Couples in all their forms, that’s Joachim Lafosse’s specialty. The Unquiet, in competition at the Cannes Film Festival and presented at Angoulême, brilliantly follows The couple’s economy (2016) and To lose reason (2012). This time the Belgian filmmaker features a family whose father, a painter, suffers from manic depression.
“I wanted my film to be shrouded in tenderness,” insists the director to 20 minutes. It was the relationship between this couple and those they had with their young son that interested me. Joachim Lafosse knows what he is talking about: he was inspired by his own father, a photographer, to write the one played by Damien Bonnard (seen in Wretched by Ladj Ly) facing Leïla Bekhti as a wife who is often patient, but sometimes overwhelmed …
A love story
The Unquiet evoked in the title of the film are not only the patients but also their relatives living in the anguish of a crisis due to stopping taking medication. “I went through the scenario step by step with a psychiatrist so that he could explain to me how to convey my character’s reactions to each event,” says Damien Bonnard to 20 minutes. Not content to study the psychological aspect of the disease, the actor also called on a boxer to help him create the body language of his character, and a painter to know how to stand in front of his paintings.
“There are artists who are able to manage these states to get the creative substance out of them and then take their medication to control themselves,” says Joachim Lafosse. The film is about how the family deals with this behavior. “It’s a love story where everyone must find how far they are ready to go for the other,” insists Damien Bonnard. That’s why The Unquiet moves so much.