Philippe Lesage is a Québécois filmmaker whose career started in documentaries — including the Jutra Award-winning The Heart That Beats (2010) — before transitioning into fiction films for his past four works, each of which explores formative experiences in the lives of young characters, traced through complex interactions with their peers, authority figures, and idols. These films — The Demons (2015), Copenhague: A Love Story (2016), Genesis (2018), and Who by Fire (2024) — privilege the gesturing to the inner lives of their characters as impactful, though not always large-scale, moments occur in their social lives.
His latest work, Who by Fire, follows a young man who is invited to join his friend’s family on a trip to the remote estate of a celebrated filmmaker who he admires, where artistic and career ambitions are problematised by romantic, competitive, and retaliatory impulses. The film was concluding its festival and theatrical run — featuring screenings at Locarno and Berlin — when Lesage came to town an MDFF Selects screening at TIFF Lightbox and a teaching appearance at Humber College, and during which he joined Christopher Heron at the Rooster for this interview in February 2025.
I read that your brother [Jean-François Lesage] had an experience similar to this, spending time in the woods with an older director, was that the basis for this story?
Yeah. I won’t tell which director he spent [time with], but yeah, he got invited when he was young to this cabin — exactly the same premise. But then my imagination ran… I also started as an homage to my brother; he’s my big brother and he’s also making documentaries. He won the Best Canadian Feature Documentary at Hot Docs: Prayer for a Lost Mitten (2020). Very nice film. But we’re not in competition because we are separating the territories. I’m taking the fiction. So, I asked him about [the experience] because I remember that story: somebody got lost in the forest — not him, but an adult. I thought it was such a beautiful beginning: a film that I would immediately go to see. This young kid meeting his idol. He wants to become a filmmaker — vaguely — and he has a chance to meet him and then the idol sees this young kind of symbolic rival — sexual rival. He just wants to hit him where it hurts. Blake is basically the destructive patriarchal force incarnated in one character. He’s destructive, like humans are in general, I think. If you look at the state of the planet and the history of war, it has always been about older men sending young men to die. And I think they were actually killing unconsciously symbolic sexual rivals.
It’s Oedipal. The film seems psychologically driven, like an [Ingmar] Bergman chamber drama where there’s a lot of psychology in a small space. Is that something you were thinking about, the psychological ramifications?
Psychology can be seen also as the tactic, which I want to absolutely not dare, because you need to do psychology without doing psychology in a way. Because doing the psychology can be very [adopting a nerdy voice], “Okay, I’m going to express how a narcissistic pervert works and I’m going to do a film about that.” [laughs] That’s not what I’m doing. I’m trying to portray different types of humans that I picture and then I let myself be guided by their attention — like I said, by their inner life. So, I’m not trying to psychologise, like the didactic approach you were mentioning. That’s why I don’t want to separate the bad guys from the good guys. I like the ambiguity. “Oh, he’s so charming, but oh my God, okay, okay.” “Oh, he’s endearing, but oh my God, what a pain in the ass.” I’m trying to portray humans with their flaws. In comedy, we like people with flaws and unlikable characters. The unlikable becomes likeable and I like that a lot. So, in a way, if I’m getting the reproach that my characters are unlikable, well, in comedy it’s always like that.
It’s a funny movie.
It is a funny movie.
What were your inspirations for this film? Pierre Perrault’s The Shimmering Beast (1982) came to mind.
