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NEW YORK, NY, USA - While French filmmakers have gone in and out of vogue at times, some of the best cinematic work ever made had a Gallic stamp on it. One of the great pleasures of the annual French Rendez-vous (sponsored by the Film Society Of Lincoln Center, Unifrance, The French Film Office/Unifrance USA together with the French Cultural Services) is the opportunity to see what is doing with one of the great international film scenes.
Born in 1941, Bertrand Tavernier, one of the great living French directors, brought his latest film, "Holy Lola," to New York to debut at the festival. Known in the States for his jazz paean, "Round Midnight" (starring the late Dexter Gordon,) he has worked with the best and brightest of French cinema.
G21: Do people find it hard to label you, even in France?
Tavernier: That's my big problem in France. I have been labeled the 'New Classical Director', and 'Anti-New Wave', because I worked with two screenwriters, Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost [on "The Clockmaker of St. Paul"] -- both attacked by the New Wave very unfairly. And yet the film I was doing with Aurenche ["Clean Slate"] was very different from the ones he did before me. Its plot structure is very free. I am against a dictatorship of the plot. I always try to preserve a very free approach.
G21: Some of your films don't necessarily have a beginning or an end, they are like one has stepped into, then out of, the light.
Tavernier: That's something I did in my latest film, "Holy Lola," and it puzzled some audiences. In [my film] "L.627," there was no beginning, and an open ending. It starts suddenly; by accident we enter the life of a few cops, and by the end, nothing is solved. Forget the principle of resolution. There are certain subject matters where nothing is solved. Nothing is totally solved in life. The teacher who is fighting doesn't get anything ... I'm always very much against some principle of most American films -- of identification with one hero. There's always a group of heroes. The hero is someone who's not always right, something I learned from [the late English director] Michael Powell.
G21: It also fits a literary sensibility as well.
Tavernier: In a way. The characters don't always win, but this doesn't make the film pessimistic. Just the fact that people are fighting against the system is gratifying for the audience. That's something I learned from [director] John Huston, the fight is more important than winning it.
G21: Would you have always made films?
Tavernier: I'm making films about difficult subjects and that's part of my life. I love books. I love music. I love theater. Three nights a week I go to different theaters in Paris but I still make film. I never wanted to do anything else. I am a film buff, but primarily, I'm a film director.
G21: You're like a sponge.
Tavernier: I have an open mind. I'm never bored of my art. Everything stimulates me, excites me. It's a bit difficult for my girlfriend, because I never want to stop. And if I come back from the theater, I want to see a DVD ...
G21: Oh, I can relate!
Tavernier: But it's true that watching others' films prevents you from being egotistical.
G21: You could have written plays or books, but you decided to make films. When did you decide that?
Tavernier: I had the idea when I was 13, and then kept thinking it, and as soon as I had my first exam, I refused to study to be a lawyer or a politician. My parents didn't like that. So I decided to do it myself, to earn my living and to write.
G21: You started as a press agent?
Tavernier: Yes. When I worked on the editing, sometimes I had good ideas. I was writing screenplays which were not very good, but that's the only thing I wanted to do. Except, at one point, I had to learn to be more influenced by life than by other films.
G21: This seems to be a problem for a lot of people; you have to live life also, as well as love film.
Tavernier: Yeah. My first writing was totally influenced by films, not by life. And maybe because of my wife, or my children, there was a twist in that. When I decided to do "The Clockmaker," it was much more influenced by life than by films.
G21: Doesn't it frustrate you that it takes so long to make a film?
Tavernier: It takes a long time to convince people to give you money, even after 20 films. I'm always on schedule and I work on a very low budget.
When I gave the cost of "Life and Nothing But," "Dangerous Conduct" or "Captain Conan" to American directors, they can't believe it, but it's true that that takes a lot of time. We are dealing less and less with cinema people and more and more with businessmen or bankers who know very little about the reality of filmmaking.
For instance, the people financing "Holy Lola" were telling us all the time, "You want so many plane tickets. You have people going there six months before the shooting." It was exhausting to repeat that, in a country [Cambodia] without a film industry, you better have a long preparation before you shoot, because it takes a long time to find things. The Cambodians do not have the same notion of time as we do. So I have to go back several times to fix a screenplay, to check up on some details, to find a crew-member. Of course it's spending money, but it's spending money with only two or three people. When we had the whole crew, we shot incredibly fast. But because of that, they were refusing to pay, and I paid with my own money.
G21: Did they eventually reimburse you?
Tavernier: Yes, but it took a while! You do not prepare a film in Cambodia in five weeks! It takes three weeks just to find people who will work on the set, because they don't have those kinds of jobs there.
G21: What was the budget?
Tavernier: Five and a half-million dollars.
G21: That's amazing.
Tavernier: It should have been six, but I saved. I went under budget. I saved about $400,000.
G21: You are drawn to an unusual range of subjects -- like these people who are struggling to adopt a child.
