Director Carmen Jacquier said that the film “Diane’s Paradise”, which premiered in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival, came within the framework of exploring “the dark side of motherhood” and the role of mothers in society. diverse.
The film, which he directed with Jan Gassman, begins with Diane abandoning her newborn at a Zurich maternity clinic and heading to the Spanish seaside resort of Benidorm, without telling anyone. Here she befriends an older woman named Rose, and the two form a temporary bond.
Jacquier says that the idea for the film came from a conversation with a friend who admitted that she had become severely depressed after the birth of her daughter. The woman did not talk about this matter to her friends or family. After Jacquier wrote the first draft of the script, Gassman joined the project and the two began talking to women about their experiences of childbirth and motherhood.
When writing the script, Jacquier says they were “very connected” to Diane and her experience, but when she and Gassman began pitching the project to film financiers and received feedback on the subject of a mother abandoning her child, they “realized how violent it could be.” Be for the sake of others and they cannot have any sympathy for her.
Then they realized that there would be some people who would not be able to accept Diane’s decision. “We had to rethink and rebuild from that moment on, but for us it was very important to be honest with this character,” says Jacquier.
Gassman adds: “The decision to leave the child raises questions such as: Will we be able to do this? What happened to the father? Is he alone? So, we try to deal with these questions, but at the same time we don’t have a moral point of view about them. “The starting point was that she did that, and then she left in that situation, and we don’t want to judge that.”
They told Dorothy De Cone, the actress who plays Diane, that it was “a very brave decision on her part to protect others from who she is right now, and to try to come home when she’s ready,” Gassman says.
“Jannah’s paradise”
Courtesy of Film 2:1
In film, landscapes can be both exterior and interior, Gassman says, referring to a line from Agnès Varda in “The Shores of Agnès,” when Varda says: “If we open people, we will find landscapes.” Therefore, we see Diane exploring her feelings, sexuality, and identity, and this is reflected in the landscapes she travels through. During the bus trip across Europe, Diane began to feel anonymous, and was able to “disappear” into the crowds in Benidorm, “a place where she was trying to rebuild herself,” Gassman says. Opposite Rose’s seaside apartment is an island that reflects Diane’s feelings of isolation and loneliness.
Diane begins to realize that there is something special about Rose. “Sometimes in life, you have that special encounter with someone who could become a part of you or of you in a few years or in the past,” Jacquier says.
“Jannah’s paradise”
Courtesy of Film 2:1
Through her relationship with Rose, Diane sees that despite her decision to leave her child, there is still a nurturing side to her personality. “It was very important to us that Diane was still able to love, still able to care for someone. So, with Rose, there’s the possibility that she might understand something, but that’s not enough and she has to move on, to finally make a decision. But for a few weeks Only with this old woman, who had witnessed something so similar to her, was there such a question of superposition in life: that you are all the people you were during your life. We are so much more than the person we are at this moment. “There is some connection between you now and you In the past and the future, even if you don’t know it in the present.”