Max and Julie are very much in love. Julie is rather jealous, but Max knows that nobody’s perfect – least of all, himself.

‘Ad Lib’ is a fantasy thriller in the world of karaoke. A story of appearances.

Director’s Vision

In France, each year, around 220 000 women are victims of domestic violence, physical and/or sexual. Who are these attackers, where are they? How do you know what’s really going on in private? As a director, I wanted to dive into the intimacy of a toxic relationship, under the varnish of appearances. This subject being regularly adressed in fiction, I didn’t want to direct another realistic drama with a documentary style, that the viewer would have already seen. I wanted to offer a real alternative thanks to an original filter: the supernatural thriller.

With this concept of karaoke-movie, I was able to visually represent the mechanisms of domination. Max’s character uses words to belittle his partner, corrects her speech. Here, he literally manipulates her sentences to achieve his aims. When he wants to silence the roommate, he actually makes her swallow her words, punches them into her. As in reality, language is a weapon and verbal violence is often the beginning of physical violence. With a work on film genres and symbolic visual effects, I want to show with Ad Lib that it’s not impossible to combine a social speech with a true visual experience.