Her Name is Sabine

Sandrine Bonnaire is not your typical French actress: after her amazing debut, aged 16, in the controversial To Our Loves by Maurice Pialat, she has starred in numerous alternative classics including Vagabond by Agnes Varda, Mr. Hire by Patrice Leconte and Joan The Maid by Jacques Rivette. She has forged an image of “rebel without a cause” for herself. But tonight at the ICA she shows a kinder and selfless side.

Now a first-time director, Bonnaire has helmed Her Name Is Sabine, a moving, insightful and achingly poignant documentary about her real life autistic sister, Sabine. Using footage filmed at Sabine’s current care home intercut with old family movies dating back 25 years, Sandrine paints a picture of her sister from a talented, fiery young woman with special needs to an overweight adult in need of constant supervision and medical treatment. Five years of internment in a psychiatric hospital have proved disastrous and crushed all of Sabine’s talents. But..she is now beginning to find a new life.

VB: Why did you decide to do this film, and why now?
SB: I wanted to make a statement to denounce the fact that in France we don’t have the right institutions for autistic people. Since the film was successfully released things have changed, but it has yet to be understood that autism is not an illness but a handicap, and that autistic people don’t need a hospital but a home. I’ve wanted to make this film since the first year that Sabine was in hospital but luckily I waited. I’m still angry ( at her treatment ) but now I think images are stronger than words, they speak naturally. It’s better for this film not to be explicative, to maintain a distance.

VB: Nevertheless you can sense the frustration and injustice watching Sabine before and after her stay in hospital.
SB: My sister had to renounce everything she knew, her character, her femininity. Now I think she should be given less drugs -  but it’s not easy to go against the suppliers. Medical laboratories are rich and powerful. I once  proposed that Sabine should go on a gluten-free diet because when she doesn’t eat gluten she’s less swollen and more alert. They didn’t even trust me.  

VB: In a painful scene at the care home, Sabine wants to dine with you but is told that you are busy filming and then you have to go to a restaurant. She feels neglected and over-reacts. What do you think of that scene?
SB: I really didn’t want to go! I’m happy to take Sabine to a restaurant. But this is reality: I am an actress and she is a disabled. If Sabine didn’t have autism, Maurice Pialat would have chosen her for To Our Loves, because she was so natural and more talented than me. Sabine was used to being filmed by me when we were young, so making this film was a trip back in time for us. She felt much better during the filming of it. It’s been a cathartic therapy.

VB: Have you ever used your fame to raise awareness about autism?
SB: Yes.. in fact it has helped to build and run the care home where Sabine lives now. One of my sisters had, by chance,  seen this community in a documentary on TV. I contacted the people who run it and they replied “we have everything, except money”. So I wrote a letter to Lionel Jospin, then Prime Minister, and using my fame we raised the funds to open the care home. Now in France we have two National Days of Autism and I’m the godmother. Recently Nicolas Sarkozy proposed me to be part of a committee for autism, but I want to check if it’s true.
The most important thing is that autistic people are considered and treated as functioning human beings.

Vera Brozzoni

Her Name is Sabine at the ICA, The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH until July 20th, www.ica.org.uk