Tavernier: I like to deal with subjects that attract me. I'm interested in people fighting, trying to change things, making mistakes. I prefer each film to be a challenge, [as if] it were my first. When you do a film on adoption and you arrive in a place like Cambodia, anything can happen. If you are too prepared, you can miss something, the unique combination of the heat, the country, something that can happen between the characters. If you overwork it, you close yourself and miss things. I worked chronologically, and that helped.
G21: Oh, you did?
Tavernier: It's more expensive, but I was producing my own film. I had to shoot very fast and to have an intelligent solution all the time. I had eight weeks to do a film with a lot of setups in Cambodia. It's a film where I did the least overtime of all my films -- which is incredible. This was because I was not doing two scenes, separated by one month, in the same setup. Because I knew that the character would be different. They will not be dressed like that during the three weeks between the two scenes. As time goes, you will see the characters more at ease with the country, adopting new habits from it. And even more suntan.
G21: It naturally progressed with the chronology of the story.
Tavernier: Yes! It was difficult, but very exciting for the actors.
G21: What's the story behind it.
Tavernier: "Holy Lola" is a film about adoption. It's so difficult to do a film like that, especially in Cambodia. The shooting was intense, and pleasurable, a very moving experience. We had to find French characters who have never left the province of the country, and who were suddenly thrown in Cambodia. They want to adopt. They arrive during the monsoon season, it's raining and they suddenly find themselves in streets that are overcrowded with people on motorcycles, and half-naked kids playing football. They find another culture, and they have to learn how to respect it, how to understand the corruption, and the explanation behind the corruption. It is a journey where they learn a lot.
I wanted to do a story of a couple -- something you don't see often in my films. But they're on the verge of breaking down. Sometimes they get depressed when they search for weeks and fail to find [what they are looking for]. One of them wants to leave Cambodia, and they have to learn how to deal with that emotion, a woman wanting a child. It's so strong, so violent, almost hysterical, and it's so moving. I had a wonderful couple: Isabelle Carré and Jacques Gamblin, who were in "Safe Conduct." This duo is the art of the film, in a very strong way. Not boasting, but I think I succeeded completely with that.
G21: Which of your films deal with the most difficult issues?
Tavernier: "The Bait" was about something really uncomfortable. How could three people who would not harm a fly, yet, with the combined ignorance, a laziness of mind, and the combined desire of becoming rich in America (without knowing how to speak English ...) [do such things as kill people.] Like always showing Cartier pen and being unable to write. When everything added transforms them into killers, doing horrible things, that makes you uncomfortable. I'm very sorry that this film was never released. It's a DVD in France, but nobody really released it. It had a wonderful review in the New York Times, saying that it was the French "Natural Born Killers." It's on the same subject but opposite in treatment.
G21: You've been successful at making films in English -- do you want to try your hand at more?
Tavernier: Yes, I made "Round Midnight." I was also the producer, and was very protective of the film, if I'm not somebody like Irwin Winkler. I met a lot of French or Belgium directors who have tried to work with an American star like Demi Moore and had a terrible experience. Not always because of the stars, sometimes it was the director of photography, or they could not have the final cut, or their film was transformed. I don't want to come to America for that.
G21: After you made "Round Midnight" and its star Dexter Gordon got a Best Actor Oscar nomination in 1987, did you have offers up to wazoo?
Tavernier: I had a few at first but still feel more free in France. There I'm doing exactly what I want. So maybe one day I will do another [American] film, but in the meantime ... [When I did "Life and Nothing But," I felt] totally free. I prefer to have a whole body of film that I am proud of, rather than fighting in a system, even if I'm sure you have a way of getting away with it.
G21: Why did you do a film about the time right after World War I, "Life and Nothing But"?
Tavernier: The subject of "Life and Nothing But" has been treated in a few books. But in France it was practically not dealt with. When the film was released, I met with many literate people in France, for example Jacques Italy said, "I discovered a moment in the history of my country that I was totally unaware of."
G21: How did you find out about the [missing soldiers]?
Tavernier: By accident! I was reading a book about WW I. It stated that number in the foreword, and it was a shock to me. I checked with the dictionary, and the number was there: 353,000. And I began wondering: who are they? People who vanish, people who change their identity, people who lost their memory?
G21: Or children who lost touch with their parents?
Tavernier: It's more than that; it's bodies that have no sign of identity. It can be someone in a hospital, and nobody can tell who he is, because he is unable to speak! It can be someone who is hiding, because he deserted, or someone who decided to choose another life. It can be someone who has died, and no one knows where he is, because he's under a few hundred bodies. I started to wonder, when they're finding missing persons, what happens; and I thought, let's make a film about someone looking for somebody, because I wanted to know more. Like Michael Powell, I make all these films because I want to learn something.
G21: He did that one with the perverse murderous photographer.
Tavernier: Yeah, Peeping Tom. He also did "Black Narcissus" and "A Matter of Life and Death."
G21: What did he want to learn from "Peeping Tom"?
