Director's Works
Émile Bouthillier is a Montreal-based director and avid music lover.
His first short film, Savouring Asylum, was part of the official selection of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival.
Wacho is his first music video, a project that feels especially meaningful, as he’d been listening to Cosmo NVL long before he ever imagined they’d collaborate.
When I was ten, I thought I caught a glimpse of Harrison Ford in a car stopped at a red light. As a die-hard Indiana Jones fan, I just stood there staring at him. He slowly turned his head to hide his face. Looking back, I doubt it was really him, but the embarrassment, the discomfort of having turned a stranger into a zoo animal, left such a mark on my subconscious that twelve years later, while listening to Wacho for the first time, that memory suddenly resurfaced.
Out of that memory came the first scene of the video: a famous singer in his car, slowly turning his head to hide his face from the insistent gaze of his neighbors.
I imagined this singer as a modern-day Icarus, someone who wanted to go too far, too fast. The accident in a red Ferrari, hinted at in the story, became the modern transposition of Icarus’s wings melting in the sun. The Ferrari here stands for the attempt to find solace in fame and possessions.
As a counterpoint, I created the character of the security guard, meant to act as a mirror to the singer. I was immediately drawn, from a dramatic standpoint, to the contrast between their outward differences and their inner similarity. In fact, even though everything seems to set them apart, they ultimately resemble each other a great deal in their loneliness.
The guard, condemned to make the same rounds alone every day, encounters only reasons to be wary. His job forces him to see every person first as a potential threat. The singer, suffocated by his status, cannot leave his house without the paparazzi, who spend their days waiting outside, throwing themselves at him; he only ever comes into contact with people who want something from him.
I also knew I wanted to play with time, to alternate between memories and the present without an always-clear chronology, like a puzzle. It’s as if the entire video were made up of fragments of the guard’s memory, mixed with his new, macabre daily life: watching over an empty house, haunted by his memories.
I found it compelling that, deep down, the guard and the singer are the only ones who see each other for who they are, regardless of their role, their uniform, their status.
