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| Arnaud Desplechin in Sodankylä, 13 June 2019, in discussion with Timo Malmi and Satu Kyösola. Photo: Roxana Sadvokassova / MSFF. |
Arnaud Desplechin in discussion in English with Timo Malmi and Satu Kyösola.
The School, Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF), Sodankylä, 13 June 2019.
MSFF:
"As the French New Wave was blooming in the 60s, director Arnaud Desplechin was born in the small town of Roubaix, known for being the poorest town in France. During his childhood, Desplechin found his getaway from books and watching films on TV at his grandparents."
"“I was a sad child, far away from Paris. I was trapped in my house and just read books. Through them I could flee away.”"
"The ambiguity and complexity of images fascinated the young cinephile. Desplechin knew from early on that he wanted to work with films, but never thought he could achieve his dream from the periphery."
"“I was amazed that the adult world is giving tribute to things that belong to childhood. I wanted to be a director, although I didn’t know what this person does. It’s still a mystery for me.”"
"Against all odds and his parents will, Desplechin got to film school in Paris. Since the 1990s, he has made it as one of the most notable French filmmakers, creating cohesive and recognizable oeuvres. Desplechin depicts a certain lack of vision that has always existed, cruelty towards people who are unsure in the midst of life’s abundant offerings."
"“I am hiding myself behind each of my characters,” the director admits."
"Desplechin has gradually assembled his regular cast and crew, including Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Devos, Thibault de Montalembert, Emmanuel Slinger and even his brother – Fabrice Desplechin. As we know from film history, this has been a necessary requirement for most great filmmakers in directing outstanding films."
"Desplechin’s recurring character, Paul Dédalus (Mathieu Amalric) is a similar icon to his director as Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel, repeatedly played by Jean-Pierre Léaud. Dédalus is a similar wanderer to Doinel, but from another generation: an unsure character that ponders on the existential, between education and companions. Besides having his main actors, Desplechin mixes different genres and actors from different backgrounds."
"“I also love to show that we are all diverse, that we don’t always fit together. I want to show that there are so many ways of being a human. Each of us has our own voice.”"
"Having escaped the small city life through cinema, Desplechin is still using the aesthetics of Roubaix in most of his films – like in his newest feature Oh Mercy! (2019), premiering in Finland at the Midnight Sun Film Festival."
"“I have certain directors I think when I wake up. One is François Truffaut, I was astonished by the art of his storytelling. But I’m particularly proud of having lived and embraced the premiere of Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander and (Lanzmann’s) Shoah. I was there at a right age, at a right time. These films shocked and inspired me at the same time.”"
"Desplechin mentions also Frederick Wiseman, Claude Lanzmann, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock and Ingmar Bergman as important influencers to his filming career. But if just one movie should be chosen on a deserted island, Desplechin would choose The Age of Innocence by Martin Scorsese."
"“I wouldn’t take Shoah with me, because it is quite depressing… But I could take The Age of Innocence, since it contains beautiful characters. It fulfills your eyes.”" MSFF press release
ARNAUD DESPLECHIN
Velipekka Makkonen / MSFF:
Arnaud Desplechin (b. 31.10.1960) is the most lauded of the French filmmakers who began their careers in the 1990s, but also the most notable for several reasons. One reason being that he has created a cohesive oeuvre, an easily recognizable idiom and gradually assembled his regular cast and crew. As we know from film history, this has been a necessary requirement for most great filmmakers in directing outstanding films. In Desplechin’s age group, there are many filmmakers with films that are easy to like but not as easy to grasp, as they don’t as effortlessly reflect the personality of their directors.
Desplechin’s first two films, La vie des morts (1991) and Le sentinelle (1992) already gained wide-spread and deserved attention, but his third, Comment je suis disputé… (ma vie sexuelle) (1996) fully revealed his personal relationship to the film. He introduced his recurring character, Paul Dédalus (a likely tribute to James Joyce’s alter ego, Stephen Dedalus), played by Mathieu Amalric. Paul seems to be a similar icon to his director as Antoine Doinel, repeatedly played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, to François Truffaut.
