Securite Routiere: The Survivor

My first reaction when I read the script was: ‘Finally, a happy ending!’. These type of films have a tendency to show images that are increasingly shocking, even hard to watch, and I’m not always convinced that making the audience blink will have more impact.

At the end of the day, this film is just an ordinary conversation at the end of a meal. None of the two protagonists leaves the dining room. We go back in time, without jumps. The action has just rewound as if it never happened, because the impact of the words has an immediate consequence, and only the audience is its privileged witness.

The original idea is very powerful. I therefore wanted a directing style that didn’t twist the idea but maximized it in the simplest possible way.

Simplicity is sometimes much more complicated to film than an action film, and I still believe that most good ideas don’t need a flashy directing style, but rather a simple and efficient approach.

The great difficulty of this film was the length of the makeup time for the victim.

Everything is real and we didn’t use any post production. It’s an amazing piece of work that took seven hours in makeup and was a real puzzle.

Everything went remarkably well with the job – we had a very cool French agency, a client who had ‘balls’, and a completely fantastic crew.

And while making the film, I was happy to tell myself, ‘If this film has an impact, be it only for a single viewer, and saves a single life, then it will be a huge success. A personal success.’

Xavier Mairesse
Director, Wanda Productions, Paris