Yann Samuell is in Chicago for a couple of days to talk about his first film. He is warm and friendly. As he gazes out the picture window overlooking a bustling Michigan Avenue, he reveals an amicable curiosity and laughs easily.

Shelley Cameron: Welcome to Chicago. Is this your first visit to our city?

Yann Samuell: Yes, it’s great. I have a few hours free this afternoon before the screening tonight, so I hope to play a little.

SC: In fact, the title of your film in French translates "Child’s Play". I understand you have four of your own.

YS: Yes, and I actually was a child once, too.

SC: Well then, let’s start at the beginning. Is the notion of the competitions and rivalries we endure in childhood and how they can affect our adult lives a personal theme for you?

YS: Well, of course I played these kinds of games as a child, but I stopped in time, fortunately. I think that being a film director nowadays is a kind of game, but, no, I never did the same dares as in the film - except for being seven and being buried (laughs).

SC: The burial in concrete at the start of the film seems to set the tone as one of comedy – black comedy.

YS: Well, its really not black comedy. To me, it’s a tragedy that looks like a comedy. It has exactly the same shape of ancient Greek tragedy or Shakespearean tragedy. The characters are prisoners of destiny and build their own fate.

SC: Visually, it is very light, with cardboard cutouts of floating clouds and carousels. Is that a contradiction?

YS: That’s what makes it visual poetry. It looks like a 19^th century theatre with all those elements that might be on stage, all those mechanisms of theatre.

SC: Do you see the film theatrically then?

YS: Yes, I am a great fan of theatre, of Shakespeare. Of course it is very cinematic, but I have a reverence for the theatre and try as a director to use all the tools I can that come from theatre. I try to capture the essence of theatre.

SC: At the start of the film, we are cautioned against being trapped in concrete, and yet it does not seem to be primarily a cautionary tale. I saw the characters to be very different from each other and perhaps not to be the sort of couple to stay together for 50 years. They seemed out of balance with each other. Can you comment on that?

YS: Well, we know everything about Julien, his parents, and his orderly home for example, and he is looking for a little chaos in his life. Whereas Sophie lives in a world of chaos. We know little about her life, her parents, but what we see of her life is chaos. We see it at her sister’s wedding, which turns out to be a disaster. She is looking for some points of reference and Julien has what she’s looking for.

SC: I must say I found Sophie exasperating at times. Was that an intentional result of your not revealing much about her?

YS: Yes, we wanted her to be a total mystery to everyone. We never know what’s she’s going to do or what she’s thinking. She wants to stay a mystery and build her own life, not wanting to follow the life that was predestined for her.

SC: I guess the idea of behaving badly has a certain appeal for many people.

YS: (Laughs). That makes sense. In France people are very attracted by characters that disobey the order. They find it very funny. Not just in France of course, but in film, all characters try to rule their lives differently. I don’t know, maybe in the United States, they find it weird. They like the film, but they find it weird. In France, they find it very funny. They love the film, but they don’t react during the film. They react after it’s over. It ends, there is moment of silence, and then there is enormous laughter and emotion. In America, from the very beginning until the last minute, they laugh, they cry, they comment, and have a lot of reaction. I think it’s a cultural habit. In France, people are less expressive than in America. I made each sequence to be what it is, laughable or loveable and that’s the way the audience reacted here in America. I loved the immediate reactions.

SC: Did they laugh at the parts you thought were funny and vice versa?

YS: Yes, it was good to see.

SC: There are references or nods to other films and other directors. Rene Clair and "Breakfast at Tiffany’s" are two that came to mind. Were you conscience of the influence?

YS: Not while I was writing it, but someone in Toronto described it as "Breakfast at Tiffany’s" if directed by Stanley Kubrick. I like that. (Laughter)

SC: Something that I am always fascinated by, especially when a film is not conventional in structure, as yours is not, is how the filmmaker keeps the sense of what a viewer will experience? All the scenes are so familiar to you. How do you know what to keep and what to cut?

YS: Yes, how to keep connected with the audience? I don’t know. The thing about me is I have spent ten years as an illustrator so I have a very visual approach. I can not write something that I don’t visualize. And when I visualize, I also hear the sound editing, the music, and everything that makes up a film. I try honestly to be a viewer of my film once the script is finished. Since I have the ability of painting and also using storyboards, I can put, physically, all the elements in front of me, read the script aloud as the characters, and really visualize it, before I’ve shot any film. I am very aware of what I am doing. I knew exactly what I wanted and I was the only one who owned it. People told me this on the set because they didn’t always know what I wanted. I think I work with such enthusiasm that all the actors and crew really trusted in what I was doing.

SC: So you are a little like Stanley Kubrick.

YS: Probably. (Laughs) Really, it was quite difficult because I spent four years making the film because no one was certain about it. It was quite unusual for a French movie. People loved the script but hardly knew me.

SC: You were very thorough, spending a very long time finding the right children for the cast. Are you sort of a perfectionist?

YS: I was looking for was kids that I was connected to. When I finally found them, I spent two months with them in rehearsal and by the time we were on the set, from the first day of shooting, we were no longer director and actors with professional duties. We were just friends playing the same game. When you have some very tough things to carry in a movie, really it’s still a game and you have to consider it as a game.

SC: Do you think the film says tough things?

YS: There are some tough things. The mother dies. Julien lived without any forgiveness from his father. Those are not easy to tell.

SC: I saw him shutting out his father as well as the other way around. Sophie and Julien had a passionate connection but it was at the expense of other people, their spouses for example. They were completely self-absorbed, no?

YS: Yes, of course. It is a very dark film because their only aim in life is to have this beautiful love above everything and life is meaningless outside their love. If you consider any great tragedy, it is always very odd. In the great love story, Romeo kills Tybalt. He is a murderer. The lovers are always killing or trying to kill and they poison themselves. So in this story the lovers just get "stuck" together in passionate love.

SC: That brings us to the conclusion of the film. The end really took me by surprise.

YS: I hope so! (Laughter) The ending is very symbolic. It’s a film about choices. You have the choice to rule your life or to be ruled, by society, family, and other forces. You choose, to rule or not, to be game or not. By the end, I really wanted the audience to make its own decision. I wanted it to be a movie you have to think about.

SC: I think you succeeded at that.