One of the most artistic movies of FrightFest 2024 is Aurélia Mengin's Scarlet Blue. We chatted to her about this incredible movie before its UK Premiere at FrightFest.
NYX: It’s been a few years since your last feature, Fornacis, what have you been up to since then?
AM: In 2018, I completed FORNACIS, my first feature film, which I wrote, directed, and produced. With this independent art film, I became the first woman from Réunion Island to direct a feature film for cinema, representing a significant symbol and a beacon of hope for the youth of my island who dream of making films. Fornacis was an extraordinary adventure; my film enjoyed great success at international festivals with around thirty official selections abroad and won 9 awards. For two years, I accompanied Fornacis around the world in festivals. It was a revitalizing joy to meet audiences from different countries and answer questions after each screening. After the festival tour, I had the incredible fortune of Fornacis being released on Amazon Prime UK in April 2020. During the lockdown, I was stuck on Réunion Island. For six months, I lived with my parents, Vincent and Roselyne Mengin-Lecreulx, in their fantastic Contemporary Art Space "Le Palais aux 7 Portes" (www.palais7portes.com), which they had entirely built over 40 years. This unique place in the world, dedicated to creation and art, was imagined, designed, and founded by my father, who was an artist and one of the pioneers of Total Art.
In total immersion for six months of creation, I wrote the script for my second feature film, SCARLET BLUE. Once the writing was finished, we spent a year and a half unsuccessfully searching for funding to make SCARLET BLUE. On September 11, 2021, my father, with whom I had always been incredibly close, underwent emergency surgery in the middle of the night. He was saved just in time but was diagnosed with a strong stage 4 cancer. From that moment, my family’s life plunged into horror and fear. A new daily routine emerged, filled with hospital appointments and heavy chemotherapy sessions. Despite his suffering, my father Vincent never complained, not once, and continued his creative work with the determination, strength, and enthusiasm of a wrestler in the ring.
In December 2021, my father asked me to make SCARLET BLUE while he was still alive. So, I decided to make my film despite the lack of support from regional bodies and the national film center. I was fortunate that private investors from the Basque Country believed in my work and offered to finance the shoot on the condition that I film in the Basque Country. In April 2022, I took a plane to the Basque Country, which I discovered for the first time. For two months, I did location scouting and wrote a new version of SCARLET BLUE adapted to the settings I had found. With a very small budget, I had to shoot SCARLET BLUE in just 19 days, even though the ambitious script required seven weeks of filming. Challenge accepted and accomplished!
My greatest joy was being able to bring my parents with me to the shoot. Despite his cancer, my father made the making-of documentary for the film, as he had done for 20 years on all my sets. My father also has a small role in SCARLET BLUE. Once the filming was completed, my parents and I returned to Réunion Island. My father could continue his chemotherapy, and I began the long post-production work, which lasted almost two years. I am particularly grateful to my friend David Bichet, who created especially for SCARLET BLUE the first feature film post-production studio on Réunion Island. Thanks to him, I could do all the post-production of the film just 10 minutes away from my parents' Contemporary Art Space without having to travel to Paris.
For 15 years, I have worked with the same film editor, Bruno Gautier, and the same sound designer and composer, Nicolas Luquet. Both reside in Paris and came to join me on Réunion Island to experience this unique post-production adventure on my island. My colorist, Daniel Santini, also based in Paris, with whom I had done the color grading for Fornacis, also joined us on Réunion Island. For several months, we all lived with my family in my parents' contemporary art space. Seven days a week, we worked on image editing, then color grading, sound editing, and mixing the film. None of us will ever forget the incredible synergy, complicity, and kindness of those long post-production months, isolated together on my island in my parents' magical space, immersed in creation, and the Blyd Factory post-production studio where we spent all our days and nights. Making a film requires several years of work, and it’s even longer for independent cinema.
Parallel to my career as a director, I founded and have been running for 14 years the MEME PAS PEUR International Fantastic Film Festival of Réunion Island, held in Saint-Philippe, the magnificent volcanic town at the heart of the Wild South of Réunion. MEME PAS PEUR is one of the most renowned fantastic film festivals in the Indian Ocean region. For each edition, we program around sixty short and feature films from about twenty different countries, all screened for the first time in Réunion. Every year, my co-organizer Nicolas Luquet and I work for many months on film selection and organizing each edition. As a director, it is crucial for me to be committed to democratizing international fantastic cinema.
