“Disorder,” the latest from French writer-director Alice Winocour, spans many genres. What begins as a character portrait of Vincent (Matthias Schoenaerts, “A Bigger Splash,” “The Danish Girl”), a war vet suffering from PTSD, transforms into a full-fledged invasion thriller. The film is suspenseful — uncomfortably so — but also features a fraught romance between Vincent and the woman for whom he’s been hired to serve as security (Diane Kruger, “The Bridge,” “Inglourious Basterds”).
Women and Hollywood had the chance to speak with Winocour about her ambitious, confident sophomore film, which premiered at Cannes last year. (“I felt really lucky to be there,” she told us. “It is always very exciting to be there because even if it’s very frivolous place it’s also an incredible picture of world cinema.”) Winocour discussed how her interactions with soldiers informed “Disorder,” why female directors are pigeonholed, and how she unraveled the dimensions of a “trophy wife” female character.
“Disorder” opens in theaters August 12. You can also catch it on VOD.
W&H: What inspired you to tell this story?
AW: I developed an interest in soldiers returning from Afghanistan who told me about their disturbing thoughts, nightmares, outbursts of violence, and their inability to cope with normality. All of these behaviors that have been described by the name of PTSD — disorders that set them aside from normal life. All of this inspired my main character Vincent, a soldier who brutally faces a world of arms dealers and corrupt politicians. He lives in a foggy world of money and power, which he does not fully understand, but he perceives a threatening and hidden violence.
W&H: What kind of prep did you do going into the project? Did you research PTSD and interview many soldiers?
AW: I met a lot of soldiers in the process of writing the script. I became very close with one of them, Christophe, a special forces soldier. He came to the set to help us. All of the elite soldiers that I met told me how much the world they live in — whether it’s in training or in operations — is different from ours.
What can be seen as a form of madness here is just a normal survival method that they call hyper-vigilance. They are psychologically and physically trained to go beyond their limits and become combat machines. And when they come back, they feel maladjusted.
Christophe told me he couldn’t look at children the way he did before, and sometimes he imagined them throwing stones to kill someone. All of the soldiers had terrible nightmares. All of them have been close to death and hell.
W&H: We see many different dimensions to Vincent in the film. He’s clearly traumatized and struggling to recover from his time in combat, but we also witness how powerful and protective he can be in action as a bodyguard. He’s both vulnerable and strong. It felt like you were playing with conceptions of masculinity with his character. Can you talk a bit about gender roles — and how they are complicated — in the film?
AW: I wrote the film for Matthias. He has the sort of “animality” that fits the character. I wanted to film a man as an object of desire the way men usually film women. But I hope it’s not the only thing I’ve done.
I think we have all a feminine part and a masculine part. I actually put a lot of myself in Vincent’s character.
W&H: When we’re first introduced to Jessie, it seems like she’s a “trophy wife” for her rich, powerful husband. But Vincent — and audiences — gradually see that there’s much more to her as their connection deepens. How would you describe Jessie’s character?
AW: I wanted the audience to be touched by the figure of a trophy wife who is lost in a superficial life. Jessie probably comes from the same social class as Vincent, and she left this world for an oppressing golden prison. Diane brought a lot of sincerity to the part. I’ve always been fascinated by her Hitchcockian side, hiding a lot of emotion under her apparent coolness, and that fit the character’s path of emancipation in the film. I simply love Diane as an actress — she’s very sensitive, strong, and emotional.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge of making the film?
AW: There were many but I would say maybe the action scenes. It was very exciting to me to direct those moments. I wanted to be very realistic in the scenes with violence. [I tried to capture] a rough and effective violence that felt like real violence being documented.
In making the film I wanted to explore the category of genre films, which is generally reserved for male directors. In fact, I used aspects of genre film to create a variation on genre. I also included many of my own personal feelings and experiences.
I wanted to show that there are no boundaries for women directors and prove that women are legitimate choices to direct all kinds of films, including war films or thrillers. There should be no boundaries for women directors.
W&H: The score for “Disorder” is so memorable. Talk a little bit about how you used music to tell this story.
AW: We did a huge amount of work on the soundtrack to achieve this feeling of reality being distorted. The soundtrack conveys Vincent’s perception of the world around him, and sometimes he’s dropping out of reality. I tried to build the mental landscape of a soldier back from combat. I wanted viewers to really feel the fragility of perceptions. That’s why the soundtrack and the mixing process were very important to me — to capture the breathing and all those small sounds that put us under the skin of the character.
W&H: This is your second feature. What was the most important lesson you learned from making “Augustine,” your first film?
AW: To concentrate on sensations and physical disorders. “Augustine” was telling the story of Doctor Charcot, a 19th century French doctor who worked on hundreds of women with hysterical symptoms cooped up in a Paris hospital. In a way, “Disorder” is an extension of “Augustine.”
I think that I have an obsession about physical dysfunctions — when there are no words to express feelings, your body is screaming. In “Augustine,” the subject was a group of women who expressed their rebellion through their bodies because their rebellion was impossible otherwise. Vincent is also someone who doesn’t have any control over his body anymore. And that is very frightening for a soldier.
W&H: You co-wrote “Mustang,” which received an Oscar nomination this year, with the film’s director, Deniz Gamze Ergüven. How did that collaboration come to be?
AW: The idea came to us when we were at the Cinéfondation together, at the Cannes Atelier for the financing of our films. She told me about this episode from her childhood where she and her sisters had gone swimming and were playing games with boys, climbing on their shoulders and all that. And one summer they were suddenly told off by their grandmother, who said things like, “You excited the boys. You rubbed your genitals against them.”
So even though there was a great innocence in these games, they had suddenly become something horrible in other people’s eyes. And I thought this was an incredible story. I myself have cousins and was raised with them, so I could immediately connect with her story; I think the film was born from the meeting of Deniz’s childhood memories and mine, of our friendship, and of course from a form of reality grounded in today’s Turkey. We both identified with the wild energy of those young girls to free themselves, and maybe audiences did too.
W&H: How would you describe your experiences working as a female filmmaker in France compared to what you hear from — and about — women directors in the U.S. and elsewhere?
AW: In France we are really lucky. There are a lot of women directors, specifically in the new generation of filmmakers. Young women who are making very different kind of films, like genre films. In Cannes this year there were also a lot, such as Julia Ducournau’s “Raw,” and Houda Benyamina’s “The Divines,” which won the Camera d’Or.
It is always very moving to me to see all these women express their voices and I never forget that women have fought for us to get here. I also have this feeling that all of this is very fragile — and that we have to continue to fight for it.
I can’t talk much about American female directors because I don’t know the specific situation. I just know that the rate of female directors is very, very low despite incredible talent, and I have a lot of admiration for many of them.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
AW: They are so many. Chantal Akerman is very important to me. I remember the emotion I had felt when I saw “Jeanne Dielman” in cinema school and all of our discussions after the screening. “Saute ma ville,” one of her short films, has also really influenced me with its rebelliousness. Akerman was such a pioneer. Her death made me really sad. It felt like a whole world of cinema was disappearing with her.
I’m also a huge fan of Agnes Varda, both her fictional films and her documentaries. The film she did on the Black Panthers, “Black Panthers,” really impressed me.
Both of these women, these great pioneers of the ’70s, have really opened the road.
W&H: What are you working on next?
AW: I am writing a film about an astronaut who is preparing to leave earth for a year and leave her seven-year-old daughter behind. I was in Kazakhstan a few weeks ago to see the launch of a rocket and all of this world is really fascinating.
