Belgian actress and filmmaker Veerle Baetens knows her directorial debut When It Melts has earned the right not to have a happy ending.
The film follows a woman who returns to her small Flemish hometown 13 years after a pivotal summer with her best friends, to come to terms with past traumas.
“Some people did try to push for a happier ending, but you can’t build this up to this stage and then chicken out. It’s not that kind of movie. It wouldn’t be realistic,” she says.
Baetens is well known from films including The Broken Circle Breakdown and series such as Tabula Rasa and Cheyenne & Lola. She nearly studied directing when she was yound but decided to focus on her acting.
“It was due to being young and wanting to be seen,” she says.
But she kept getting closer to her directing ambitions as she started co-writing the series Tabula Rasa. It was Girl and Broken Circle Breakdown producer Dirk Impens of Ghent-based Menuet, who first approached her in 2016 to direct the adaptation of the bestselling novel The Melting (Het Smelt) written by Lize Spit.
“I was blown away by the book,” Baetens recalls, “but I could also see it would be very difficult to turn into a movie because in the present it’s a very passive character, and there was an internal monologue. But it appealed to me that it’s about a girl who wants to be seen, to be validated, or to belong. The story also had great elements of tension.”
After Impens left the project, producer Bart Van Langendonck at Savage Films came on board. He had previously collaborated with Baetens on The Ardennes. “What is good about Bart is that he has a lot of confidence in his artists, he gives a lot of freedom. And he pays a lot of attention to what you say,” she explains.
The co-producers are Belgium’s Versus and Dutch company PRPL; Kinepolis will handle the Belgian release and Paradiso in the Netherlands. Backing comes from Flanders Audiovisual Fund, Belgian Tax Shelter, Telenet, VTM, Netherlands Film Fund. The Party Film Sales handles international sales, boarding after the project was presented at the online Connext 2021.
Baetens is now showing footage from the work-in-progress at this month’s in-person Connext in Antwerp
Careful preparation
Baetens had her own ideas about directing, and drew upon her directing experience in the theatre. She also she worked on a small short during a one-month workshop at the London Film Academy. She also read the books of directing guru Judith Weston and even did some Zoom meetings with the author to feel more prepared.
In adapting the script, she did a draft on her own and then brought on Maarten Loix as co-writer and worked together for the next three years “We had such perfect communication,” she says.” If I wasn’t happy with something he kept questioning what I wanted to change and how that would impact other moments.”
He also helped her explore several options to nail the film’s challenging ending.
The script is not an exact replica of the book – for instance, there is less elaborate set-up time establishing the childhood friendships of the main trio, “so they had to be believeable as ‘The Three Musketeers’ more quickly.” Also Baetens wanted to warm up the “quite cold” tone of the book, plus she needed the adult protagonist to not be as passive as in the book.
She cast the youngsters first, starting with 2,500 potentials whittling that down to about 15 who started doing acting workshops. Newcomer Rosa Marchant was cast; 16 years old but looking younger when they filmed. “She had an adult mind and the emotional backpack needed for this character,” the director explains.
A therapist was on set in case the young cast needed to talk about the dark subject matter – and especially when filming scenes about how they invent dangerous game that gets out of control. “I was very careful with the kids,” Baetens explains. “After a take, they’d play games so it wouldn’t get stuck in their heads. And we all talked a lot with the therapist and with the parents too.”
Charlotte De Bruyne, whose credits include Don’t Shoot, plays the adult lead. “I already had my eyes on Charlotte, she didn’t have to audition, You can see everything in her eyes.”
The film shot in the Belgian villages of Poperinge, Bousval and Ronquières, Beauraing and in Brussels in 2021, in two time frames, summer and winter. After all her preparation, Baetens says she found the shooting process enjoyable. “The shoot was very well prepared and I knew what I wanted. I got what I wanted every day – it was a joy.”
Baetens says she will certainly keep acting – she next appears in Delphine Girard’s Le Plus Vivant Possible– but is also scouting projects for her next directorial project. Her inspirations include Lars von Trier, Michael Haneke and John Cassavetes and she reckons her directorial projects “will always be a topic that talks about society. Maybe the next one will have some dark humour in it.”
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