Q: The obligatory question first: How many crustaceans died during the making of this film? At the afterparty? Do you eat meat?
ALICE WINOCOUR: We used thirty lobsters in the making of this film. They were usually resting in their “caravan,” which was a huge aquarium where we fed them. None died, but one committed suicide on camera. We buried him with a lot of respect. Acting is a tough job. Another one was nicknamed Leonardo, like DiCaprio. He was the best. The afterparty was very calm. I do eat meat, but I don’t eat actors.
Q: Did you know that Whole Foods—a conscientious and very expensive U.S. grocery store—has stopped selling live lobsters on the grounds that it’s inhumane, and instead have overseen the development of a giant, supposedly close-to-painless lobster-killing machine that immediately pressurizes the little fellas right out of their shells? Other companies sell a little lobster electric chair called the Crustastun. Which would you choose?
AW: Had I been a Texan lobster, I would have had no choice: the electric chair. But being a French lobster, I think I would prefer the “killing machine” by Whole Foods. As Françoise Sagan said,
“It’s better to cry in a limousine than on the subway.”
Q: I read that Caribbean spiny lobsters can detect the disease PaV1 in passing lobsters, even if the other lobster shows no detectable signs of sickness. What was the most vicious illness you’ve endured?
AW: I’m a hypochondriac, so I have a lot of vicious illnesses: imaginary and real ones. The worst illness was a chagrin d’amour, which was the break-up that inspired Kitchen.
Q: Have you heard of the Robo-Lobster? It’s a two-foot-long, seven-pound crustacean made out of industrial-strength plastic, which the U.S. Navy plans to employ to detect and destroy mines buried under the surf zone. What is your favorite possession?
AW: My favorite possession is my boyfriend’s body. I’ve never heard of the Robo-Lobster.
Q: Have you ever seen a line of lobsters, two-hundred-strong, scuttling across the ocean floor on their way to deeper water? They do this to escape storms. The sand bothers them; it gets under their shells. While making this wonderful film, did anything get under your shell?
AW: When I’m shooting a film or writing, I try to avoid having a shell. Without one, everything hurts, and this is the hardest (but very important) part.
Q: The woman in your film is struggling to communicate with her husband. She doesn’t beg and cry, or scream and throw fits. She’s composed, although clearly unfulfilled. Why did you choose passivity for her character? Which emotional response (rage, apathy, neediness, etc.) do you think is the most common in unsatisfied humans and why?
AW: I decided that the female lead, Elina Lowensöhn, should be passive, but only in appearance.
The starting point of the film is a short story by Roald Dahl, called “Lamb to the Slaughter,” which is about a woman who kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb. I saw it first as part
of a Hitchcock TV series. But when I started thinking about a woman who fantasizes about killing her husband, I couldn’t identify with the violence and murder. The action of killing in a short movie can be hard to believe. I was more interested in insidious and perverse violence: one contained and withheld, and part of a bourgeois world. I think that rage and revolt are the most common emotional
responses for unsatisfied humans. However, I believe that these feelings can also result in an inner struggle, as in the case of Elina. Her desperate effort to kill the two lobsters is a metaphor
for her struggle with her own demons. In taking action and killing them, she allows herself to escape from the prison of her own kitchen. She’s free to march toward her destiny.
Q: Is Kitchen based on a true story? Have you gotten in a fight or ended a relationship over food preparation?
AW: Kitchen is not based on a true story, but it does have some autobiographical inspiration. One day, my grandmother told me about how she’d used a hammer to smash a dying pigeon on the head, on her balcony. She also smashed its eggs. She spoke of the incident naturally, and coming from her mouth the drama seemed comical. So I decided that in Kitchen, Elina’s violence would have to be
motivated by an object. This is how I came up with the idea of the lobster à l’américaine. My starting point would be a day in the life of a woman who is determined to kill a living entity—in particular,
her marriage. At that time I was going through a difficult break-up. When the film was finished, I realized that the story was also about the difficulty of killing something that is still alive—like
my relationship. I have to tell you that the recipe that is in the film is the real recipe of homards à l’américaine, which says that the lobster should be alive when cut into pieces before it’s fried.
Q: Is there anything else you would like to share with us?
AW: A shrimp! And of course my latest short film, Magic Paris, which tells the story of a woman who meets the love of her life and then loses it the following morning on her way to buy croissants.
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