“Visiting Hours”, an interview with director Patricia Mazuy

June 6, 2024

A study on what happens when an upper-class lady opens her door to a fellow-prisoner's wife and her children

"Visiting Hours", an interview with director Patricia Mazuy Bénédicte Prot

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French director Patricia Mazuy (Peaux de vache, Of Women and Horses, Bowling Saturn) tells us more about her 6th feature film, “Visiting Hours“ (La Prisonnière de Bordeaux), starring Isabelle Huppert and Hafsia Herzi as Alma and Mina, two prisoners’ wives on opposites sides of the sociocultural spectrum who find themselves unexpectedly united under the same roof, from a script initiated by Pierre Courrège and François Bégaudeau which she later boarded and completed. Visiting Hours just premiered in Cannes as part of the 56th Directors’ Fortnight.

We talk, amongst other things including the script and working with children, about her collaborating again with the iconic Huppert after The King’s Daughters (Saint-Cyr, 2000), about their approach to create the character of Alma, which relied heavily on costume, and about the combination with co-star Hafsia Herzi, whom she chose to physically transform for the role of Mina.

Patricia Mazuy also recounts how serendipidously she found the house around which the film revolves, and elaborates on the various, often sociologically intriguing spaces where she chose to place her characters.

Plot

Two women cross paths in the waiting room of a prison where each has come to visit "their man". One is a wealthy bourgeois woman, the other, a mother of two children who has to work hard to put food on the table. The former, Alma (Isabelle Huppert) who lives much closer to the prison, offers the latter, Mina (Hafsia Herzi), a room in her large house. Is this a friendship, a romance, a pact? The film follows the unlikely pair, their dreams of female emancipation, and the reverberations of the gulf that separates them. Nothing is black-and-white here, nor half-hearted.

Written by: Bénédicte Prot

Guest

Patricia Mazuy

Film

Visiting Hours

Festival

Festival de Cannes

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