Lucie Zhang: ​‘The nudi­ty was like wear­ing a costume’

With Paris, 13^th Dis­trict, direc­tor Jacques Audi­ard adapts three short sto­ries by Amer­i­can car­toon­ist Adri­an Tomine, merg­ing them into a sharp, sweet por­trait of sex, love and endurance in a Parisian high-rise neigh­bour­hood. The ensem­ble includes Noémie Mer­lant, Maki­ta Sam­ba and Jehn­ny Beth, along­side Lucie Zhang in a star-mak­ing turn with her debut fea­ture film role. She plays Émi­lie, a French-Tai­wanese twen­tysome­thing with a flair for chaos.

LWLies: How did you get into acting?

Zhang: The first time I tried an act­ing class was 2019, but I real­ly hadn’t any expe­ri­ence before. And this act­ing class didn’t tell me that much because I was nev­er there due to too much col­lege work. But I pushed myself because I real­ly want­ed it. Even though I’m shy and it’s hard for me to express myself cor­rect­ly, I real­ly want­ed to chal­lenge myself. When I was young, I was inspired by my grand­fa­ther who is a very skilled, genius doc­tor. I want­ed to do that type of job, but then, boom, this desire for act­ing came. And it erased every­thing else. This film hap­pened because I saw the announce­ment on Insta­gram, look­ing for Chi­nese-speak­ing girls who grew up in Paris. I was so excit­ed and I told myself it’s gonna be me or I’ll die.

Were you famil­iar with Jacques Audiard’s pre­vi­ous films?

To be hon­est, not at all, because I wasn’t real­ly cul­ti­vat­ed in terms of cin­e­ma. Both French and Chi­nese cin­e­ma. I was study­ing a lot, so my life was just study­ing. Of course, once I was cast, I watched every­thing. But I couldn’t find the first two.

This film was shot dur­ing the pre-vac­ci­na­tion Covid era of autumn 2020. What was it like film­ing such a phys­i­cal­ly inti­mate pro­duc­tion with those ear­ly restrictions?

Since it was my first film expe­ri­ence, I couldn’t com­pare it to any­thing. But things got real­ly close between us. We were only see­ing each oth­er. And for the inti­mate parts, we had to for­get the Covid restric­tions because it’s just a para­dox. There’s no movie with­out them. Even the twice-a-week PCR test was kind of fun because every­one was lined up in a row and we were all stressed. It’s a bond­ing experience.

How was it act­ing in two lan­guages in the film?

It was much bet­ter because two lan­guages is me. If there was only Chi­nese or only French, it would be even hard­er to reach the char­ac­ter. All my cry­ing was done in Chi­nese because we found out that Chi­nese is my inti­mate lan­guage and I use French because I learned French at school. So, any­thing intel­lec­tu­al or tech­ni­cal had to be in French for bet­ter, clear­er, con­crete com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But in terms of feel­ing, it had to be in Chi­nese. Also, to help me, every­one told me to trans­late the whole script into Chi­nese to play it entire­ly in Chi­nese the whole time, and then to find a sen­sa­tion and instant­ly switch back to French if [dia­logue] had to be in French.

Does the film resem­ble a side of Paris that you know personally?

Yes. The way peo­ple smile, the way peo­ple talk to each oth­er, the way they don’t stand up straight in the Metro sub­way. Even lit­tle details are illus­trat­ed effort­less­ly, I think because [Audiard’s] Parisian, everyone’s Parisian, so we didn’t have to think about that. It was Parisian already. And it shows the Parisian side with­out tourism.

Were you giv­en any films as ref­er­ences for the char­ac­ters and story?

[Audi­ard] gave every­one titles but I don’t remem­ber that he gave me per­son­al­ly instruc­tions to watch these films. Maybe he thought I was too new to this type of work­ing and exer­cise, so he didn’t want me to have any ref­er­ences to dis­turb me. But I know his own ref­er­ences are Ma Nuit chez Maud and Annie Hall, he told every­one else to watch those. And then, dur­ing the three months of prepa­ra­tion work, he noticed I was strug­gling with the char­ac­ter and want­ed to help me, espe­cial­ly to find some­thing lighter in every­thing: in the way of think­ing, speak­ing, act­ing. He asked me to watch roman­tic come­dies, such as When Har­ry Met Sal­ly. I real­ly liked that one.

