Quotes

The Wanderings of Ivan is a kind of modern, cruel tale in which the wishes and the expectations of a young man are turned into merchandise with a price. The aim of the film is to show through his wanderings and his encounters the increasing power of money. Money (Bresson's eponymous film title) that contaminates and spoils everything is one of the main themes of this story made of swerves, digressions, submersions. The general tone of the film is dark and bittersweet, lit up with moments of evanescent grace. We were eager to have these suspended moments be part of a rather grim, pessimistic narrative. The sensual and carefree scenes, far from obliterating the nightmare Ivan goes through, worsen it. (The wanderings of Ivan - press file).

The starting point was a bad encounter I had one night in Bois de Vincennes when I was young. This incident has haunted and unsettled me throughout my youth (and still does). I suggested to Claude Chamis we write an allegory about the encounter that destroyed my carelessness. Thus we started writing a story in the shape of a tale of initiation, a cruel journey with bucolic aspects. We agreed on the Kerouac-style character of the pure, innocent tramp, the ideal prey to all kinds of covetousness and malevolence. We imagined a young wanderer from Russia who arrives in Paris in the heat of the summer and keeps being rejected. He finds shelter outside the city, in Bois de Vincennes, where an underground, asocial life has developed with its own codes and traffics. Ivan arrives in town totally innocent and pure, he will leave the woods deeply soiled with his life broken forever. (The wanderings of Ivan press file).