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Dominik Moll said he has read books on lemmings - the furry footed rodents of his new film - and was attracted to them - calling them "a mysterious animal". In this film, a lemming from Scandinavia is trapped in the drainpipe and sets off a chain of events involving two couples-- the Pollocks: played by André Dussolier and Charlotte Rampling, and the Gettys – played by Laurent Lucas and Charlotte Gainsbourg .

Moll adds that the film talks about what people would like to control in their lives, things that "we just can’t get a grip on, secret desires and fears, the anxieties that we don’t want to meet". The French director has proven to be a master of suspense in his previous box office hit With a Friend Like Harry, a film that grimly confirms that with friends like Harry, you really don’t need enemies.

Actor André Dussolier, who plays Richard Pollock, said the strength of the film lay in "the things said and unsaid", revealing that "a bomb" is dropped in the beginning of the film. What attracted him to the project was that "people say what they think, what they feel". He felt total "jubilation" and loved the screenplay that allowed him to express "the lines we have behind dark glasses". "It was great fun", he said.

As for Alice Pollock, the character played by Charlotte Rampling, the veteran British actor describes her as "a woman that doesn’t hide behind social conventions and says what she thinks". We think the same of Rampling who prides herself on and is admired for her natural looks. In fact she goes as far to call the artificial beauty business "barbaric", and enjoys her status as an European actress that can defy the obligatory glamour conventions of Hollywood film.

The plot of Lemming is set to a Hitchcockian score. "I don’t think Hitchcock hated women, if you watch the way he shot", exclaimed Moll at the press conference for the film. Moll admitted to being "a great admirer" of the director and learned "how he constructed his films and broke them down into shots".

Of his latest film, Moll claims it is natural that people have similarities with lemmings. On this point Rampling agrees. The "characters are so clear", she said. The dialogue of the film in fact is constructed so that "the answers snake in between like the lemming in the film". How are we going to get out?", she asks

Moll doesn’t see the film as pessimistic and likes "dark and strange atmospheres I can easily create with lightning".

As for the Cannes prizes, Moll explained that "awards are the cherry on the cake!"

Moira Sullivan