Maniquerville

“I never said to myself: ‘I’m going to make a film about old age’. In fact, I never look for the subject of a film. I ask myself how to film, but never what or who to film. I like being led by an encounter, with a place, a person, or a situation….I had no idea when planning this film that the [Gerontology] Centre was going to move. Loss and disappearance were not what inspired the project….The crucial book for Maniquerville is obviously A la recherche du temps perdu [In Search of Lost Time]. I was in Trouville when I reread a passage at the end of A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleur [Within a Budding Grove], when the narrator sees three trees on the road that fill him with happiness, trees familiar to him but which he can’t quite place. ‘His mind having wavered between some distant year and the present moment’.  We decided with Françoise Lebrun that she would read Proust to the residents. With the Centre’s move far from Maniquerville, people were forced to live, to finish their lives on a site that they had not wanted. What’s more, this new landscape had no ties to their history. It was neither countryside nor seaside, but a peri-urban zone, where the scenery was limited to roundabouts and car parks.” P. C. (Cultiver, habiter, filmer, conversations de Pierre Creton avec Cyril Neyrat, éditions Independencia, 2010)