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| Kévin Mischel in Out Of This World Photo: Bulldog Film Distribution |
Marc Fouchard’s Out Of This World (Hors Du Monde) is one of those films which will blow you away when you first see it, and which you will hesitate to watch ever again. It’s the story of Léo (Kévin Mischel), a shy, emotionally damaged man who seems constantly uncomfortable with the world around him. He finds relief only in composing music, and in killing, which gives him inspiration – but this is very much unlike most serial killer films. There is no glamour, no sense of power, no sexual titillation – just sadness and brokenness. When Léo meets a young deaf woman, Amélie (Aurélia Poirier), who is a dancer and listens to his music by pressing her face against the door of his taxi, he is intrigued by her, and a tentative relationship begins – but can he control his compulsions?
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| Kévin Mischel as Léo in Out Of This World Photo: Bulldog Film Distribution |
I first saw Out Of The World at Glasgow Frightfest in 2021, where it was a clear standout. It finally got a release this month, so I connected with Marc to discuss it. His producer, Julien Russo, joined us to help with translation (Marc’s first language, like that of the film, is French), and contributed a few thoughts of his own.
Julien tells me that Marc comes from the music industry, where he worked as a dancer. His first feature film, Break, drew on that background. It was aimed at a big, mainstream audience, and was a musical comedy. Marc explains that he wanted his next film – this one – to be a musical tragedy. He was interested in the idea of being inside the head of a serial killer.
I'm interested in it because he's there's so much sadness in the film. There's no sort of element of sexual pleasure from what we see. And it's just that he's so broken as a person. And that's something that we don't usually see in depictions of serial killers. So I wondered how much research he did or how he got away from the usual presentation of serial killers.
Julien reveals that the two of them worked together on a film called Tanker which ended up not getting made because it was too expensive. In the course of researching that film, says Marc, he learned that most serial killers are social outsiders, and also have sexual problems.
“I didn't want to explanation on the backstory of the character,” he adds, stressing that everything we understand about him should come from what we see onscreen. “What you see is what you get.”
We talk about the importance of the musical element and getting that right.
“The important thing is that the man who made the music made also the picture,” says Julien, referring to cinematographer/composer Pascal Boudet. “I don’t think that happens very often. And he started before shooting.”
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| Aurélia Poirier as Amélie in Out Of This World Photo: Bulldog Film Distribution |
With Julien’s assistance, Marc explains that he sees the music as one of the characters in the film. It was a punk film, he explains, made without money, so he had to give a lot of thought to how he could make that work. Pascal was a musician friend and he thought that his work would be perfect for it. Everybody involved with the film had multiple roles, and Kévin Mischel, whose delicate yet volatile performance anchors the whole thing, was also someone he knew beforehand.
“I knew Kévin Mischel since my first feature film, Break, and when I decided to make this movie, Hors Du Monde, I wrote this movie thinking of Kévin.” he says. “With my first feature film I detected a bigger competence in acting in drama, with a dark side, in Kévin Mischel. He is a superb dancer but I knew when I made my first feature that he could be a big, big actor too.
“Aurélia Poirier, I knew her since years, because my first agent spoke to me about this the actress for my first movie, Break, about dance, but for the film Break I searched for a mixed-race actress. She didn’t fit the character for Break, but I saw a big actress and she’s a superb dancer.”
We talk about how the characters relate to each other, and how that developed as the film evolved.
“When I make a movie, sometimes I have just a visual, an image,” he explains. “With this one, it was this man dancing with this woman in a parking [lot]. Around this image, this visual, I start to write the script, and I realise that this man has a social illness.” Aurélia’s character is also out of the world because she’s deaf, he adds, and the thing which brings them together is the music.
Despite the low budget, Marc had a very clear vision for how he wanted the film to look.
“I wanted a mix of concrete and nature, town and forest. I wanted a character between two worlds. When we decided to shoot it was in Autumn. We were very afraid because of the rain and no money, but we had a lot of luck because it rained, but not a lot, and the landscape was beautiful, because in the town you have a lot of leaves. It was good.” He smiles.
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| Out Of This World Photo: Bulldog Film Distribution |
The future is looking good, too.
“Yes, I have a project to finish a movie for Netflix. In French the title is Le Roi Des Ombres - The King Of Shadows – and it will be released in March 2023,” he says. “And we have another project, Géronimo, which is a book, for February.”
The book will go on to be adapted into a film, he adds.
I thank him for his efforts in coping with the language difference and he laughs and says that honestly, the film is difficult to talk about in French as well. It’s well worth seeing, however, so look out for it on Digital HD now.
Out Of This World is available on digital platforms now.
