Thomas Bourguignon: “With Ouija we wanted to tell a detective story, fantastic and fun”

Broadcast from this evening on France 3, Ouija, a deadly summeris a mini-series featuring young French high school students and their German pen pals. In the early 80s, following a strange disappearance, these teens will embark on a paranormal investigation that will take them back to the end of the Second World War. Supernatural, sociology and humor go well together in this show directed by Thomas Bourguignon and starring Patrick Mille, Bruno Solo and Ophélia Kolb. Thomas Bourguignon lifts the veil a little before the broadcast of the first three episodes.

How was Ouija born?

With my co-author Jörg Winger, we first wanted to tell the story of Franco-German relations and their evolution over time. More specifically from the end of the war in 1945. It seemed important to us to show how these relations between France and Germany evolved until today they no longer pose a problem. We grew up thinking that we were hereditary enemies.

Where did the idea of ​​setting the action in 82 come from?

Exactly. It was when Jörg and I were teenagers, and it was also the year of a truly traumatic event for the whole world: the football semi-final between France and Germany, with the clash between Battiston and Schumacher. That has still not been digested and from a symbolic point of view it is a crucial knot in the history of our two countries. Moreover, 82 is also the year of the release of AND which was THE reference on which we relied from a stylistic point of view.

So there are 82, but Ouija also goes back to 1944…

There, hatred towards the Germans was at its peak in France since it was the time of liberation and purge. What we wanted to stage was the connection between these two eras. We didn't want to tell a story in 44 on one side, and then a story in 82 on the other. We were looking for a way – a priori fantastic – to connect these two temporalities. And we remembered that, as teenagers, we had turned tables. We had played Ouija. By looking a little for the origin of this game, we came across its etymology: when you ask a spirit if it is there, the spirit answers and taps three times for yes. Yes in French, and Ja in German. Oui-Ja…

The originality of the series is indeed that it mixes this sociological aspect – life in a small French village – with fantastic elements and humor. How did you balance all these elements?

We first delved back into the 80s; we reviewed a lot of films and INA documents from that period to re-appropriate the language of those years, which is really very particular. Delving back into this lexicon was like a Proust madeleine. And we also realized that, at that time, new relationships were emerging between men and women, between the French and people of Maghrebi origin. The world was changing and we tried to portray it. We had to address racism, feminism and misogyny. But we chose to tackle it in a light-hearted way, almost like a comedy – that's a lesson learned from my admiration for Kubrick. When he made Strangelove and that it addresses the threat of the extinction of humanity by the atomic bomb, it does so in the form of a farce. The comic aspect, the lightness in dealing with these themes, allowed us to remain very lively. And that contrasted the point of view of the teenagers, for whom everything is experienced in an intense way. For them, everything is necessarily dramatic. All these contrasts seemed essential to us for the series.

Did these contrasts dictate your casting choices and your direction of actors?

I like to play with the actors and with the expectations of the viewer. Everything was very scripted. We did a lot of rehearsals with the actors to achieve this balance between drama and humor, intensity and lightness. And I rewrote some dialogues so that each character had an extremely precise score that corresponded with the directorial choices. We were particularly careful about the tempo. Comedy is about rhythm, and sometimes, you have to let a silence or a word last a second longer for it to be funny. But it's true: it's this desire for contrast that guided the choice of actors. Bruno Solo or Patrick Mille are in roles where we are not necessarily used to seeing them evolve. Ophélia Kolb too. With her, we worked a lot on the rhythm precisely. Sometimes she played a scene in a very staccato way, like a machine gun, and at other times, she went very slowly. With Patrick, it's different, because he is always on the edge and I love that. He brought a little bit of theatricality, because his character plays a role, he is never natural. He instills this feeling of unease that becomes funny and chilling at the same time. A hot and cold side.

There are constantly these contrasts that you talk about, but the series also gradually leans towards more darkness and fantasy.

As we move forward, the links between the past and the present deepen. And what happened in 44, which is very dramatic, will have repercussions on the characters' present in 1982. History comes to the surface, as does fantasy. And the teenagers will have to get involved to solve the village's problems. But, if it is sometimes very dark, we still wanted to constantly keep the light side, the humor. That's why we have all these characters evolve in very colorful, very beautiful settings. Once again, to keep the idea of ​​contrast.

It's true that the series is very stylized.

Yes, we wanted to be realistic – in fashion, attitudes, language, look – and at the same time very stylized. We worked at night to create a fantastic feeling – it's red, like on Mars! It's part of this fantastic feeling that gradually permeates the series.

You were talking about AND just now. The series also made me think a lot about Stranger Things with this idea of ​​fetishizing all the pop culture of the 80s…

The idea of ​​fetishization fascinates me. But we haven't seen it again Stranger Things. We went back to the sources: Spielberg and the Amblin films to shape our own recreation of the 80s. When we remember those years, it is both through the prism of our memories, but also of our cinephilia. There were the films, and the objects. A VCR, the Rubik's cube, the 4L, the K-Way…. And we designated all of that with a lot of realism but also a lot of freedom. We wanted these “fetishes” to be seen through the cross-fade of the eras. Sometimes, I watch films and the excessive realism brought to the sets, the costumes or the language makes things a little ridiculous. It was really a super cool time, with sometimes strange aspects for today, but in any case, on a visual and sound level, very seductive even today. And I wanted us to feel that. So, we chose clothes or sounds that are both from that era and from today. We practiced a mix of genres that allowed us to make it both distant and very close. This is the spirit of the music that Yuksek imagined. He makes totally contemporary electro, but since he is crazy about 80s synthesizers, he used analog instruments to rediscover the grain and warmth of the era. Basically, we did everything to avoid ending up at the Grévin museum or Madame Tussaud's (laughs)!

Was there a message you wanted to convey through this story?

First of all, we hope that the spectators will like this police, paranormal and entertaining story. But we also wanted to remind people that friendship between peoples is a construction, just like hatred. For years, we were made to believe that we were enemies of Germany and then, with the construction of Europe, we were made to understand that we could be friends, allies, and co-constructors of our common destiny. It is a construction that remains fragile and that we must take care of. This friendship is not necessarily self-evident. For today's young people, it is obvious. But if we go back 40 years, it was absolutely unimaginable. No one could have predicted that we would be so close today. It has been 80 years since there was a war on European territory, but there is war on our doorstep, in Ukraine. This is the longest period of peace we have ever known and it is thanks to this European construction that is often reviled. We have a difficult, complex love for this European construction, and I can understand it. But at the same time, this is what allows us to live in peace in Europe today. If there is a message in Ouijathen, that would be the one.