There’s a concrete homage to it in the film with the rabbit and the character is named Albert after Stéphane-Albert [Boulais], the poet [who acts in that film]. Of course, I’m doing a very obvious homage — frontal homage — to that film. And then there’s a lot of nods and winks to so many films from Bresson: the first shot with the hands. I mean, who can shoot hands better than Bresson? The film is opening with the hands and it’s closing with the hands. With the cinematographer — this is more like the cooking aspect of it — we were watching a lot of Vilmos Zsigmond’s work, from Deliverance (1972) to The Deer Hunter (1978). Deer Hunter for me is still one of my favourite films ever. Actually, what I like in The Deer Hunter is the whole beginning where there’s no narrative, it’s just a presentation of a group of friends and it goes for an hour and a half. Just them partying, dancing, going for a hunting trip that goes not really well, and then going to the wedding. I mean, the Vietnam part for me is the weakest part of the film. It’s not that interesting. It’s really the taking of time to establish the characters, their connection together, the scene that they’re dancing to “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” and it’s a brilliant scene. Just the interactions with the people.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be precise about portraying relationships; that’s what I do, that’s what I like to do. All of the subtle things that are not said: You say something, the other one is hurt and he doesn’t show it. Things that are hidden. It’s full of that in the film and then there’s the tension. I had the luxury to do those long scenes and to take risks somehow, narratively, but if there was no tension, nobody would really go see my films. So, I also like to feel that tension. Basically, when I write, I write the film I want to see. It’s like the film that I wish existed and then I’m creating it. The first spectator I want to please is myself.
The Deer Hunter has a lot of interiority, like a novel. In the film, you see the characters’ behaviour, but with their motivations, it’s not didactic.
Exactly. And that’s the problem with contemporary films and TV. Often, you can feel that it’s completely written. They follow the rules of how to define a character and they’re not multi-dimensional. They don’t present a full human being; there’s no inner life. With inner life, maybe people believe that belongs to literature, but for me, it’s important. I studied literature first and to bring that inner life… it’s the inner life that guides the story: the story’s model, the tension — the inner tension. I’m much more interested in that than having some exterior events where the hero is fighting with a precise quest. It takes you hostage. To make it like a shirt where every little piece fits together, and then it brings to a climax. You have those stupid rules, you know, like David Mamet. “You cannot have a scene where you don’t know exactly what the characters want.” Fuck, fuck, fuck. That’s a conservative way of seeing.
Like that screenwriting seminar guy, Robert McKee? Or that book, Save the Cat?
Yeah, luckily we don’t hear that much about him anymore, but everybody was talking about him in the 2000s. Of course, you need to know the rules before you break them, but we know the rules without having to read them and do a test and pass the exam — it’s so stupid. Because we saw so many films as cinephiles, so we know how film works. But I’m surprised how the audience is… I don’t know if you saw Genesis, but I was so surprised by the fact that one out of two people who saw the film didn’t really get anything about the ending. I’m amazed because I’m taking a freedom. In a book, nobody would ever ask me not to… I could change the narrator and you can end your book with a poem, and it’s been done since forever.
Don Quixote.
Yeah, absolutely. From Don Quixote to Faulkner.
You have a Faulkner reference in this one, the copy of The Sound and the Fury.
Oh, you saw [laughs], you’re one of the very few… Well, I didn’t translate it. It’s an old French translation, a good one.
It’s such an interesting text as far as language and interiority and it’s interesting that Aliocha is reading it because her artistic approach seems different than the other artists: the two older men [Blake and Albert], and even Jeff. She seems to have a different approach to art than they do as we understand it in the film.
The only one that is doing something in writing is her.
She is the beginning and the end of the film. She has a perspective that might be the most interesting of them all.
My goal, and I don’t know if I succeeded, was that we start with Jeff and then we slowly move towards her point of view and that the film will end more on her perspective on things. I was feeling that, because for me, she’s the one who is going to probably write a story about what happened. She’s kind of the hope among all the characters. Even though I think that Jeff pays for his stupidity, I think he’s gonna be okay, as well [laughs]. When he sees Blake trying for me, it’s not to show that Blake is such a sensitive man because he can cry over a dead pet animal. It’s more to see that Jeff is seeing him being weak for the first time and really breaking down.
In your previous two films, you focus on adolescence. So we’re seeing their experiences as they happen, but in this one, because you have the older characters, they have a history that we don’t know. There’s a lot that’s inside of them that’s not being depicted that we’re only seeing kind of manifest. Was that interesting for you as a writer to kind of explore that, their unseen backstory?
