In terms of set design, your thoughts often pass
through a color filter. Taking a cue from the director, a context,
or a story, you begin to think in terms of red, green, yellow or blue.
The resulting places and objects enrich and reinforce
these choices.
With "A la Vertical de L'Eté", the passage
of time needed to be colored in, in order to find a tone, a proper
volume to identify it - to make it real. The design was conceived
along these lines
The decor was conceived along these lines.
It wasn't a question of creating a sociological
reality, but one of setting a stage where the colors and materials
would embody the notion of time and the singular approach the
characters have to it. Bits of colored paper or a brilliant yellow
crying out to be tarnished echoed Lien's fragility and spontaneity,
a deep luminous green expressed the perennial nature of family
traditions; rough hewn wood combined with fresh water evoked
the purity and harmony
that human beings aspire to, as seen
through Quoc's character.
In Vietnam and more specifically in Hanoi, the precariousness of the materials used to join or divide
houses from one another allows anyone who wants to see and
listen to their neighbors' lives.
Intimacy and secrets
find themselves
partly hidden in daily gestures, implied in the spaces they live in
and the things they decorate them with. The colors used, their
opacity or transparency, as well as the walls with their elaborate
openwork, play an important role in the expression of these
characteristics. Therefore, the choice of sets, their conception,
their arrangement takes on a particular resonance and the design
becomes an actor in its own right.
benoît barouh (set designer)
