A note from Stefan Boublil, director of Retreat.
About fifteen years ago, I wrote a book called The Considered Life. I was trying to understand how much of the person I had become belonged to me, and how much had been inherited from my parents, my schools, my religion, my country. If I could peel all that away, would there be anybody left?
I thought the process might be useful to someone else. So I put it in a book.
Then I finished the last sentence and thought: who the fuck do I think I am?
It seemed a reasonable question for someone who had just spent several hundred pages offering an opinion on how to live.
That discomfort became Self Help, a screenplay about a successful guru forced to put her own methods to the test. Would the advice she had sold to so many people work if her own life depended on it?
Retreat came from wondering about the person at the other end. Someone who needs help, who is frightened, exhausted, and willing to listen to a voice that seems to understand. Someone who finds that voice on her phone.
I had seen friends struggle after becoming mothers and kept noticing their difficulty in asking for help. And when they finally did, the responsibility of whoever answers. In the film, Jaime does ask. What she needs, what she is offered, and what she hears become terribly different things.
This site is a place to spend more time with those questions. To look at the research, listen to people who have lived through these experiences, and find qualified support where it is needed.
You are welcome here whether you have seen the film or not. I hope something here is useful to you. And I hope you question what I’ve written, too.
— Stefan Boublil