Through a series of monologues delivered by teenage girls, playwright Suzie Bastien’s play offers a universe that is both hard and delicate. After listening to an interview given by the author, I understood that she wanted to explore the themes of control and teenage experimentation. We want to take control of our body, our image, our relationships, our head, the world we live in... We also lose control, in front of others, of our words, our ideas, our actions, under the influence of substances... In adolescence, our first contact with the adult self suddenly appears. The self that no longer allows itself to be guided by the mere nature of things. In the texts of Sweet Sixteen, the teenage girls, still wrapped in the last embraces of childhood, see their naivety being shattered and arrive at the inevitable realization that things are no longer as simple as they used to be.

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Despite the fact that the Sweet Sixteen monologues are filled with urban references, I chose to shoot all the scenes in nature. In my opinion, setting these voices in a wild place creates an interesting contrast. Nature is a force we can’t control: it exists fiercely in its simplicity and most disarming purity. For me, it relates to childhood. In Bastien’s play, these young women are trying to control something that eludes them, and that distances them from their original nature. The film allows us to hear the voices of these teenage girls in a wild space that connects them to their vulnerability.

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I wanted each word to come to life in a different landscape and for the actors to speak directly to the camera. Since monologues written for the stage were to be transposed to cinema, I had to think about how to capture the viewer’s attention and keep it for the duration of the film. Thus, by offering strong visual universes that are very different from each other, I could, in my opinion, feed the audience’s curiosity. In addition, I found that visually evoking the symbols that underlie each of the texts would deepen the audience’s attention, making it more sensitive. The fact that the actors tell their stories in detail pushed me to put the richness of the text front and centre. I think that a strong poetic visual universe allows viewers to let themselves be carried away by the words. I wanted to bring each monologue to life in an environment that complements what it’s already about.

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Shooting entirely with natural light, the cinematographer Emili Mercier and I chose to show the characters with delicacy, intimacy and authenticity. The camera, most often shoulder-mount, offered us a few tableaux where nature is shown as majestic, but also several closeup shots of the actors, which are brutally revealed to us. The brightly colored makeup heightens the experience by reminding us of childhood, as well as a form of «playful witchcraft» that I associate with sisterhood. I thought it was important to be able to feel, between the monologues, the tender and still childish side of these young women who, despite appearances, are still very small and pure. By showing the disarming naivety that hides beneath their female bodies, I wanted us to feel that we have to pay attention to them. I wanted us to be moved by their frank bursts of laughter, their high-pitched screams, the physical closeness that comes so easily to them and which we lose as we grow up, as if women’s demureness had erected walls between us all. In short, in the form of a three-movement symphony, I tried to stage the brutal vitality and gentle youthfulness of these adolescent girls.

Julie Boissonneault, Pénélope Ducharme, Laurence Trudelle, Charlène Beaubien, Roxane Lavoie, Doriane Lens-Pitt, Melania Balmaceda-Venegas, Marie Reid.

DIRECTING: Alexa-Jeanne Dubé

SCREENPLAY: Film adaptation of Suzie Bastien's play Sweet Sixteen

PRODUCTION: Lucie Pelletier (Théâtre de l'Opsis)

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Emili Mercier

SOUND: Benoit Plante, Gael Poisson-Lemay

ORIGINAL SCORE: Hologramme, Guillaume Bourque et Eric Shaw

EDITING: Emma Bertin