kind of monstrous, even if they’re not, they’re just normal people, but the way they’re deformed, everybody is monstrous. It’s the way I wanted to tell about how we, the audience, are looking at the unseen. The presence around her. Maybe we think it’s going to be something monstrous, and at the end I hope that the feeling we have is that what we thought was monstrous is actually beautiful. Because if you look at the eyes of the other character at the end, I think there is some some humanity and there is something very beautiful in him. It was always to trick the way we perceive reality, and people around us. And if I have a movie that inspired me regarding how to see reality through different screens, it was really Lost Highway. I think it was always somewhere in my mind. I wanted to try to use the video cameras and all that, in a way that caused the same feelings as an audience when I saw this marvelous movie.
1428 Elm: Yeah, you can definitely tell the Lynchian influences. Very subtly, but you can definitely tell that it’s there.
David Moreau: I don’t want it to be too much on the nose, but he’s one of my favorite directors. I mean, I’ve seen all of his movies like twenty times. So I’m sure that as in love I am with someone else’s work, you always see [the influence], even if you don’t want to. Sometimes you think it’s your idea and you say, “Fuck. Have I seen that somewhere else?” Even movies you haven’t seen for years. And sometimes you see a shot or a prop or something that makes you think, “Oh, I’ve seen that in a movie I saw about fifty-five times!”
1428 Elm: The house is kind of a character itself with the paranoia that surrounds it. Did it take a while to find the right house?
David Moreau: I saw like fifty-five houses before this one. You know, as I don’t use any flashback, it was very important to find that this house was stuck like forty years ago, thirty-five years ago. I mean, the 80’s style. So I knew we had to look for a 70’s or 80’s house. And this one, when I saw the gate open, I knew it was the one. It was such a cool house.
1428 Elm: During the writing and directing of the movie, did you learn anything about the nature of madness?
David Moreau: When you’re stuck in a house with a crew and, again, this always trying to look at faces in a different way. And to look at things the way I wanted the audience to look at it, I think I started to look at people around and reality, myself, in a different way. And Olga was really concerned at the beginning of shooting about going to work with people that you don’t see their faces. And she was concerned for the actors. “Oh it’s tough for them, they’re coming, they’re on set, and you’re never going to show them.” I told her we are showing them in a different way. I mean, we’re not just a face. We’re a body, a gesture, a mind. You can embody a character in different ways rather than showing faces. And Olga was really looking at things in a different way. So I don’t know if it’s madness, but it’s how the spirit of the movie came in our minds.