Why did you choose to make this film a comedy?

First, it is in my nature. Second, because comedy is the ideal form to express tragedy, as it allows us to distance ourselves. As soon as you manage to laugh about a problem, you put it into perspective and it becomes clearer. Coluche used to say: “laughter is like a windshield wiper, it doesn’t stop the rain, but it allows you to see”. In addition, for me, The Student and Mister Henri is partly a comedy about characters, based on the dialogues and verbal sparring, and partly a dramatic comedy.

You first wrote a theatre play. How did you work on adapting it to the big screen?

Intuitively, I wanted to give space to the story, to get out of the apartment. To fulfill that wish, the biggest constraint is not the unity of space, but the unity of time. The story unfolds for several months, which made it possible to introduce new settings without seeming artificial; and also to introduce new characters in order to expose the stakes in dramatized scenes rather than through dialogues. But the essential element in this work of adaptation was to refine the characters’ psychology. In the play, theatrical conventions allowed my protagonists to change their minds quickly without sounding too fickle. In the script, we needed to find their inner path that led them to make new choices. But the story is 95% the same.

Does the film echo the world today?

Yes, it is about the difficulties to find housing, which is, in a way, the social context of the film. It also brings up universal themes of filiation and fulfillment. How to be the happiest you can be? How to provide something to the world while finding your own place, while expressing your unique qualities? That is a difficult path, scattered with clumsiness, but I do not think it is a selfish one.