Yes, of course. Because I told myself from the beginning that Albert, for instance, he wanted to work again with Blake, who doesn’t want to work again with this guy. But then why does he want Albert to come to visit? Because he wants to show off and to have spectators. He wants to show that now he’s this independent, free-thinking artist, living isolated. I mean, they all have those motivations. But then probably one of the worst portrayals, which is not the “Wine Gate” [scene], I imagined breaking into a kind of taboo where only a certain type of very kind of toxic and destructive person would go.
In your fiction films, friendship is a very contentious thing, there are negotiations and difficulties.
Yeah, it is, and because I think there’s always a little competitive thing that is being hidden, especially among men. I’m surprised also because I’m really putting my characters in a situation where I don’t think I would have gone there for that weekend. For me, it’s a nightmare to spend more than one night under a roof with a group of people. It needs to be people you really trust — family. Otherwise, I get like, “Okay, I need to get out of this place.” For the friendships, we witness Millie end the friendship at the end, as well. Jeff and Max are not friends anymore, Albert and Blake, Millie and Blake. In a way, I’m suggesting that Blake is going to end up alone.
I haven’t really talked about the representation of friendship and what I want to say. I don’t really want to say anything about the friendship, but it’s something that I had fun to write about. Because there’s a lot of toxic masculinity that I’m portraying. But on the other hand, I had in my life a problematic friendship where I needed to take a break and to take a distance at some point. I’m not the most faithful friend on the planet, but… I mean, it depends. If I start to feel that there’s a certain kind of competition, there’s a resentment, then I’m really allergic to that. The beauty of getting older is that you don’t waste time being surrounded by the wrong people, which you do when you’re younger. So being surrounded by the wrong people, for me, it’s very immature. So, maybe I’m expressing that kind of teenage friendship where there’s still that connection that is not completely based on trust. Besides that, I have very good friends in life and am also not claiming that every man has a toxic side — I think we do, you know, to some extent, everybody does. But there is something destructive that we need to be aware of, that’s for sure. Can we be sweet among each other? I’m a new father, and I see [other] new fathers, as well, younger parents, and they’re so sweet with their kids — trying not to repeat the mistakes that their parents or other generations did. I try to be the same. I’m not as pessimistic as it sounds like, or as it looks like in the film, but the reality is that when I started to write the film, it was pre-#MeToo and then I did the film during the #MeToo period. I thought this is really relevant and then I thought there was going to be a change and it’s going to be more of a feminine kind of society. Now it’s worse than we were even thinking of, you know, it’s an atrocity. So, that makes the film relevant, but I’m not happy. I would have preferred that my film is describing another world, another period, but it’s even worse what we see live on the news than what’s represented in the film.
One thing that’s interesting about all the male characters is that Laurent Lucas’ character is slightly outside of it all. I know he and Irène Jacob are the celebrity-celebrities in the film’s story, and something befalls him, but he’s outside of the competition in a way since he’s already won. What made you bring those characters into the story and what was it like working with these two actors?
I really wanted to put two French actors in a canoe [laughs]. Though Laurent lives mainly in Québec. Surrealistically I was having fun with these French actors coming and being put in a canoe being pushed by Blake’s ego and it’s going to turn bad for them — something’s going to happen. I really like that it’s a short presence, I really love the couple, they make me laugh. They come back from fishing and ask, “How are you guys? Are you okay?” Laurent is perfect as a Parisian bourgeois with his beautiful actress wife, that was enough for me. Laurent I had worked with earlier and I will always give him small roles that he has the generosity to accept. It’s almost a cameo, but they had almost twenty days of shooting. I think Irene really likes the film and is happy with it, but wished maybe would have liked if her character… If you put a group of actors together, like ten actors, of course everybody’s going to try to pull the sheet in their direction, but the character is where I wanted the character to be, I have to admit.
It’s funny you say they’re all pulling the sheet, because in the second of the big dinner scenes, you have the same staging as the first one, but the camera pulls back and you see all the new characters that have arrived. There are so many people, they’re not even able to be in the shot initially. Those dinner scenes are so key to the film and I’m wondering how you approached shooting them and what they meant for you in the writing process?
