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| Interview: Philippe Claudel on "I've Loved You So Long" |
by Peter Sobczynski
The celebrated French novelist discusses his directorial debut, the new drama "I've Loved You So Long."
Primarily known in his home country of France as a best-selling novelist, Philippe Claudel has moved behind the camera to make his directorial debut with the new drama “I’ve Loved You So Long.” In a performance that has been receiving raves ever since the film premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Kristin Scott Thomas stars as a cool and reserved woman who has spent the last 15 years in prison who moves in with her younger sister (Elsa Zylberstein), who is eager to reconnect with the sibling that she hardly knows, and her family while trying to set up a new life for herself. As the film progresses, we follow Thomas as she tries to adjust to life on the outside world as we gradually begin to discover both the horrible crime that she was imprisoned for and her reasons for committing it. Although dramatically uneven at some points (the big reveal isn’t very surprising and is handled somewhat clumsily), this is a more-than-respectable debut for Claudel and the performances that he gets from both Thomas and Zylberstein are both pretty extraordinary.
Recently, Claudel came to town to present “I’ve Loved You So Long” at the Chicago International Film Festival and the morning after the screening, he got on the phone to discuss the film and his transformation from novelist to filmmaker.
Although “I’ve Loved You So Long” marks your debut as a filmmaker, you are quite well-known as a novelist--when did you first become interested in writing?
Yes, I am a writer but I think I am fascinated by the possibilities of translate stories into pictures. Sometimes, I try to imagine fusing a picture with words in a sentence. I think that technically, I am just an artist and I am driven by all the ways of the arts. It is very important to always know the best manner in which to adapt an idea or design. In this case, when I started to imagine the story of Juliette, it was immediately clear to use an instrument like filmmaking because I wanted to work with silence and I wanted to work with real human beings. It was important to me to have with me a human team to try to get at the story.
What was the initial inspiration for the story?
In my novels, I am almost constantly writing about the male universe and my characters are almost always men--there are women, but just in the background. I wanted to change that because since my childhood, I have been constantly fascinated by women. I like women--I grew up in a very female universe with my mother, my grandmother and my sister and now I am married and have a daughter. I like to work with women and I wanted to show my fascination. During the beginning of the writing process, I had this simple idea that I wanted to show the faces of women. After time, I thought about writing about the relationship between two sisters and after that, I came upon the idea of two sisters reuniting after a long separation. Why? Maybe because the older one was in prison, etc. . .Little by little, all the topics of this film came together like little pieces of a big puzzle. I was very surprised when I finished the screenplay because it was more interesting for me to work on this puzzle construction than a narrative construction--I wanted to suggest different pieces of our lives and use the screen like a big mural of our lives and desires and hopes.
Beyond the fact that they are two different beasts from a structural standpoint, do you have to change your basic writing approach when you are working on a screenplay instead of a novel?
It is different because when I write a novel, my only instruments are words and I work with these words and I know that with them, the reader can move in my universe. During the writing process of a screenplay, it is different because the language is not the final goal--the final goal is a picture on the screen with actresses and actors and to create this universe, I need actors and sound and movement. The best thing that a screenplay can do is disappear. Nobody reads a screenplay after the shooting and the editing--it goes into the trash.
Telling a story by writing a novel is obviously a solitary experience while doing so by making a movie requires the participation of hundreds of people in order to bring it to life. As you began making “I’ve Loved You So Long,” was it difficult to make the transition from the one extreme to the other?
You know, the writer is not constantly alone. When I write, I am not in the desert. When I write, I like to do it in the world--I do it in planes and trains and cafes and when I am at home, I like to do it in the same room as my daughter or my wife. I need the sounds of the world and so, this is not really a solitary exercise for an author. You are right, though, in that we don’t need a team when we write and that is totally different when it comes to shooting. During the shooting, there are many, many people and I think that most important responsibility to the director is to have everybody working at a very high precision. You need great technicians and artists who are also good humans because during the next two months, you have to live with these people. At the same time, I am also a teacher at a university and it is not unusual to manage a team because I have different student. It was not a problem for me to work with actresses because I knew exactly what I wanted and I was not lost in this universe. I felt totally ready for this adventure. For ten years, I have worked in the movie industry as a screenwriter and script doctor for different producers and directors and little by little, I learned the job through these producers and directors. It was not a recent discovery, this universe, you know.
In putting this film together, did you see the screenwriting and directing as two completely separate and distinct jobs or did they just blend together into one for you?
