Comme J'ai Mal - Music Video

Music Video

The music video was produced by Marcus Nispel, who had previously directed the ones for "XXL" and "L'Instant X", and later for "Souviens-toi du jour". Nispel also composed the screenplay alongside Farmer, and this video was generally regarded as his best. A Requiem Publishing production, the video was filmed in Los Angeles for two days in August 1996 with a budget of about 80,000 euros. It was said that the video was produced twice, as the scenery of the first one was ransacked by panthers that were originally included in the video. Only few photographs were taken by the only photographer who attended the shooting, Jeff Dahlgren, who also played in the 1992 film Giorgino. The costumes, make up and hairstyles required several hours of preparation. Farmer was deeply involved in the creation of the butterfly costume which holds itself through an iron wire and pins, and Farmer deemed it a masterpiece.

The video features Farmer at different stages of her life, and two actors who seem to be her parents. At the beginning, Farmer plays with a praying mantis in a cupboard. Then a little girl in a dark room opens a box containing many insects that she likes. When her father comes, she hides them in the box. She is then beaten by the latter who also starts to break everything in the room. With her doll and her box, the girl runs to take refuge in her cupboard where she plays with an insect. Then she eats sugar and gets covered with honey and finds herself in a cocoon in a forest. She begins to leave it, the sticky body with wings in the back, very long nails, ruffled hair. She has therefore converted into a butterfly whose face is that of Farmer. The father cries because he understands that his daughter is gone away.

The video was broadcast for the first time on television about one month after the single's release. According to French magazine Instant-Mag, this video underlines "the relationship with a father figure". "The girl, scared by her father, who hides in her cupboard, is the representation of a child beaten and mistreated. The most painful is the metaphor of Farmer converted into a butterfly, which has therefore no more than one day to live : allegory of a child injured in search of paradise ?" Royer considered this video proves the fact that "animals have something valuable to teach us. Something that we lost, and which undoubtedly relates to the survival instinct."