What do you think it was about that film that helped?

It helped because he insist­ed a lot on the fact that it’s a com­e­dy and he told me, ​“Lucie, you are some­times too melan­cholic.” He didn’t want it melan­cholic, he want­ed comedic and light. He didn’t have to say too much. He just told me to watch it and I under­stood it bet­ter. Actu­al­ly, I think I couldn’t help but put some melan­choly into the char­ac­ter, even though there wasn’t any at the begin­ning. I’ve seen it five times now and each time I found it much more melan­cholic than what was writ­ten at the begin­ning. I don’t know if it’s because I put too much of myself in it.

Audi­ard has pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned that the lead actors did these work­shop ses­sions on body and move­ment. He said it was specif­i­cal­ly ​‘to face the sex scenes as serene­ly as pos­si­ble’. What did those involve?

It was real­ly instruc­tive, con­nect­ing our­selves with oth­ers. I’ve got a very illus­tra­tive, rep­re­sen­ta­tive exam­ple of an exer­cise. This is some­thing I will remem­ber for the rest of my life. The chore­o­g­ra­ph­er [Stéphanie Chêne] want­ed me to con­nect myself bet­ter with myself. And she told me that I could think of water inside of my body, flow­ing every­where. Just as sim­ple as this. I start mov­ing around and I just do that. And after doing that, she told me that if you do that well, you will for­get the image you have of your­self. You will for­get the idea you have of being sen­su­al, but you will be sen­su­al in your own way because the only thing you are doing is being the water and noth­ing else. Not to rep­re­sent or illus­trate any­thing, just to be like water. It was this kind of exer­cise that would help us. It’s not mechan­i­cal, it’s real­ly about connection.

A risk with films focused on sex­u­al rela­tion­ships is that some­times the actors seem real­ly uncom­fort­able, or the cin­e­matog­ra­phy seems to be try­ing to show off the body rather than the per­son. But here, every­one moves so freely dur­ing the sex scenes or moments of just casu­al nudity.

Oh, [Audiard’s] gonna be hap­py if he hears that because it’s what he found chal­leng­ing at the begin­ning. He always says that there are two things real­ly chal­leng­ing in film­mak­ing: vio­lence and sex, because they’re com­plete­ly unre­al onscreen. There is no ambi­gu­i­ty on the real­i­ty of it. It’s com­plete­ly unre­al, but at the same time you have to make it com­plete­ly real and believ­able. It’s not like a scene of just talk­ing, for exam­ple. Hav­ing a dis­cus­sion could be real and unre­al at the same time, but the screen sex is not real. So, I think he was a lit­tle stressed about that. Well, I couldn’t say that for cer­tain, but I was a lit­tle stressed about it.

But it hap­pened with­out being awk­ward at all. Maybe because before even before enter­ing the rehearsals, after meet­ing the direc­tor just one time, I start­ed work­ing with the cast­ing direc­tor [Chris­tel Baras] and my scene part­ner. We arrived and then she told us, ​“Okay, take off your clothes, we are gonna work nude.” It’s just like we were wear­ing a cos­tume, which is the nudi­ty. The nudi­ty is a cos­tume. So, from the begin­ning we did that. And at the begin­ning, for just the first three sec­onds, it was real­ly hard, but then noth­ing. It’s com­plete­ly nat­ur­al. So that’s it. She did a good job, the cast­ing director.

What ideas in the film do you hope con­nect with audiences?

The idea that every­one has inti­mate parts of them­selves. How the char­ac­ters are so real, so com­plex. Not total­ly mean, not total­ly kind. Not total­ly into sex, not total­ly into love, just because they’re human. It’s life and we all live in the same world, so it’s not say­ing a mes­sage or what­ev­er, but it’s direct­ly about human intimacies.