In her new film Les Oubliés de La Belle Étoile (The Lost Boys Of Mercury), Clémence Davigo tells a truly shocking story about how kids staying in a Catholic correctional facility half a century ago were beaten and humiliated by the priests in charge. The kids are now in late middle age.
In the documentary (which screens in the International Competition in Nyon), Davigo helps Dédé, Michel and Daniel confront the demons from their childhood.
“I met Dédé, one of the main protagonists of the film, in 2014, when I was working on my first documentary film Arrested Lives,” the director recalls. That film was about the relationship of Annette and Louis, a couple whose love survives the fact that one of them is behind prison walls.
“Dédé is a friend of theirs, and like Louis, he spent many years in prison for robberies. During our discussions, I understood that his story had a pre-history. That he had experienced another form of confinement before the prison experience. At the age of nine, Dédé was placed in the Belle Étoile reformatory and what he told me moved me deeply,” Davigo says.
One day in 2018, Dédé asked Davigo to accompany him to the shared meal that this group of former Belle Étoile residents have been organising every summer for several years. She was both moved and surprised by this unlikely reunion. What, she wondered, could have driven Dédé and his friends of misfortune to meet again and to reminisce about a period which was so painful for them?
The director met Daniel, Michel, André, Pierre, Gérard, and many others, who had also experienced the hell of La Belle Étoile. (The place takes its name from the mountain nearby and is based on). “All these men touched me a lot, and what they told me revolted me. My desire to make a film was born that day: I was chilled by this terrible story, but I had a deep empathy for these men and their need to find themselves again.”
Davigo had read stories and poems by authors like Jacques Prévert and Jean Genet about the suffering of kids in childhood penal colonies. She didn’t think that such places were still in existence until comparatively recently. She acknowledges that she is “not an expert” on the violence toward children in institutions today but she has her fears it still continues. “There is a general tendency, at least in France, to create, for example, more and more CEFs (closed educational centres / prisons for minors), whose functioning is very much criticised,” she notes.
The protagonists took no persuading to appear in the documentary. They all wanted to tell their stories on camera. Davigo has spent five years working on the project, building up a very close level of trust with her subjects.
“I started the scouting and the writing, during which I took the time to meet each of them. I then took the time to choose the location…I didn’t want to film them alone in their homes, because this story is collective. For this reason, I suggested for the film that some of them would meet together, just like their annual meetings. For the film, they would spend time together over a longer period of time and in a welcoming place, which would allow them to look back on the past in a shared and serene present.”
These men have tried to blank out their terrible memories – or have previously felt too fearful to talk about them. “Many of them have not spoken about it for more than 50 years, out of fear, shame, or because they were not believed,” Davigo observes.
Being in a group with others who endured similar experiences was liberating for them. Davigo made sure they were in congenial surroundings when they were being filmed. “I found a suitable place… a beautiful house, located on the other side of the valley, just in front of the Belle Étoile centre. An open, warm and protective place, which could be a showcase for their words.”
The protagonists spent a lot of time together, eating meals, talking, thinking, mulling over the past. “I also wanted to draw on their own threads, things they have done in their lives that are important to them: cooking for Michel, sports for Daniel, digital paintings for André…and what was also great was that the protagonists really got into the game of “acting”, they waited for the camera to be placed, they were ready to say things again if necessary, they were real acolytes. They understood that staging is not a betrayal but a way to make their story better understood.”
They’ve now all seen the film – and have been very moved by it. “Some of them told me that they didn’t expect it to be as good as it was, nor that the images were [going to be] as beautiful. They were touched and happy to have their story come out of the shadows. Others would have liked more information about the abuse they suffered in these centres, but there was so much [of that] … a film cannot be exhaustive. I had to make choices in the editing process, and I wanted to avoid the [film being a] catalogue of horrors at all costs.”
Davigo knows they can never fully shake off the trauma they endured as kids. “Listening to these men, who are now retired, I was able to measure the extent to which their time in reform school during their childhood had a terrible impact on their entire lives,” says Davigo. “Their childhood in a reformatory had a terrible impact on their whole life. Each of them bears the marks of his stay at the Belle Étoile…”
The director refers to their nightmares, suicide attempts, social isolation, mental fragility and health problems their lives went in many different directions. Dédé became a criminal and did a lot of time in prison, Michel became a cook and cooked for children in school canteens all his life. Others became educators, librarians, workers. There were also those who killed themselves or were homeless or ended in psychiatric hospitals.
“Many of them have never dared to talk about it, neither to their relatives nor to others. For most of them, the trauma is such that it took 50 years for them to speak out. It is not just the passage of time that has allowed these people to tell their stories, but also the strength of the group, the comfort of being together: feeling reassured without the need to explain, prove or justify themselves,” Davigo notes.
The film was co-produced by Lyon Capitale TV and supported by a partnership between Tenk and Mediapart. It also had the support of the CNC and several French regions. The film will be broadcast in France after its run in festivals. Andana Films is handling international sales.