MEME PAS PEUR will celebrate its 15th anniversary in February 2025, and we are preparing for the 15th edition of the festival.
NYX: Where did the idea for Scarlet Blue come from?
AM: Since my first short films and also in my first feature film Fornacis, I have been exploring the presence of the double, twin-ship, and the ghost. A recurring theme in my filmography is the confusion between hallucinations, fantasies, and reality. I build universes where the real and the surreal are treated almost in the same way and on the same scale, to create a true loss of bearings for the characters in my films and also for the audience. From the beginning of the writing process, I had a very clear idea of two themes that would be at the heart of SCARLET BLUE: schizophrenia and hypnosis. I also knew that I wanted to treat schizophrenia not in the classical way in a hospital, but rather use it as a gateway to surrealism, as the purest expression of imagination and creation.
I also knew from the start that SCARLET BLUE would have as a backdrop the complex mother-daughter relationship, seen between the character Alter and her mother Rosy. I wanted to address the chaos generated by family secrets. This is why, as the hypnosis sessions progress, the healer Léandro Lecreulx discovers that Rosy is hiding a terrifying secret from her daughter, which is partly the origin of her schizophrenia. Strangely, despite the difficult themes addressed in the film, the scriptwriting process was quite smooth and clear with very few rewrites. All the characters had well-constructed and well-defined personalities. During the writing, I had in the background several adolescent memories of one of my best friends who had her first schizophrenic episodes at around 16. For several years, she experienced terrifying and violent experiences, misunderstood and plunged into great suffering with partial amnesia. The doctors were powerless and her entourage disarmed. Mental illness creates a void and solitude around the victims. I tried to transcribe into my artistic universe the violence of the mental illness suffered by the character Alter, her solitude, her absences and disconnections from reality, and the helplessness of her mother Rosy.
NYX: Did it take long to get the script exactly how you wanted it?
AM: The writing of the screenplay was quite smooth and straightforward, without any struggle. However, the final rewrite of the script required a real intellectual gymnastics to adapt it to the filming location in the Southwest of France, in the French and Spanish Basque Country, without losing the essence and spirit of the original screenplay. My goal in this rewrite was to successfully maintain the strong and surreal universe of the film despite the change in the filming location. Initially, I had written SCARLET BLUE to be filmed in a cold, northern country like Canada or England.
NYX: Did you write with a cast in mind?
AM: When I wrote the screenplay, I had no casting ideas in mind.
The first actress I chose for the cast was Patricia Barzyk, who beautifully portrays Rosy, the intrusive and mysterious mother of Alter. Then, it was necessary to cast two actresses who could look exactly alike to play twin sisters and alternate in portraying the character of Alter, who is played by two actresses throughout the film. It was also essential that these two actresses resembled Patricia Barzyk, their mother in the story. Alter is a single character portrayed by two actresses, who have such a striking resemblance in both face and body that, once made up and in costume, it is nearly impossible to tell them apart. I believe the performance is very successful!
To bring schizophrenia and personality splitting to life, I approached the character of Alter from two distinct facets: the first facet represents Alter when she is connected to reality, embodying the realistic part of the character, portrayed by Amélie Daure. The second facet represents the schizophrenic double, which encompasses all sequences where Alter experiences hallucinatory crises, primal urges, nightmares, and moments of madness. This borderline facet of Alter is played by Anne-Sophie Charron. Addressing schizophrenia in this way naturally and viscerally creates the internal fracture of the character of Alter, which is materialized on screen by two different actresses, thus truly capturing the syndrome of memory loss and personality dissociation.
For the male casting, I chose Italian actor Stefano Cassetti, who embodies with much charisma and depth the character of Léandro Lecreulx, the mysterious hypnotist healer whose consultation room is located deep within a volcanic cave. I had seen Stefano's performances in other films and knew he could bring a unique quality to the healer—both unsettling, connected to intangible forces and energies like a guru, and cold yet benevolent. This character is complex and requires a broad range of acting skills. Stefano and I worked extensively on developing the character, but without ever doing text rehearsals. I never conduct readings or rehearsals before filming with actors because I want them to maintain the freshness and spontaneity of their performances.
