Roxane

‘Roxane’ is based on the play ‘Subject Mater’. Like the play, the film explores a mother’s psyche, full of lyricism and pathos, highlighting the beauty and absurdity of her life. The story follows three siblings who come together in a ritual game of make-believe, in which they reenact their French mother’s life in an attempt to understand the impact she had on them. To do so they use the only thing she left behind: audio tapes, each with the title of a chapter of her memoir. Once they hit ‘play’, we’re transported into the mother’s colourful and surreal world. ✨Creative process:✨ At the beginning of each audio tape, we hear Roxane—the mother—reading the name of the chapter (in French). To make it clear that she’s the one who wrote on the cassette tapes, I thought the graphics (or ‘titles’) for those should be written in a typical French handwriting. This led me to design the movie title as Roxane’s signature, to convey the sense of personal memoir. Now, you’ll have to watch the movie to understand fully, but the toaster is her husband. The power cord linking ‘him’ to her name and wrapping around her wrists suggests that her identity is tied up with the domestic/her husband. This idea came from Nadia* after seeing my initial poster idea. I thought it was brilliant and was happy to visually interpret her idea! Creative collaborations are the best. After playing with a version of the poster that would include the three siblings, we decided to go with Roxane taking centre stage, ‘husband’ in hand. The mother’s world has a very 1950s aesthetic, so for the sub-titles, characters’ names and credits I chose a font that would have been used in old French school books from that era (see moodboard below). *Nadia Cavelle is the movie’s writer, one of its directors, and she also plays Roxane