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The Shade of Your Shadow

Unable to face her son’s act of sexual abuse, Catherine strengthens her odd relationship with him.

synopsis

Catherine, 43, is unusually close with her son Clément, 12. Not only do they share the same passion for classical music and the cello, but Clément is also his mother’s confidant, listening to her dissatisfaction with other relationships. Being with Clément is the only time Catherine feels that everything is fine and sweet. One day at the swimming pool, Catherine sees a girl push him away, and thinks her son is being bullied again. Panicked by this event and Clément’s silence about it, she watches him more closely to see what’s going on. Clément’s school accuses him of sexual assault. Catherine needs to confront the boy. When she finally does, she realises she is jeopardising the closeness of their relationship. She cannot bear this and backs down, convincing herself that the accusations against Clément are fake. External accusations are levelled at Clément and Catherine feels the need to withdraw the boy from all his activities. Oddly, she finds that this ultimately pleases her, as mother and son now spend more time together. But Catherine’s inability to establish healthy boundaries within their relationship makes the situation more and more ambiguous for Clément.

Director’statement

The Shade of Your Shadow addresses the issue of incestuousness, an excessive and improper intimacy within a relationship, which can be just as destructive as incest itself. In the film I take Catherine’s point of view, to draw a portrait of a character with a very singular psychology. Faced with her son’s actions, which remind her of her own past, Catherine gradually immerses herself in denial, finally kidnapping her son to avoid confronting an escalating situation. The film explores the need and desire not to see, pushed to the extreme. By providing contextual elements of Catherine’s family, I also want to communicate a sense of the power of the trans-generational aspects at work in the characters. To best portray the feeling of denial, my directorial ambition is to completely inhabit Catherine’s point of view, with long follow-ups, slow motion, and impressionist touches, stylistically close to Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park.

TFL PROGRAMME:
ScriptLab 2023

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