Summer Drift (aka Virages) was presented this week in Vision Du Reel’s “Swiss Films Presents” showcase. A few minutes of footage were shown but audiences and buyers will have the chance to see the entire movie next month when it has its world premiere in the Cannes Festival Acid section.
“From the beginning, we were struggling to find a title,” producer Aurélien Marsais says of the project, co-directed by Celine Carridroit and Aline Suter. At first, the film was called ‘Johanna,’ after its main character, a factory worker who loves all things mechanical but is still encountering rejection following her gender transition. “We wanted to find the right title to represent the tone of the film that was found very much in the editing.”
What is that tone? “I would say it’s a documentary-comedy, a ‘fiction-réel’ as we say in France, turned into a summer comedy,” the producer suggests.
The project first began to spark into life when directors Carridroit and Suter met Johanna over a decade ago. “They became great friends. Johanna had a very rich manner of speaking about her everyday life and what happened to her. Aline and Celine saw how a film could be done around her very colourful life.”
Ten years ago, Johanna wasn’t in a position to participate in the documentary. She was too busy looking for work, a process made “more complicated” because she was a transgender person. However, after she finally found a job, she bumped into the directors in the street. “Hey, why don’t we do that film?” she said to them. They took her at her word.
“Johanna is not, I would say, an activist for trans rights but she is very much invested in her community,” Marsais suggests. The two directors wanted their film to focus on the fact that their main character had been rejected by “the community of mechanics” after her gender change. In the documentary, she is stuck at home in Switzerland because she can’t afford an expensive holiday. Her wife Vivi is off in Mexico. But then she gets the chance to buy back her beloved old VW Beetle. After repairing it, she decides to enter Europe’s biggest Beetle gathering, held in Belgium, and to show her face to the racing community that rejected her at the time of her transition. After all, she is not the type to be bullied or pushed around.
“They [the filmmakers] really wanted to centre the film around the dreams and life of a working girl in a summer when she cannot go on holiday,” Marsais explains. “This is really the theme of the film. She’s a worker, a fan of mechanics, a Beetle addict.”
Competitors in the VW race don’t race to win. They strut their stuff over a 400 metre course as they try to show off their engines’ prowess.
“The film is more around that than properly on trans identity issues,” the producer says. He adds, though, that gender identity remains a key part of the story. Johanna is not “out” in her work and still regularly encounters prejudice and misunderstanding. Over the years, she has found ways of coping. Her job is on an assembly line in a luxury watch factory in Geneva.
“She lives in a very mechanical world, a vintage world. She is not very drawn to computers or digital stuff. She is very much a mechanics girl. And she loves metal and rock music too. She’s a big fan.”
This is the first film that Marsais and the two directors have made through the new filmmaking collective, Cavale Productions. They were together at film school in the south of France. This is also the first feature-length movie from Carridroit and Suter.
“We really worked together as a trio with, of course, Johanna, who was always consulted in the writing of the film,” the producer says.
Here in Nyon, Marsais has been talking to sales agents and distributors. The Cannes selection has given the project an obvious boost and various different companies are already circling the project. The aim is to have a sales agent aboard in time for Cannes.
Cavale is making the film in co-production with French docs specialist outfit, Alter Ego (the outfit behind Maxence Voiseux’s Cannes Quinzaine entry, Gabin).
Marsais is in Nyon this week in a dual capacity. Not only is he pitching Summer Drift. He is also part of the festival programming team. “I love programming. Production is different but the two activities are very much complementary,” he suggests.
Summer Drift is a “hybrid” documentary with some fictional elements, a form that some distributors are wary about, but its producer emphasises that it is “a crowd-pleaser, a very joyful film.” That’s why the Cannes Acid selectors were so keen to have it.
The producer hopes that audiences watching it “will just let themselves go” and enjoy the sheer vibrancy and lust for life of its central character.
Sadly, Johanna won’t be able to take enough time off work to be able to drive down to Cannes in the VW Beetle, but she may turn up for the Swiss premiere in the car. (The Swiss launch will be some time between August and the end of the year). In the meantime, Cavale is revving up some new projects.
“This is the very first film we have produced. It’s our calling card.”
The Cavale film collective is based in Geneva. The producer and the two directors are among its seven founding members. “We are all part of the film industry whether it is in production, direction or film programming. We’ve created this collective to be independent but also to exchange knowledge. All of the members in this collective have worked on Summer Drift…”