They were the main course of the film, so we shot them at the end, where everybody knew where they were standing and the actors were completely into their characters. It went very fluidly and it was super nice. It was very smooth so then I could explore, because we had two days of shooting for every dinner, so that’s six days, which is a luxury. Then we ended up in three or four, so it went so nicely, so I had time to… I’m a director who does a lot of takes, but it’s not like Stanley Kubrick asking for Tom Cruise to open a door 75 times. It’s more like we have this five minute scene, and it’s one shot, and technically it needs to be mastered, but it gives us the opportunity because I have all the actors in the same frame. So it’s not like every time you do a shot-reverse shot, where you lose a bit of the energy of the person the camera is not on. I never do that and I never do pickups. Everybody knows that they’re in the frame, so that keeps everybody on their edge. And then we can do it, and do it, and do it, and try a different version every time. More violent, more subtle, more… this is going to happen, this one is completely freestyle, go nuts, don’t follow the fucking screenplay… Or go back, “Okay, maybe this is important to say, and then we can… But you said that, so that’s good.” I like to be surprised, I like the actors to surprise me, and I’m expecting them to also be surprised by my spontaneous ideas that I have on set, as well. I really want a film to be completely… it’s not about taking your script and, “Okay, now we’re going to do blocking.” I don’t even block, I shoot my blocking. I want the camera to grow as much as possible, all the time, and then to a point where we almost forget that we are shooting a film. And that’s the most magical moment where we kind of… “Oh my God, what happened?” We were so into the intensity of creation that we almost forget that we were shooting a film. That’s the best feeling ever. And the dinner scene, I think there were moments like that.
It’s interesting what you said about blocking, because in your films, the characters have a real physicality; there’s a physical sense of their movement and how the camera follows their movement. The beginning of The Demons and Genesis both feel very embodied. Is that something that is just happening as you shoot, or are you still planning a certain amount of how they move?
I’m planning, it’s just that the time is so important in film that I don’t like to say, “Okay, let’s do blocking, you’re going to sit here…” I can do it, of course; they need to be placed somewhere and to do something, but in order to keep it fresh, I shoot the block. But sometimes I let them also be completely free, but of course they have things to do: they’re fishing. That was completely mise en scène: they’re fishing and then Jeff is coming, and then we see them and action, and so on. Of course, all the long shots are kind of choreographed, but there’s always space, I don’t want it to be too precise, as well. It’s a mix of some things that are precise and some are not. That’s why the takes are very different from one to another.
I wanted to also ask about the shots that are locked off, the long shots and long takes, where they tend to be further away from the characters. Sometimes you kind of zoom in or track in a little bit, sometimes you go in really quickly. There’s a moment in Genesis, when Charlotte’s name is said and the camera punches in really quickly. But sometimes the movement is subtle and you almost don’t notice it. Is that an intentional technique or an intuition?
We’re discussing all the ways we’re going to shoot the scenes. The camera is discussed with my cinematographer [Balthazar Lab] first. We take the script, we sit down for a couple of days and then we take notes. He needs to know what I want technically, like we need rails. Then I’m thinking of what I’m seeing for the scene and I say what is going to be interesting. And sometimes when we arrive [at the location] — even if we know where we’re going to shoot because obviously we did some scouting and we did some technical visits also — it’s like, “Okay, but it would maybe be interesting to…” “We plan to do it in two shots, but let’s do it in one shot and maybe we can…” “We do a dolly shot here and then we take it from here and then…” And sometimes I had things in mind, for instance, there is two scenes in the film, one at the beginning where they just arrive in the meat plate in front of the seaplane. It’s not my favourite scene, the way they approach, a bit of a low angle and then it’s a dolly shot. Then I realise at the end of the film, which we shot on the last day of shooting, there’s a car coming, it’s a different kind of shot, but the kind of coming, stopping at the front of the vet clinic and the characters, they go out and then they meet and then the camera goes very slowly. I ended up succeeding and doing the shot that maybe I wanted to do at the beginning, but I couldn’t do it. I did something else, but that’s what I was intending first. So, sometimes you have something in mind and then you’re like… “How am I going to do it?” And then sometimes you really find the perfect angle, the perfect thing, the perfect clocking, and sometimes you don’t.
