10 · 30 · 21

"I Feel Like A Composer": An Interview With Léos Carax

Alonso Díaz de la Vega @diazdelavega1

Durante su estancia en el 19º Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia (FICM), ha sido fácil toparse con Leos Carax. Por ahí anda en la Plaza de Armas, con su abrigo raído, sus lentes oscuros y un sombrero que sólo a veces se quita en interiores. Por ahí anda fumando. Cuando no habla, come o respira, Carax está calando un cigarro que es invariablemente el preludio de otro más. En una palabra, se trata de un bohemio: el cineasta exacto que uno imagina viendo sus películas.

Casi siempre sus personajes sufren las invasiones devastadoras del sentimiento: aman demasiado y los aman muy poco; en ocasiones sucede al revés, pero nunca se salvan de una traición ejercida con indiferencia. Un muchacho llamado Alex, en Boy Meets Girl (1984), sueña con ser cineasta mientras absorbe el dolor de ser abandonado; otro Alex, el de Mauvais sang (1986), mira con deseo a la novia de su jefe gánster, sin importar que podría pagarlo caro. El amor es un riesgo, una derrota, pero también un éxtasis nocturno y sobre todo tierno que nos permite descubrirnos en otros.

Los amores de Carax, sin embargo, no se limitan a los besos y a los regalos. Su cine es también una expresión de cariño a otras filmografías, de Vard a Scorsese, y, además, a la música. Por eso su más reciente película, Annette, mezcla el caos redomado de una sinfonía y la trama emotiva de una ópera. A continuación presentamos la entrevista que sostuvimos con Carax al respecto de Annette, del amor, de la música e incluso de su significad particular del éxito. 

Alonso Díaz de la Vega: Me gustaría empezar hablando de Annette en términos de financiamiento. Eres un cineasta atrevido. ¿Cómo financiaste una película que es tan desafiante y al mismo tiempo tiene tantas estrellas y valores de producción?

Leos Carax: Pues tardamos siete años desde la propuesta original de Sparks para empezar a filmar. Nos tomó siete años de ir de un productor a otro, de empezar en Estados Unidos y luego volver a Europa, de cambiar productores tres veces, pero teníamos la música. Teníamos a Adam desde el principio, Adam Driver, y eso era todo. Nunca he tenido éxito en taquilla y esta película es demasiado cara para mí: involucra la marioneta, la bebé en el centro de la película, así que los productores estaban asustados, pero toma tiempo, como todo lo demás en el cine, conocer a la gente correcta. Así es como empecé en el cine: necesitas productores que sean gánsters un poco, o lo suficientemente locos. Encuentras muchos gánsters pero no es a menudo que te encuentras con gánsters agradables, así que toma tiempo.

ADV: ¿Qué hay del elenco? Acabas de mencionar que Adama siempre fue parte de esto, ¿alguna vez pensaste en Denis Lavant?

LC: No, es muy viejo para el papel y además es francés, no canta. 

ADV: Otra decisión en el elenco que me pareció muy interesante es Simon Helberg. Creo que hizo un extraordinario trabajo en la película. ¿Cómo llegó él a ti?

LC: Simon y Marion Cotillard llegaron muy tarde. Llegaron unos meses antes de la filmación; como siete años después de Adam. De hecho nunca había visto a Simon actuar —todavía no lo he visto actuar en nada más— y lo escogí porque no podía encontrar a nadie más que pudiera tocar el piano, cantar y hacer una pareja interesante con Adam. Tuve mucha suerte, y no lo conocía, así que dije: "tomemos a este chaparrito judío de Estados Unidos" —es más bajito que yo, lo cual es raro— y estaba muy sorprendido de lo bueno que era.

ADV: Me fascinó particularmente ese plano de él conduciendo la orquesta. ¿Como se te ocurrió?

LC: Eso estuvo ahí desde el comienzo. Sparks me dieron esta propuesta y me dieron 15 canciones y la historia básica de Annette y reescribí algunas de las letras, pero la idea de las canciones era suya, y también cómo hacer todo. La música se impone, es decir, encontré que la música y el canto me liberaban mucho, que me daban mucha libertad, en cierto modo, pero al mismo tiempo tratas de no cortar. Están cantando en vivo, toda la película es canto en vivo. Quieres tratar de mantener esa fragilidad y esa emoción. Fue divertido hacer ese plano.

[:en]During his visit to the 19th Morelia International Film Festival (FICM), it was easy to run into Léos Carax. He walks around in the Plaza de Armas, with his shabby coat, his sunglasses and a hat that he only takes off indoors sometimes. He's going around smoking. When he doesn't speak, eat, or breathe, Carax is puffing on a cigar that is invariably the prelude to another. In a word, he is a bohemian: the exact filmmaker one imagines watching his movies.

His characters almost always suffer devastating invasions of feeling: they love too much and they love too little; sometimes it is the other way around but they are never spared an indifferent betrayal. A boy named Alex, in Boy Meets Girl, dreams of being a filmmaker while he absorbs the pain of being abandoned; another Alex, the one from Mauvais sang, looks at the girlfriend his gangster boss's girlfriend with lust, not caring that he could pay for it dearly. Love is a risk, a defeat, but also a nocturnal and above all, the tender ecstasy that allows us to discover ourselves in others.

Carax's loves, however, are not limited to kisses and gifts. His cinema is also an expression of affection for other filmographies, from Varda to Scorsese, and also for music. That is why his most recent film, Annette, mixes the downright chaos of a symphony and the emotional plot of an opera. Here is the interview we had with Carax about Annette, love, music and even the particular significance of his success.

