Alex Lutz adapts Nicolas Mathieu’s Connemara

Hélène and Christophe, the two adolescents from the Vosges have grown up, but their teenage memories linger. While he stuck to his hockey skates and never left their little village, she only returns after a burnout, fleeing Paris to find solace in her childhood region. One look across a dusky parking lot is all it takes for a spark to ignite between the two forty-somethings.

Since Leurs enfants après eux (And Their Children After Them), Alex Lutz has been fascinated by Nicolas Mathieu’s work. The actor and director had wanted to adapt that novel, winner of the Prix Goncourt in 2018, but the rights were no longer available. The brothers Zoran and Ludovic Boukherma made the film, which came out in theatres last December.

Fortunately, Connemara also proves to be highly adaptable. Similar to his previous novel, Nicolas Mathieu uses image-driven text to propel the story forward, tracking back and forth between the 1990s and 2010s. The unifying melody is Michel Sardou’s hit, Les Lacs du Connemara, as the crowning title in a soundtrack seeped in French feel-good nostalgia.

Alex Lutz aims to keep the essence of the novel by addressing social class, societal structures, and determinism without losing its heart. He vouches to respect Hélène’s character as much as possible:

“I would never be so presumptuous as to talk about feminism, but the novel’s first sentence, ‘The anger came as soon as she woke,’ made me want to explore this female anger harnessed in a professional environment. If we had first glimpsed Hélène in her car pounding her steering wheel like a maniac, we would have called her hysterical.”

After having played in his own film alongside Karin Viard in Une nuit (Strangers by Night), Alex Lutz remains behind the camera this time. He brings together Mélanie Thierry and Bastien Bouillon, exploring their sensual and social beings.