Sophie Deraspe tells Geoffrey Macnab about achieving a documentary feel and shooting in the Canadian winter for her Tiger competitor Les Signes vitaux
Canadian filmmaker Sophie Deraspe takes it as a compliment when spectators ask about the frail and elderly hospital patients featured in her second feature Les Signes vitaux (Vital Signs), an international premiere in the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition. Many viewers are startled to learn that these dying patients are, in fact, actors. The Montreal hospital shown in such detail is… a movie set. “I am glad when people ask about that. It means that the mise-en-scene works, and that the art director did a good job.”
Les signes vitaux is about a young, bereaved woman (played by Marie-Hélène Bellavance). As she spends more and more time at the hospital, her relationship with her boyfriend begins to fray. She neglects her studies. There is morbidity, as well as tenderness, in her obsession with these sick old patients on the verge of death.
Bellavance, is a dancer and visual artist. “When I saw her, I saw she was beautiful. She was luminous and she is photogenic – I work behind the camera and so I could set that right at first sight,” the writer-director reflects of her leading actress. “She was beautiful, strong, independent and young but at the same time, she was so vulnerable.”
Like Deraspe’s debut feature, Looking For Victor Pellerin, Les signes vitaux has strong documentary elements. Before shooting began, Deraspe spent many weeks researching the film, meeting patients and carers in palliative care. “I met very generous people… of course, it was a moment where we didn’t want to be intruders. If there were times when people needed their privacy, I would just go away.”
Deraspe shot Les signes vitaux in the middle of winter, in a snowbound Montreal. “It’s always difficult shooting in winter,” the director reflects. “Even in our cinema in Canada, we don’t see winter that much. It’s beautiful and it’s harsh. I thought the image of having to fight winter is interesting in this type of movie.”
Having finished Les Signes vitaux, Deraspe is now writing a script set on an island where the locals live from seal hunting. The writer-director acknowledges that this is contentious subject matter for European audiences. “It’s not a film that wants to do propaganda for or against seal hunting, but I think in Europe, your information is really propaganda against seal hunting and you don’t get quite the real information.” Again, the new film will have a documentary-like feel. “I don’t want to spare people from what it is. Hunting is hunting. But at the same time, most people eat meat. If we eat meat, it means animals are killed.”
More about Les Signes vitaux here.