How did this come about? I thought it rocks the boat. After a while, we finally managed to get it funded and we did it. But that and the dialogue were a bit of a challenge for them. And I knew all of the [actresses we cast] because I had worked with them individually on other projects, but when they were much younger.
And they knew each other, but very little from auditioning [together] sometimes, and there has to be this friendship that comes up without it being forced. Knowing of your own acting background, was there anything you do for actors that you may have wanted from a director yourself?
It was a bit of a tough call for us because there are no adults in the movie. I had to take them apart and work [individually] and we did a lot of table work and rehearsals and we prepared things very much along the way before we started shooting because I knew I was not going to have a lot of time [once we got to set]. So your ear has to be very sharp, otherwise, it falls off. Were there any lenses you were using to get that effect? I wanted to shoot the movie in black-and-white for several reasons.
One was that I wanted to do something slightly different. The black-and-white is not harsh. All of the light is very natural and [the cinematographer] Alexis Durand-Brault did a very, very beautiful job with these lenses.
Her name is Maria something. How did that come in? Well, there was a different ending. It was written the same way, but not [with] Bollywood choreography, and I thought we needed another way of having good, healthy fun.
