Or, on the other hand, would you want someone to submit entirely to you?
And can you envision these scenarios, of personal submission and power dynamics, not involving sex?
Maud Ferrari‘s fantastic and funny short film The Chauffeur screens at the International Fetish Film Festival this week and will surely set many people’s minds a wander. I chatted with Ferrari about the film and her own experiences.
At the Cannes Film Festival 2010, I met a chauffeur like that. He proposed to drive me around the town but in exchange he wanted that I rub my feet on his head… It was very weird for me and I thought it was a good story for a short film.
Do you think this story could be told in the same way if it included a sexual element to the power dynamic?
There is a sexual element in the power dynamic! Everything is sexual in this story, even if Tony, the chauffeur, says the contrary to Audrey to make her comfortable. That’s what I like in The Chauffeur: it’s all about sex – about a very cerebral sort of sex, fetishism – without any sex scene… Christian Biegalski, great screenwriter who was my mentor, used to say that screenwriting is the art of smuggling. You tell the audience what they see is not what they see. At first, the audience believes you. Then they realize that they have been duped, but they forgive you because they came here for this.
Why did you choose to make it a comedy?
I love comedies. I think we can say a lot while making laugh the audience. And when you talk about delicate subjects, it helps to approach them with humor. Make people laugh is a great pleasure too.
What projects are you currently working on that we can look forward to?
I’m working on my first feature film, The Impatient Virgin, the story of a teenager girl who wants to loose her virginity over the summer vacation, another funny story on the discovery of sex and love… And I’m developing The Chauffeur in a full-length feature script.
