Jean Marc Vallee Talks The Young Victoria

10 July 2009

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Jean Marc Vallee is a filmmaker and screenwriter who has found success with French speaking movies with the likes of Liste noire and Los Locos under his belt.

But he moves into the period drama with his new movie The Young Victoria, which stars Emily Blunt in the early years of Queen Victoria's reign.

I caught up with Jean to talk about the movie, how he tried to portray a different image of Victoria and what lies ahead for him.

- The Young Victoria is about to be released on DVD can you tell me a little bit about the film?

It's a true romantic, heartbreaking film. The Young Victoria is such a passionate film and it underlines the beautiful romance that she had with ther cousin, ooh, with Albert. It's a story where we learn about her young years and how she was when she first became queen of England and we follow her through the years of the seduction with Albert.

- Now Queen Victoria does have this image of being a woman living in grief and dressed constantly in black so what image did you want to portray of this monarch?

Of course it's about the young Victoria and not the old, dressed in black widow that everybody knows and that was the interest it was nice to present her through that veil and in a different way.

We are going to discover a young and rebellious girl, she was rock and roll for her time; if rock and roll is to make some noise and cry out loud what you want to do and what you don't want to do to the authorities she was modern in her own age and era.

She wanted to do good and while see can see that she had quite a temper she had good intentions and I loved the mythical quality that I found on the page about that character who tries to fulfill her destiny.

- That sort of leads me into my next question the likes of Martin Scorsese and Julian Fellows also worked on the project so how did it come to you attention and what was is about the story, script or character that you thought would make a good feature?

It came to me through the agency ICM, they had been giving me scripts since I signed with them and we released C.R.A.Z.Y, so I have read a lot of scripts from America and Hollywood over the last year and a half just reading trying to see if there was something out there for me.

I was almost ready to give and stop reading when they said that I should read this script by Julian Fellows called The Young Victoria, but my first instinct was well first I'm not into period and film and secondly I don't know anything about the monarchy and I'm not sure I want to know.

But then I stared to read and it was good and I felt that it was something that would be fun to direct and I could relate to and when you choosing your film, it's like choosing your lifestyle, when you are spending two years on something you have got to love it.

- I didn't realise that it was such a long production process why did it take two years?

It took two years yes; a year of prepartaion and shooting and then a year of post production, the post production was rather long because of all those little details and the effects to be invisible and transparent to make it believable, authentic and true.

So it takes time to work with the effects team and the effects crew so yes filmmaking takes close to two years and that's always almost the case.

- The cast is very British driven with the likes of Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend and Paul Bettany so what was the casting process like, did you have those actors in mind?

Again, in order to aim for authenticity as we wanted the film to look real, we aimed for British actors but we do have some German as there are some German character so we went to Berlin and did some auditions over there.

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