SKIN FLICK: THE ERIC FALARDEAU INTERVIEW

Thanatomorphose exists within that realm of cinematic visions that challenges even the most ardently cynical of moviegoers. The debut feature from Canadian writer/director Eric Falardeau, it tells the story of a lonely artist (model/actress Kayden Rose) whose body begins to undergo post-mortem decay whilst she is still alive. Like Lynch's Eraserhead or Cronenberg's Rabid, it is a nightmarish work of consummate horror, though also deeply moving. A thoughtful man with an encyclopedic knowledge of the body-horror genre, Falardeau spoke with SCREEN-SPACE about his grotesque but beautiful film...

The artist in Thanatomorphose finds a potent sexuality as her condition worsens. How do interpret the co-existence of these two elements in your work and the horror genre overall?

It is an interesting question because while I was doing researches for Thanatomorphose I’ve found out that there are several states of mind in the mourning process, either when you lost someone or know that you will die. One of the typical reactions a large amount of people tend to have is an increase of their libido to counterbalance the impending death, which is very interesting when you work in the horror genre. It is as if life was fighting death right until the end. And for me it made sense that the main character in my film, who is kind of death inside, slowly comes back to life while her body decays. Her own materiality makes her aware of her existence and that was one of the many aspect I wanted to explore in the film.

Regarding the horror genre overall, sex has always been an important element of the genre for many reasons starting with the transgressive quality inherent to both subjects. I did my Master’s thesis on body fluids in gore and pornography. Both genre focused on the body as a cinematic object and consequently share similar ways of filming and types of storytelling. A lot of renowned directors have made the parallel in their films before me (David Cronenberg, Jörg Büttgereit, Dario Argento to name a few) but I wanted to push this to its logical extremes. Sex, or more aptly reproduction, is the only answer to death.   

We’re only that: flesh and blood. Sex is how we came in the world. Then we die. Between the two, we try to cope with the meaningless of our existence by telling stories and doing what we believe are the best things. In the end, we’re only organic matters, coming from nothing and going back to nothing.

Tell me about the on-set environment. It looked to be a bleak, dark, confined space. Was there ever moments when the relentless nature of the horror or the content of a scene made the work day tough?

That was one of my main tools as a director to put the actors and the crew in the right mood. We had a lot of fun shooting the film but by the end we were all exhausted as much by the work as by the psychological state the film putted us in. I think it shows in the film, the acting, the bleakness, etc.

I think that to properly write, direct, and edit a film you must be in the right emotional state, the one that corresponds to the feeling you’re trying to convey. It must come from the heart. If you don’t feel it as the creator, I highly doubt that you’ll make the right choices. As the great editor Walter Murch once said, emotion is the first rule to follow when editing a film and I think that goes for all the other aspects of production.

The hardest part when making that kind of film is always how much of yourself you put in it and how much darkness in yourself you have to get out to get the proper tone and feeling. That requires a lot of energy.

And, extending the last question, tell me of the relationship between actress and director on a film like Thanatomorphose. You asked Kayden to go to some very dark places in this role, which would have required a huge amount of shared faith and trust.

Kayden and I discussed a lot in pre-production about what I wanted and how I wanted to shoot to get it. She knew that it was going to be difficult. I gave her references to see and feel what Thanatomorphose was about: movies (from Buttgereit’s Nekromantik 2 to Grandrieux’s La vie Nouvelle), books (Camus, Kafka, Dostoeivski), and music (Silver Mount-Zion and the Guild of Funerary Violins). She understood exactly what I was aiming for. She was exhausted but she kept giving all that she had. It was impressive.

We shot the film in chronological order over a 21 days period. We did that for 2 reasons: continuity and special effects. But I think it helped her in feeling the same way as the character, to be as exhausted as the character. It comes across when watching the movie.

Why is ‘body-horror’ still such an effective subset of the horror genre? Why are even the most hardened horror watchers still rattled by scenes of decomposition or body fluids?

For me, great horror films always use the body as an excuse to talk about something else, be it our fears or our human condition. Every body horror film is about the body as an object, a commodity. How do we treat our body and disconnect ourselves of it in the process. And how do we reconnect to ourselves trough our body. Thanatomorphose is a body horror existential film and I had to shoot it in respect to the subject. Horror cinema is one of the most visual genre. It is all about bodies, textures, organic matters, and it main subject is ourselves. What interest me – and I think what interest a lot of horror watchers - is the human condition and this genre allows to explore it in the most extreme ways.