The ultra-masculine and flamboyant character of El Gringo is portrayed by Emmanuel Bonami, an actor I know well, as he played the lead male role in Fornacis. Emmanuel is an actor with a strong sense of interpretation who adds a touch of irony to his role as a sexual predator. Emmanuel also possesses the rare ability to be fully immersed in the direction, leading to unexpected emotions that enrich his characters. My father, Vincent Mengin-Lecreulx, plays the owner of the gas station where Chris, the character I portray, works and where she will experience a passionate story with Alter. Lastly, the luminous twin sisters Anouk and Capucine Collette, who play Alter and her twin sister as children, are also part of the cast. It is their first time acting in a film. They were very attentive and thrilled to be part of this adventure.
NYX: The style and colour scheme of the movie is very precise, how hard was it to get the correct tones?
AM: As I mentioned earlier, my father was an artist, painter, sculptor, and also created art films. I grew up surrounded by artworks, and my view was shaped from a very young age by painting and the interplay of colors. Since my very first short films, the strong use of color in lighting construction has been omnipresent in my work. Color is a central element in my films, not only in creating light but also in costumes, sets, and makeup. I handle the artistic direction in my films because I have a very precise vision of the final aesthetic result from the moment of writing.
SCARLET BLUE is built around two primary color axes that are the essence of the film: blue and red. The challenge was to explore and utilize the full spectrum of shades of blue and red throughout the film without one overpowering the other. Blue symbolizes truth, healing, forgiveness, and serenity, while red represents fear, lies, schizophrenia, and sexuality. I aimed to blend these two strong primary colors throughout the film, achieving a balance and harmony. The screenplay is very detailed, with extensive descriptions of sets, costumes, lighting, and camera movements. During the writing process, I create an aesthetic bible that includes about hundreds reference photos of sets, fabrics, materials, paint, hairstyles, cars, and more. This bible accompanies me throughout the film's preparation, helping me to deepen the aesthetic construction of the film's universe.
During location scouting, I am always accompanied by Nicolas Luquet, and together we take hundreds of photos of the various locations we visit. Once the sets are confirmed, I meticulously plan the lighting design for each set using neon lights, which become a foundational architectural element of each set. I then share my reference bible, set photos, and lighting design with my Director of Photography, Sylvain Rodriguez, so he has all the elements needed to create the film’s lighting. Sylvain is passionate about his craft and invested heavily in the shoot to create exactly the lighting I envisioned for each sequence.
The work of framing and camera movements is also a crucial aspect of my films. I share my framing intentions with my talented Steadicam operator, René-Pierre Rouaux. Working with René-Pierre was particularly stimulating because, despite it being our first collaboration, our synergy and shared vision for framing were immediate. René-Pierre is a magician with the camera; he elevated every camera movement. I am eager to work with him again on another film. Once the shooting is completed, the most important and lengthy phase for image work is the editing and color grading. For each of my films, these two tasks require several weeks of work. Color grading is a moment where I treat each image as if it were a painting, sometimes deviating completely from the original light, and sometimes remaining true to it while enhancing it. It is a meticulous, intense, and perfectionist process that I undertake for 6 to 8 weeks with Daniel Santini, my colorist, with whom I share a love for painting, saturated colors, deep blacks, and strong contrasts. Together, we rework each image until it achieves the beauty of a painting.
To summarize, yes, the journey to achieving the final result is long and demands unwavering dedication and effort.
NYX: It’s a very raw look at depression and schizophrenia, how did you decide on how to show Alter’s visions
AM: Scarlet Blue is a deep dive into the inner workings of a body and mind suffering from depression and schizophrenia. I exposed myself to create a film that is sincere, authentic, and uncompromising. I never questioned the rawness of the sequences. My goal throughout the shooting and post-production was to make a film as powerful as the violence of this mental illness—an incandescent and chilling film. From the writing stage, the challenge was to depict the terrifying and phantasmagoric imaginary world that the character Alter experiences during her crises and hypnosis sessions. The hallucinatory visions that punctuate Scarlet Blue are, for me, the film's true anchor—almost as if surrealism devours reality. I aimed to experience and film schizophrenia from within, rather than as a distant voyeur, immersing deeply into the schizophrenia.
