In the beginning, making this movie was not in the cards. I was returning from a road trip with two friends, Niels and Monia. The journey had laid on some rich moments ranging from arid deserts to outlandish obese people. Locked in together for mile after mile, the dynamics of our intimacy sparked ideas for a project about a love triangle. Come early September, I boarded a train and headed for Toronto International Film Festival. With Lake Ontario’s iridescent waters lapping nearby, I took out my laptop and started writing the screenplay for Heartbeats (Les Amours Imaginaires). I did the same rounds, knocking on the very same doors I had visited back in the days of J’ai tué ma mère. I went back to being the young, scrawny filmmaker, vainly begging the tightfisted fat cats and bogus angels to, once again, put flesh and bones on a dream. But nobody answered the call. Impatient, I dipped into my modest treasure chest and, using what I had left, I set the wheels in motion, driven by a crazy, deep-seated conviction that, sooner or later, the money would show up.

Hi, Square One – I’m back! I was mentally poring over our first day’s work and beginning to sense that this film was going to be nothing like J’ai tué ma mère. Nevertheless, at that moment, I was not about to rule out the same dense, anguished emotional charge that had informed my earlier work. Nor had I yet decided that this film would be no kind of follow-up inviting unfavourable comparisons with its predecessor. I still had no clear, conscious intention of putting it on a new and different footing. However, almost magically, and as if by an act of will pushing up from the film set’s own collective unconscious, I was protected from the pitfalls of redundance as Heartbeats began gradually to assert itself by revealing its own distinct voice, colours and soul.

As for money, private sector investors (whom I had met thanks to the intervention of a guardian angel) emerged from the shadows shortly after we had started shooting. They saved the day. We received everything we needed and they, literally, became the heroes of the film.

Today, I look back and I am stunned by the twists and turns of events and, above all, atthe way the universe conspired to bring this work to life with such serendipitous timing. Isee now that I could never have made a better second film than Heartbeats.