Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios

There isn’t a lot of “fictive universe” in Lisa Azuelos’ latest film I Love America, Azuelos admitted when discussing her eighth film. The longtime French writer and director said she doesn’t know how to make a story without drawing from her own life, and even has difficulty selling scripts that aren’t inspired by her experiences.

“I've always shared my life, not because I'm a narcissist, a stupid person, but because I feel that the more true I can be with people, then the more true they're going to be with me,” Azuelos said. Filmmaking itself is a process through which she can share her truth and foster beauty, value, and friendship, she noted. Her latest project stays true to that spirit of vulnerability and openness.

I Love America tells the story of French filmmaker Lisa (played by Sophie Marceau) as she embarks on a new adventure, moving from Paris to sunny Los Angeles in the wake of her mother’s death. Reuniting with her best friend Luka (Djanis Bouzyani), the two of them plunge into the world of online dating to search for their respective "Prince Charmings".

Luka, who is gay, has had success in running his own drag bar but not in finding love. Through her experiences online dating, Lisa meets John (Colin Woodell), but along the way discovers that to truly love she needs to reconcile with her tumultuous first love, her late mother who was absent during Lisa’s childhood due to her fame as a starlet.

Expectations and embracing change

This was the fastest-moving process for creating a movie she’s ever had, Azuelos said, likely because the film went directly to Amazon Studios as opposed to a theater premiere. Azuelos arrived in the United States in September 2019 and decided she was going to take a two to three-year hiatus from screenwriting to give her heart a rest. 

“I was fed up with doing movies telling about my life,” she said. Azuelos then met up with her best friend Gael Fierro in the States, who convinced her to get on Tinder where she met someone.

From there, she and Fierro, who is not a writer, began writing the script and exploring themes of love, childhood, dating in the digital age, and the gay community in LA.

“I didn't expect my mom to die at that moment; I didn't expect to go on Tinder that moment, but it just happened,” she said. “And suddenly I felt there is a connection there — the way that I love people and the way I've been loved as a child.

Shifting Themes

Though she was only talking about romantic love at the beginning of her project, in the wake of her mother’s death the themes began to shift. “I was like, ‘This is the moment to mix my loving situation nowadays with what was my first loving situation with my mom.”

Azuelos deftly explored the impact of parental love using periodic flashbacks to her character Lisa’s childhood, a storytelling tool that emerged organically, she said. When writing the screenplay, she would be working on a scene that would make her think of her mother, and eventually, these flashbacks to her youth became a powerful narrative structure.

The filmmaker also drew on her relationship with her father for her project, naming the film after the first song she ever heard in a discotheque with him — Patrick Juvet’s “I Love America.” The film originally included a scene to pay homage to that moment, though it was later cut. Azuelos even offered film writers a useful tip: write as many expensive songs as you can into your screenplay so the extra costs will be considered in the budget line early on when you are starting to develop the film.

Finally, “there are things that I can say in music that I can't say with words,” she said.

Los Angeles love song

In addition to paying homage to her parents, Azuelos used the film to also showcase her appreciation for disco nights, America, and the city of Los Angeles.

“I don't know why I feel so loved when I'm in LA, and maybe so rejected when I'm in Paris,” she said. “Of course, there is my brain that has been fed by all those American movies, so when I'm here, I feel like I'm in a big great fiction movie.”

For Azuelos, movies were a way to escape her loneliness as a child, which is evident when watching I Love America. Seeing Paramount Pictures®, Warner Brothers®, and other studios when walking down the street is a special experience.

“Fiction is still a place where you can give your brain and your heart and your mental 'whatever' to someone who's going to take care of it in a gentle way,” she said. “And LA, for me, is one of the best places to do that.”

Though she made it big in France many years ago, Azuelos is eager for Americans to see her film and to see how they respond.

 “It's very bizarre for them to be confronted with American culture,” she said of Americans. “Usually they say, ‘we don't love America.’ I say I love America.” While the country has its flaws, she still loves it.

“I Love America” is available to stream on Amazon Prime.