Paul Dédalus is a similar wanderer to Antoine Doinel, but to the third power. He is from another generation and getting an academic education. He doesn’t know whether he wants to write his thesis or to sleep with a woman, and he is also unsure of which woman to sleep with. Why plan for the future, when you don’t know what that is? Other people take hold of their futures, moulding it to their image. Paul Dédalus isn’t one of those people.
It is a question of worldview. Desplechin depicts a certain lack of vision that has always existed, helplessness when faced with all the options. Cruelty towards people who are unsure in the midst of life’s abundant offerings.
Here, the director adheres to the robust tradition of French Cinema, the apparently foremost representative for him being Jean Renoir. Renoir was an all-round filmmaker who rarely subjected himself to any lack of vision. Some kind of model for Paul Dédalus seems to be found in Boudu Saved from Drowning (Boudu sauvé des eaux, 1932); Michel Simon’s fabulous turn as Boudu, the clochard who is taken in a bourgeois home and immediately begins to make advances towards both the maid and the mistress of the house. Altogether, his uncontrollable antics turn the house upside down in the matter of moments. Another film, this one much imitated, is The Rules of the Game (La règle du jeu, 1939), which didn’t gain wide popularity until the beginning of the 1960s and was then voted many times over the greatest masterpiece of French Cinema. It is about the turning point for the French bourgeoisie on the cusp of World War II. The setting is a hunting trip and a grand ball held in its honour, during which the masters and servants are fatefully mixed up. A central character is Octave, played by Renoir himself, who effortlessly criss-crosses between the classes. The line that has become the film’s motto is: ”The awful thing about life is this: Everybody has their reasons.”
It is the motifs of these two films that Desplechin seems to creatively use in his films, even if class conflicts appear to have waned into something different from Renoir’s time. The exception to this is A Christmas Tale, which is a cruel portrait of these conflicts. – Velipekka Makkonen / MSFF
AA: A wonderful morning discussion with Arnaud Desplechin, although the event suffered greatly from being conducted in English instead of French.
Q: The first film you saw?
A: "A Disney film. Among the earliest films was also The Jungle Book. Early memories also include Marnie and La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc."
Excerpt: L'Aimée (2007). The excerpt is deeply moving, as moving as any fiction film; it is a family story from Roubaix, 26 August 2006.
A: "My only documentary. Like Truffaut, 'I'm against the documentary', although I love Fred Wiseman, and Claude Lanzmann, who was a close friend. "
"I spent three years reading James Joyce's Ulysses". Paul Dédalus becomes an alter ego in Desplechin's films, and central is Dedalus's relationship with mother, starting with the tension with Buck Mulligan. "Some of my heroes have a terrible relationship with their mother".
"I have no memories of childhood. I was just reading books, preparing for the IDHEC. I hated sport."
Q: You wanted to flee Roubaix. In your films you constantly return to Roubaix.
A: "It's like Philip Roth and Newark. When you visit Newark, there is nothing to see. In a Sacha Guitry film of the 1930s there is a curse about being fired and ending up in Roubaix, as the end of the world. I'm proud of this curse. The old houses have complicated house plans. They look like a maze. They can be a setting for a Strindbergian chamber play. Like Ingmar Bergman's Saraband which is an absolute miracle. My father's only connection with his mother was the childhood home: the house, the labyrinth."
"There is a strong North African community. Roubaix, une lumière for me is like The Wrong Man was for Alfred Hitchcock: a special film based just on facts. In my new film everything is real, which is new for me."
Q: Tell me about your reading.
A: "Encyclopedias, histories of the cinema, the subversive cinema. Native people, native Americans, Westerns, classics."
"I hated the theatre. But after the film school I read plays and I read about the theatre: Strindberg, Ibsen, Shakespeare, Musset, Pagnol: how to write dialogue."
"Dédalus is autobiographical. By the way my mother is still alive. I'm hiding behind each of my characters."
"In Roubaix there may be nothing to see, but with the art of placing the camera Roubaix acquires appealing, mysterious, novelistic qualities".
