French director Arthur Harari presented one of the most mind-boggling films in Cannes Competition this year with body swap tale The Unknown starring Léa Seydoux and Niels Schneider,
Adapted from a graphic novel Harari co-wrote with brother Lucas Harari, the film revolves around reclusive photographer David (Schneider), who wakes up in the body of the woman (Seydoux) with whom he had a sexual encounter at a party the previous night.
It is the third feature from Harari, who shared the Best Original Screenplay Oscar with partner Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall in 2024, after Dark Diamond and Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle, which played to acclaim in Un Certain Regard in 2021.
“I seem to have the need to find stories in which the characters are at war with reality or have a profound problem with reality,” Harari told the Deadline Studio.
The director added that his aim as director is to create some sort of genuine experience for spectators when they watch his films.
“It’s become kind of difficult… because we’ve seen so many stories, read so many books, there are so many series,” said Harari.
He is an unapologetic about the unresolved nature of the mysteries at the heart of the film.
“The audience has to admit that they will never know, so it deals also with frustration, with the fact that there’s something hidden, there’s something secret, and you have to let go, you have to accept,” he said.
Léa Seydoux said she was drawn to the project for the mixture of the sci-fi story and aesthetic realism.
“Arthur wanted to make a movie that with no special effects and the challenge was to make something believable without like any tricks, and I thought that that was really, really interesting for me,” she said.
This realism extended to portrayal of the bodies of the characters with Seydoux quite laying herself bare to the camera just weeks after giving birth to her second child.
“What’s great about this part is that Arthur gave me the possibility to really use my body as a tool of expression. Women, even now, are seen through the male gaze. They are objectified, sexualized and it’s the first time that I had the possibility to play with my body, to show a body that doesn’t exist in cinema. Most of the time, you see actresses, they’re super skinny, they’re so much in control of themselves… my challenge was to abandon myself,” she said.
Schneider added: “It was so unique to have the fantastic in reality. The subject of body swaps is usually in comedies like Freaky Friday or the Blake Edward movie [Switch]. The vision of the movie was to put the impossible into reality. we had to be really believable.”
To see the full conversation, click on the video above.
The Deadline Studio at Cannes is sponsored by SCAD.