It’s true that I don’t give a lot of precise direction… Even if it’s the body, like you say, it’s so important, the dancing scene at the opening of The Demons. That was just asking the actress to ask the kids to do some exercise. “You can do this and then you can do this and you can jump in jacks and they can do…” And then they run away and then we were just filming like we were shooting a documentary. This is what I like, to feel like I’m shooting documentaries and they’re not actors who are being told exactly what to do with their hands. They can do what they want with their hands.
The last three films all have dance scenes.
Many films in the last decades with dancing scenes. I really wanted to nail it. Like, to do the dancing scene. So we can get over with it [laughs].
Music is so important, not just in your films, but also to the characters in each of these films, too. Sometimes, as a viewer, it seems like it’s non-diegetic, but then it is diegetic, like in this film with Aliocha and the John Grant song. When she starts singing at first, you think that it’s just the soundtrack, but it’s not.
Yeah and then it can be a bit less realistic. We don’t know if it’s a dream, we don’t know if it’s in her head, or it’s very impressionistic. I think I’m a failed musician and probably a failed writer.
You composed some pieces for Genesis?
It’s music in the background that we did in the bar that we did on the side [laughs]. But I’m not saying no to composing some music in the next film, because I haven’t said my last word. I bought a piano when my son was born, and I play and I want him to listen to some music. I’m planning a musical, as well. So that shows you how important music is for me. It’s a script that works by itself, a comedy. It’s more a comedy than all my other films. The characters would sing original songs and also songs that are already existing, like the John Grant song “Marz”, sung by the actors. Sometimes, they walk in the rain and sing, or there’s a sophisticated choreography on the bridge in Copenhagen. It’s taking place in Copenhagen. Then it’s crazy and it gets the [Jacques] Demy-meets-Spike Jonze-type of crazy choreography. That’s what he was doing in his early…
The Björk music video?
Yeah, and then we go back to the story, so not filled with song, maybe five pieces.
I wanted to ask about your use of dissolves.
I like that you mention it because nobody asks you any questions about the dissolves. There’s at least three. It’s the first time I’ve used them. It’s in the screenplay. It’s really something that I feel while I write it. In the next film — not the comedy, the musical, I’m going to do another one before — in the end, it’s “Fade to Black.” Which I haven’t done since… I don’t think I’ve ever done a fade to black, the dissolving to black and then another scene. It’s nice.
It feels like a chapter ending in a book.
It feels like a chapter, it gives a certain kind of a rhythm. I just feel it instinctively, I feel like we should try it. It creates something nice when you’re overlapping to a situation. Hitchcock is the master of the dissolves and it’s been studied and studied. This is where my naturalistic approach to acting meets my impressionistic approach on all my films. Because I’m not a realistic, naturalistic director. I’m more into impressions and the dissolves are totally an example of that. It’s almost dreamy.
Like David Lynch.
I’m playing with the dream also at the end of this film. I can read that people also have a problem with my ending. They don’t understand it, but I don’t understand what they don’t understand. It’s funny how cinema becomes so conservative that every time you take a little step aside, we are slightly a bit out of the box, how we miss so many viewers. I like when I think a film is ending and then it surprises me with something else or it confused me a bit at the end. I like the ending. Like, “Oh, there’s no resolution.” For me, there is. What else do you need? That we see Blake dying alone and then Aliocha becoming a successful writer.
They probably wanted the film to end when she’s singing, because that’s how so many things now end.
We thought about that and it was strange. People would have been even more angry if I did that. People are very good at telling you all you should end your film [laughs], but then I would like to see their films, because…
The ending made sense to me because I thought that when Aliocha introduced herself when they first arrived, she had such a strong presence and then ending with her it connected with me. This is the character that, as you say, was seeing everything.
She has a last word and she’s closing the film. My former title was A Great Man and it was ironic, of course. But since a lot of people don’t understand irony these days, I changed the title. Then the ending scene for me was like, okay, it’s called A Great Man, but then we assist the birth of a great woman.
A Better Woman.
Yes, a better woman. ❏