Tavernier: Scopophilia. He said he wanted to understand the feeling. He said that it is an autobiographical film. In "Red Shoes," he wanted to learn about the period and the social class. For me each film should be an exploration of unknown territories.
G21: That's one way to stay creative.
Tavernier: Well, I hate an organized trip. If you go on a tour, you know you're going to see the Louvre at 11:37; you'll see the Mona Lisa at 11:42, and you'll see ... I hate that!
I know that I'm trying to find an unknown place somewhere, but I don't know what I will discover. That for me is exciting. It's my wanting to explore. When I began those films, I knew nothing about the subject. I knew nothing about the army, or adoption. All the historians said that my films on the World War are totally true. The cops in Paris found "L.627" totally true. I got this article from a specialist in the Middle Age and I received 1,200 letters from teachers who said that everything in the film, "Beatrice," was true. That's something that makes me proud.
It's the same with my documentaries, like when I did "The Undeclared War" (1992); I received 500 letters from soldiers saying, "This is my film."
G21: How do you decide when to make something a feature or a documentary?
Tavernier: When you deal with an institution, there are certain things that you'll never be able to put on the screen. If I had done a documentary about the police squad, I would never be able to show cops beating up a drug dealer -- well maybe it's allowed to show in America, but not in France.
G21: You'd be able to show it in America?
Tavernier: I would never be able to show some cops keeping some drugs for themselves to give to the stoolies. It's something that the Minister says never happens, when every cop tells me that they do that every day.
Or when you do a film about the school system: I would never find a teacher who would be suicidal enough to attack the head of the institution. You have to do that in a fiction film.
G21: You really immerse yourself into periods that you didn't live. There are details you can put into the future but not to the past, because it had already happened.
Tavernier: You can imagine; you can invent. And if you dream in the "right now," your invention will always be right. For instance, I was wondering where the girl in Beatrice [set in medieval times] would put a dress after it had been raining for a long time. They couldn't put it on the stone floor, because it is cold and wet. The costume lady said, "In Afghanistan they put thread through the room and put the dress on it." And I thought, "My God, this is the idea!" That changed the atmosphere of a room in a castle, where you can put those dresses hanging everywhere. I never had a proof it was true. But a lot of people told me they did it. If you just try to put yourself in the situation, it suddenly makes sense.
G21: The hardest part is getting the actors to do it right?
Tavernier: If you work with the actors like that, paying attention to every detail, their behavior will change. They will move differently into the room if they bump into the dress hanging there; they will move differently if they know that in the Middle Ages, people were always standing near the window, where one can see something. You have to think about how the room was lit, how people were looking at each other, and that in order to read a piece of paper, they had to find a source of light. Acting is like mechanics: you can draw a map of the engine, but you still have to put your hand in it, get dirty -- and not be afraid of the dirt, the oil, and the sweat.
G21: It must be incredibly difficult making a film about the Middle Ages.
Tavernier: You have to work on details like crazy. For instance, in the Middle Ages, pigs were black. The pink pigs were a creation of the British in the 19th century, to make them cleaner, more proper.
G21: Did the actors do a lot of research?
Tavernier: Oh, I liked them to do a lot of research.
G21: Some directors find that it's easier for the actors to come in cold, in some ways.
Tavernier: Oh, no. It depends on the actors. Some find that it's helpful, and they come with their own ideas. Others like to be told what to do.
G21: There are certain actors you keep working with.
Tavernier: I do, but I don't give them the same thing to do. I like to build a relationship with an actor. Some directors do that very often; for example, Renoir with Jean Gabin. I gave Philippe Noiret a totally different part in every film; the same with Philippe Torreton, who is not the same in "L.627" and "Captain Conan."
G21: Is that to see how they'll approach a project differently?
Tavernier: It's a challenge especially when I get along with an actor and I know I can work with him fast. That he's intelligent. When I throw out an idea, he's throwing something back. In a way it's a guarantee, but it's still experimental, because we're trying something totally different. For "Captain Conan," Philippe Torreton prepared himself for a whole year. He said, "I must not think of the costume, I must not rehearse in front of the mirror. I have to find out who my character is. I have to be totally blank when I arrive."
G21: You were honored as an important international director by the Directors Guild of America Last year in New York. Yet you still have the frustrations of trying to find a distributor .
Tavernier: Yes, we all have frustrations trying to find a distributor. There seems to be less space for foreign films now in America than 20 years ago. More films are released on DVD, but less films are released theatrically. There was a time when there were 10, 20 companies buying foreign films. But this is a small frustration in comparison to the pleasure of doing a film. I am a very happy director compared to others. I produce and co-write my films. I don't think I've ever made a compromise. I've never taken an actor just for pleasing the co-producer; I've never changed the ending of a film to please the people who put up the money. I keep meeting American directors who complain about doing a film they did not want to do; the editing was changed or they had a lot of fights with the money people ... The films I've made are totally mine from beginning to end. So that makes me a very happy person.
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