17/04/2020 - French filmmaker Julien Leclercq talks about his new film, Earth and Blood, genre cinema, violence and his "perfect wedding" with Netflix

The very punchy film Earth and Blood [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Julien Leclercq
film profile], the 6th feature film from French filmmaker Julien Leclercq after Chrysalis [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2007), The Assault [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2011), The Informant [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2013), The Crew [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2016) and The Bouncer [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2018), is launched today worldwide by Netflix, which has been involved in the film’s making since the beginning.

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Cineuropa: Where did you get the idea for this brutal confrontation at the heart of Earth and Blood between these thugs and a hero practically alone against the world?
Julien Leclercq : I live in the countryside in the middle of fields and woods, and I’ve always wondered what would happen if I confronted my neighbours, farmers who have hunting rifles and work their land, to these gangs I came across when I made The Crew, who deal in the Paris banlieues. It was fun to make a real western, a real thriller, a real crime film, but one that wasn’t urban but rather rural. One of my references was Rambo, of which I’m a fan, and the hunting scene. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at the chase movie, which The Terminator is as well.

Why did you choose to place a sawmill at the centre of the story?
I wanted to anchor the character in an artisanal, worker life. There was also this idea of working with wood. Moreover, some sawmills are situated in areas where there is no reception, and I really wanted a place where people are working cut off from the world. When I was shooting The Bouncer, I went past a sawmill several times and the look of it really hit me. Then, I wrote the script tailor-made to this place, moving the action to that location. It’s in Belgium, but in the film, we aren’t anywhere specific, we don’t really know if we’re in the Vosges, in the Juras, or in the Ardennes.

How far did you want to push the violence?
My goal was not to make a “slasher film.” But what was great about working with Netflix, is what I had seen and lived through with my previous films, especially The Crew which was forbidden to those under 12 in cinemas. I don’t always understand those restrictions, I kind of vaguely know the rules, but the TV series Grey’s Anatomy is shown on prime time television, with close-ups on stomachs cut open, which I find ten times more gore than a stabbing. But maybe that’s just me… The advantage with Netflix is that because I had this cinema reflex, I asked them: how violent can it be? And they answered that I could do whatever I wanted as long as it was coherent with the story, as long as it was organic. So, naturally, I didn’t censor myself on the violence, which doesn’t mean that I went too far either. But in the action scenes, I really wanted to have close-ups, to show heads exploding, even if just for a brief moment. This was part of the project’s DNA.

Is Sami Bouajila your ideal actor?
This is the third film in a row we’ve made together. We know each other very well and of course I wanted to give him a perfect made-to-measure role. In real life, he is relatively close to the character: he lives in the countryside, in his lodge, he cuts wood, he loves working with his hands. Aside from the films he’s made with me and maybe The Nest by Florent-Emilio Siri, his CV mostly features auteur cinema, but I know that he dreams of playing cowboys and Indians.

Returning to the subject of Netflix, Earth and Blood is the first French film in which the company is involved from the origin of the project. Why did you decide to work with them?
I see the perfect wedding I have with Netflix: I have another film with them (Sentinelle, starring Olga Kurylenko) in post-production and we are following it up this year with a big project. I’m happy because I think this changes the game for the industry. Because what is important is to help new directors come to the fore. And there are many young directors, men and women, who are waiting to rise, maybe in genre cinema, and who wouldn’t necessarily have the chance, in the classical path of cinemas and TV channels, to have their projects greenlit. I think that streaming platforms will enlarge this spectrum. It’s great. In any case, it’s healthy.

(Translated from French)