It is difficult to answer because there are many famous directors who have written as well. For me, it was important to do both of them. It might be possible for me to direct a screenplay that I don’t write but at the same time, I like to explore my universe and I like to imagine a story and then picture how to shoot it. In France, we have opportunity to do both at the same time because in France, many directors write their screenplays themselves. For myself, I like to write and I think it would be difficult with another person during the writing process because I am not sure it would be possible to make a great mix between his ideas and mine. It was not a problem when I wrote those screenplays for others because I knew that they were not going to be my movies and that I was just a servant. I wrote the screenplays and talked to the directors but I was convinced that it would be his movie and not mine. Now that I am in the position of director, I think it would be too difficult for me to work with a writer and accept the mix between his universe and mine.
In doing some reading on you in preparation for this interview, I discovered that for a while, you used to teach inside of prisons. Did those experiences in any way inform the writing of this film?
I think this screenplay is the result of that experience. For eleven years, I was a teacher in jail and that was a very intense program of human discovery. After this period--I stopped back in 2000--I wrote a book that was not a novel but an essay whose title translated into “The Sound of the Prison Key.” In this book, there were different scenes involving prisoners because I wanted to show the reality of this world and the complexity of this world. I think the most important lesson I learned during these eleven years is that we are all very complex human beings and that it is not that easy to separate the good from the bad and the right from the wrong. Like Michel says in the movie, “the border is very thin between the good and the bad.” After the publication of this book, a producer wanted to adapt it and I wrote for him a screenplay but I was totally unhappy with the results and I asked the producer to give the whole thing up. I think that it is very difficult to show prison life in a movie because it often becomes a very caricatured version of life in prison. I believe that the fiction of a novel is a better way to show this universe and when I started to imagine the story of Juliette and Lena, I don’t know why but this topic returned to my mind and the result is this movie. In the movie, you never see the real prison or the walls of the prison but at the same time, I think we constantly feel the presence of the prison because the shadow of the prison is always on Juliette’s face and her body, at least in her mind. I like the idea that we don’t need to view the thing in order to get the perception of it.
Could you talk about the casting of Kristin Scott Thomas in the role of Juliette? Although she is primarily thought of as a British actress thanks to films like “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “The English Patient,” she has actually done several French film over the last couple of years and has done so in such a convincing manner that if you didn’t know better, you would swear that she really was French.
Kristin has been living in France for 25 years and is a very talented actress but the paradox is that in the French films that she has done before this one, she only had supporting parts. This was her first French movie with her in the lead part. It is strange and her explanation is that maybe French directors are a little afraid of her accent but I don’t think that is true. I don’t know why French directors don’t take the opportunity to work with a very talented actress like her. It was a chance for me to send the screenplay to her and to have her quickly give an enthused reaction. I think it was at the same time a great moment for her to show her talents in this world. When I imagined my cast, Kristin was a good idea because I wanted to show another side of this actress. She is very famous for “The English Patient” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral” but in these movies, she plays these glamorous and romantic roles and I wanted to destroy this side of her. I wanted to show another face of this actress. The first thing that I said to her was that I wanted to destroy her beauty because I wanted to show a woman with the destruction of prison on her face. She agreed with me and felt that it would be important for the part. I think we had a very good understanding--I trusted her and she trusted me. During the first takes, I gave her the freedom to explore and to play with the scene and after that, if I didn’t agree with her, I would direct her in another way for a variation. I am a very precise and demanding man and she is very demanding too, so I think we had a good connection and as a result, I was impressed every day by her talents and I am proud to show her talents in this movie.
Now that you have made your own movie, do you think that the experience will affect the way that you go about writing novels in the future?
I like to do many things at the same time--it is impossible for me to write only a novel or only a screenplay. At the same time, I am writing novels, short stories, screenplays, plays, etc. . . I think there is a mutual benefit between these worlds and when I write a novel, it may be with a visual attitude of a director and when I direct a movie, it may be with the precision and freedom of a novelist. At the moment, this movie has been a very great success in my home country and in the foreign countries where it has been released and as a result, I now have the opportunity to begin the process of a new movie, which is a big chance, and I think that I have to take my time for that because I want to be sure to have a good idea and to have the energy to make a second movie because it will be a very big and heavy experience. At the same time, I want to keep the wonderful sense of freedom of the novel-writing process. At this time, I am in a hotel room and just before our conversation, I wrote several lines of a new novel on my laptop and after our conversation, I will write again.
link directly to this feature at http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=2607
originally posted: 10/29/08 15:11:57
last updated: 10/29/08 15:32:28
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