Excerpt: Un conte de Noël. The beginning. Strongly moving.
"It's a play about the sense of loss. How to tell such a story and sell tickets? Together with Éric Rochant I saw Orson Welles when he visited la Cinémathèque française. He asked the audience: 'Who wants to become a film director?' Everybody raised their hands. Then he asked: 'Who wants to be an entertainer?' Me and Rochant were the only ones. "
"I was inspired by the grave of Waldo, the first son of Emerson. A Christmas fairy-tale of a different kind."
Q: IDHEC, now La Fémis.
"It was not only a disappointment. It was war. They had to close the school. There was no interest in New Hollywood. 'Raging Bull is not properly shot'. We then made films together without teachers."
"New Wave is now not very popular in France. But we had the same conflicts with the previous generation. We were young rebels, together with Éric Rochant and Pascale Ferran. We were unemployed at first."
"Unemployment is not so terrible. I read three novels a week. We were poor and happy. It was wonderful, a great opportunity."
"I'm not sure you can teach something about film-making. Theatre direction requires a lot of experience. I have now directed for la Comédie-Française."
"Cinema is not logical. It's absurd. It's like love. There is a rebel aspect. You learn on the street. Meet people, see films, and discuss."
"I'm scared about the new generation. There is a lack of curiosity about the past."
Excerpt: Esther Kahn. Another stunning sample: the audition at the theatre school: Ian Holm meets Summer Phoenix.
"Directing actors I don't talk that much. As a director I'm heavy, harassing them. We are not pals in private life. In real life I can do Louis de Funes impressions all the time. As a director I'm overacting, taking all the shame on my shoulder. I jump into the freezing swimming-pool, and they are glorious. I overact in front of all the actors."
"I agree with André Bazin's defense of the impure cinema. I love to show the fact that we are so diverse."
Excerpt: Comment je me suis disputé... (ma vie sexuelle).
"The discovery of Mathieu Amalric took place in a long casting process. He is never afraid of looking ridiculous on the screen."
Excerpt: Rois et Reine.
"Mathieu is a hard worker. He cannot dance to black music. We grew together. A relationship based on friendship and equality. Amalric gave me freedom to experiment."
"I am anti-Panofsky. I don't believe in realism at all. Realism is an ideology. I select moments when life is exceptional. Cinema is telling something deeply true. Boredom is an illusion of common life. Life is fascinating. Realism is the illusion that life is a bore. The same moment can be subtle and extreme."
Q: Writing dialogue.
"A good line is a surprise. A good line is like an enigma. I never improvise. Only non-actors are allowed to improvise in Roubaix, une lumière.
Q: Dialogue tender and acid.
"Ingmar Bergman: Scenes from a Marriage. The scene where Erland Josephson announces out of the blue that he is leaving Marianne with another women to Paris tomorrow. A damage you cannot change later. Words are acts. Words you can kill with. Words you cannot take back. You can transform any word into action. Showing the photo of the rival."
"I saw Fanny and Alexander at the right moment in my life. I have revisited it endless times, the long version and the short version. Sven Nykvist."
"Shoah. These are two films I am proud to have received at the right time."
Q: Directors.
"There are so many. There are not so many.
"Truffaut I think about each morning, each evening. Today I see the fire hidden in Truffaut. The art of storytelling. Scorsese: haunting. Truffaut: subtle. Adèle H. The feeling is so violent. Les deux Anglaises et le continent. The burning feeling, the hidden fire. I worship that art."
Q: Godard?
"I'm more ambiguous. I have a problem. Making a film you should acknowledge the fact that in front of the camera is a human being. While filming, you pay tribute to someone. Godard has a difficulty of a relationship with a human being."
Q: Mise-en-scène.
"I don't know what that is."
"Marguerite Duras: le cinéma est du son".
"Marcel Pagnol was just listening to the actors. He did not look. Regain is a great film."
"Each one has obsessions about movements of the camera. Coppola improvises. Each director has his own definition. There is no one definition.
Q: Desert island film.
A: The Age of Innocence, if not Casino.