I portrayed without shame or censorship the tortured soul, the chaos of bodies, the impulses, desires, wanderings, loneliness, silences, and vulnerabilities. Scarlet Blue is a film profoundly free and without taboos. It is also a love declaration to all those who suffer from mental illness and to everyone whose body and heart are marked by wounds and scars.
NYX: Were you ever concerned you were exploiting such mental health issues?
AM: I have indeed always feared that the hyperactive imagination that constantly invades my brain could turn into madness if I hadn’t had creation, writing, and directing as an outlet. I am convinced that creation has saved me from depression and insanity. I discovered quite late, about six years ago, that I have Asperger's syndrome, and this revelation was incredibly liberating for me because suddenly, all the oddities and difficulties I’ve faced since childhood became almost normal, in the sense that I finally had an explanation.
I have always felt set apart or different; I believe it is this sense of solitude that drove me to write and direct Scarlet Blue.
NYX: Does actress Anne-Sophie Charron actually have to bite into a real fish?
AM: Anne-Sophie Charron is an absolutely incredible actress, particularly dedicated and generous in her performance. She is also very courageous, as when I asked her if she could bite into a large piece of raw fish for the two most spectacular sequences of Scarlet Blue, Anne-Sophie looked at me with her beautiful blue eyes and, without hesitation, said, "Of course, I’ll do it," and she did so without flinching or hesitating. Every time I see these sequences during film festival screenings, I am so proud of Anne-Sophie’s performance as an actress.
NYX: Did you have much budget to play with as the movie looks fantastic?
AM: No, as I mentioned earlier, it’s a low-budget auteur film; the budget was so tight that I was forced to shoot in just 19 days. Over the past fifteen years, I’ve made 8 short films and 2 feature films, always with very modest budgets and sometimes even with no budget at all. I know how to respect the shooting days and maximize the final aesthetic of each film so that the lack of budget doesn’t show on screen.
Despite insufficient funding, it’s always important to maintain the drive to create a quality work and to spend long months in post-production to ensure the result is truly beautiful. I sincerely hope to have much better shooting conditions and a larger budget for my next feature film.
NYX: Sadly, your father died whilst you were in post-production, how did this affect your working on the movie?
AM: My father's cancer profoundly impacted and shaped the entire creative process of SCARLET BLUE. Without his illness, I would have waited to find more funding to complete my film. Making a film is a challenge, but the true challenge of SCARLET BLUE was managing to complete the shoot while my father was still alive. I had to organize his and my mother’s visit to the Basque Country despite his illness. Then, I had to create a post-production studio with David Bichet close to my parents' home, so my post-production team and I could live with my parents and saw every day with my father while working on the post-production.
Every evening, my parents would bring us the dishes my mother cooked for my team and me, and I particularly cherished those moments when I showed my parents the editing work done during the day, followed by the color grading and sound work. It was a great joy before continuing to work for several more hours each night. We maintained this ritual throughout the post-production. I am grateful that my father was able to see SCARLET BLUE several times during the different stages of post-production. I organized two private screenings at the cinema for my parents when I finished the color grading of the film. We were able to discuss my film extensively, and my father really liked it; he told me that I managed to impress him, which is nearly impossible!
My father passed away on February 15, 2023, exactly one week before the opening night of the 13th edition of the *MEME PAS PEUR* Festival. Always determined and courageous, just before he passed away, my father told me not to cancel the festival and to continue with my work and my film. I kept my promise; the festival went ahead, and by late October 2023, Nicolas Luquet, my sound designer, and I completed the sound design and mixing of *SCARLET BLUE*.
Losing my father has utterly devastated me. He was my confidant, my best friend, my inspiration, my artistic mentor; he taught me everything. Today, I still have not managed to grieve, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to accept the pain of continuing to live without him.
NYX: So, what are you up to at the moment?
AM: I am currently seeking producers for my third feature film. I sincerely hope to meet producers in France or abroad who would be interested in supporting me in my next project.
NYX: Aurélia Mengin, thank you very much.
