Chloé Robichaud looks at how a toxic family relationship affects a conductor's work in her latest film
The filmmaker enlisted acclaimed conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin to help her get it right
Chloé Robichaud's films open you up to new worlds by exploring the relationships within them. From the young runner whose marriage doesn't go the way she plans in Sarah Prefers to Run to the politicians involved in a heated negotiation in Boundaries, Robichaud gets you into her characters' heads.
Her latest film, Days of Happiness, is no different. The film depicts Emma, a conductor on the rise in the Quebec music scene, and how she deals with her controlling father — who is also her agent.
The idea for the film came to Robichaud after #MeToo, when people were discussing toxic relationships in the workplace.
"I was always thinking, yeah, but that toxicity takes root somewhere, and it's in our family," Robichaud says in an interview with Q's Tom Power. "So to have him as an agent and her father was a great way to explore that."
Despite the film's heavy content, Robichaud didn't want Days of Happiness to be all doom and gloom — especially because movies have often depicted the classical music world as a dark and abusive place.
Robichaud wanted to accurately portray this world. So she enlisted the help of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the music and artistic director of New York's Metropolitan Opera, Montreal's Orchestre Métropolitain and the Phildelphia Orchestra. He served as a musical consultant on the film.
Intense family dynamics in the classical world weren't news to Nézet-Séguin. He saw some of his peers deal with parents similar to Emma's father, who were constantly pushing them to work harder and harder.
WATCH | Official trailer for Days of Happiness:
"I could see that extremely talented people, because their parents were putting too much pressure, it broke them and they don't play music anymore," Nézet-Séguin tells Power in the same interview with Robichaud.
But for the acclaimed conductor, the classical music world has been a place of love. Nézet-Séguin's parents were always supportive, but never pushy, of his career. Plus, he met his partner of 28 years — now his husband — while they were working at the Orchestre Métropolitain!
Robichaud used Nézet-Séguin's positive experiences to inform her depiction of a conductor's life in Days of Happiness. Though the father-daughter relationship in the film is rocky, there are lots of other relationships that are quite beautiful. Emma falls in love with a cellist, as well as starts to explore her own life outside of the professional success dictated by her father.
"I want musicians and conductors to see the film and be bluffed and believe Sophie Desmarais, playing Emma, is a real conductor," Robichaud says. "And I think with the help of my friend Yannick, we made the right choices."
The full interview with Chloé Robichaud and Yannick Nézet-Séguin is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Chloé Robichaud and Yannick Nézet-Séguin produced by Mitch Pollock.
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