Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg in – The Jokers Films
“The French public seems to like the film. Maybe because it’s about freedom, ”Lorcan Finnegan suggested to 20 minutes, during the last
Gérardmer Festival ((
Vosges) In January. The Irish director’s latest feature film, Vivarium, left empty-handed – it was previously presented at the Critics’ Week in Cannes and at the Strange Festival in Paris – but it was very well received by spectators, thrilled by this story of a young couple (Jesse Eisenberg and Imogene Poots) visiting a house before finding themselves literally trapped in a housing estate.
If you describe your film as “the worst nightmare of a heterosexual middle-class couple”, is that right for you?
It’s a good definition (laughs). At the beginning of Vivarium, there is Foxes, a short film that I shot in 2011, in a phantom domain [les « ghost estate » sont des lotissements construits durant la période de croissance économique en Irlande]. All the houses were identical, since it was a question of optimizing space. People bought these houses, then the financial crash occurred and they could no longer repay their loans or resell. They were trapped. The story of the short film was that of a couple entangled in such a situation, but it was nature that wanted to reclaim its rights. I wanted to take up and extend these themes in Vivarium to make it a more universal narrative about the lifestyle of these middle class people in the consumer society, the ideals that are sold to them, the social injunctions they suffer about what to do (be owner, having children, a dog…). I wanted to transcribe a reality while amplifying it to show its absurdity and the nightmarish nature: to work all its life, to repay the loan and to die.
The film seems to take place in a canvas by Magritte. Want to wink at surrealism?
Already in the script, the subdivision was described as resembling Magritte or Chirico, in terms of light and “imperfect” perfection. The idea was that it looks pretty with fluffy clouds, pastel houses, etc … and at the same time disturbing. The place must have looked believable but artificial. There is no wind, rain, insect… We built the facades of three houses in a warehouse in Belgium and the interiors were filmed in the studio in Ireland. Each time, we opted for artificial lighting to reinforce the sanitized and disturbing side. We wanted the colors to look toxic.
Your film is a co-production between Ireland, Belgium and the United States. Did you need well-known actors to allow it to see the light of day?
Yes, it’s a weird film, so to raise the money we needed actors with some commercial value. If it had not been them, we would have looked for similar profiles in terms of notoriety. Imogen Poots came first, she loved the script, found the character and the themes interesting. She signed and then we started to think about who could play Tom. We had a list and we thought that Jesse Eisenberg would be perfect with her. He looks like a normal guy. Imogen knew him, she transferred the script to him from his smartphone while we were having lunch. Two days later, he wanted to meet me in New York and we got along very well.
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