Va, Toto !

The arrival of Toto the boar piglet at Madeleine’s place; Vincent’s trip through India and his problems with monkeys; the dreams Joseph has thanks to his sleep apnea machine: these are the tales that Pierre shares with us, tales that summon up, in one way or another, our relations with animals – our other neighbours.

"I did not choose this or that animal; I have always started from real situations. The wild boar, the cats, the monkeys are an integral part of life and therefore of every character’s story. I don’t use trained animals in my films. The stories told by the voices from the off don’t necessarily correspond to the images, which was done to create a resonance effect, to leave an imaginary space between the narrative, between what one sees and the memories that belong to the characters themselves. Having the voices of the main characters spoken by professional actors adds a fictional and novelistic dimension. The voice of Françoise Lebrun for Madeleine was an obvious choice. I relied on Jean-François Stévenin both as an actor and as a director, and on Evelyne Didi, with whom I had already worked to make Sur la voie (2013). And I worked with Rufus, which took me back to Jonas qui aura vingt-cinq ans en l’an 2000 (Alain Tanner, 1976). I think that all of us have something like an internal voice that tells the story of our life. That was ultimately the essence of this film. The professional actors on the screen all live either in Vattetot-sur-mer or in Bénouville: Sabine Haudepin, Yves Lefebvre, Catherine Mouchet, Xavier Beauvois. They are part of the landscape, of my everyday life.”
(Pierre Creton)