Alonso Díaz de la Vega: I'd like to start talking about Annette in terms of financing. You're a daring filmmaker. ¿How do you finance a film that's so defiant and at the same time has so many stars and production values?

LC: Well, it took us seven years since the original proposal by Sparks. It took us seven years of going from one producer to another, starting in America, then back to Europe, changing producers three times, but we had the music. We had Adam from the beginning, Adam Driver, and that's it. I've never had big box office success and this film is too expensive for me. It involves the puppet, the baby at the center of the film, so producers were afraid of that but it takes time, like everything else in cinema, meeting the right people. That's how I started in cinema: you need producers who are either gangsters, a bit, or crazy enough. You find a lot of gangsters but not often nice gangsters, so it takes time.

ADV: How about the casting? You just mentioned that Adam was always a part of this. Did you ever think of Denis Lavant for this?

LC: No, he's too old for the part, he's French, he doesn't sing.

ADV: Another casting choice which I found very interesting is Simon Helberg. I think he did an extraordinary job in the film. How did he come to you?

LC: Simon and Marion Cotillard came very late, they came a few months before the shoot, like seven years after Adam. In fact I'd never seen Simon act —I still haven't seen him act in anything else— and I chose him because I couldn't find anyone else who could play piano, sing and be an interesting couple with Adam. I was very lucky I didn't know him so I said let's take this little Jewish guy from America —he’s smaller than me, which is pretty rare— and I was very surprised at how good he was.

ADV: I was particularly fascinated by that shot of him conducting the orchestra. How did that come about?

LC: That was there from the beginning. Sparks gave me this proposal and they gave me 15 songs and the basic story of Annette and I rewrote some lyrics, but the idea of the songs was theirs and how to do it. Music imposes itself, I mean, I found music and singing liberated me a lot, they gave me more freedom in a way, but at the same time you tend not to cut. It’s live singing, the whole film is live singing. You want to keep that fragility and that emotion. It was fun to do that shot.

ADV: Would you define your processes as more irrational, more emotional?

LC: It's a mix. I often say that I bring chaos and the crew brings precision, and I have to find good people who understand the chaos and who have that precision.

ADV: Considering that, do you believe in the concept of the auteur?

LC: Yeah, yeah, of course. Hopefully everyone’s an auteur in a film. I sign my films as “a film by Léos Carax”. Some people have “written by”, “adapted by”, “directed and written by”, or you could act. “Edited by”. And I'm everywhere in the film, I hope. I try to be and I like to be, but actors, you know, sometimes are auteurs of the film, also the DP. Being an auteur doesn't mean that you wrote and directed, it means the film was not possible without you, even with the same script. So my films are personal films and that's what I am: an auteur.

ADV: Now, going back to music as an inspiration, was the making of Annette fundamentally different from the way you usually work with music? Because it seems like in other films —for example, I'm thinking of Mauvais sang with that scene based on “Modern Love” by David Bowie— it’s the songs that sort of create those images in your mind.

LC: I used Bowie in my three first films and I discovered Bowie before I discovered Sparks, when I was a kid. I discovered Bowie when I was 10 or 11 and Sparks when I was 13 or 14, and then I used a Sparks song in Holy Motors. That's how we met, actually: they saw the film and contacted me. Let's say that in Mauvais sang the scene originated from the song, from the energy of that song, and sometimes it's the opposite but, usually, when I imagine a film, the music I listen to feeds the imagination. In the case of Annette it was different because it was only a story with music and I said yes to the project because I've known this music from childhood, I felt at home with it and I wanted this energy and this poignancy. So I feel working with music and with singing is much more natural and organic. It was my easiest shoot, I would say, and my happiest, because of music. And also the very young and wonderful crew.

ADV: I recently read Serge Daney saying that film was more like music. Do you feel that way or do you care more about storytelling?

LC: I wanted music in my life before cinema. I think the most beautiful life is a life with singing, composing, playing instruments, but I was not good at music. I feel like a composer when I imagine a film, when I direct a film, when I edit a film. I feel like I’m composing a score, very much so.

ADV: Love has been a sort of signature in your career. Why is it so important to you?

LC: I don’t know. My first film was called Boy Meets Girl and I guess all my films, except Holy Motors, could be called Boy Meets Girl. Why? My main attraction to cinema was: a man, a woman and a camera. When I started there where mostly men directing and there still are because it’s mostly men behind cameras. There are many more female filmmakers today, more than when I started, though. That’s what dragged me into cinema: a man watching a woman’s face, a woman’s emotions.

ADV: You mentioned Holy Motors, wouldn’t you say it’s a film about love, but of the love for film itself?

LC: I would say that about my two first films. I started young, I was discovering cinema at the same time I was making cinema, so I felt attracted and grateful towards cinema and towards all the people who created cinema and who were mostly dead by the time I started. Not all of them, but Holy Motors was made out of the rage about not being able to make films. I made three films in the eighties and then only one film each decade after that. So I thought: “I’m gonna make a small film I’m pretty sure I can do”. Not much money, in Paris with Denis, it shouldn’t be too hard to find the money. It’s not imaginable without Denis. Denis is one of the great actors but it’s not about actors or cinema. I used Denis like I used music in Annette. I start with Denis and then I look at the world and I see this virtual world eating us little by little and I see these limousines, almost old-fashioned cars, but people go in them like in a bubble, a virtual bubble. This is the perfect part for Denis to play: he’s gonna travel, he’s gonna travel from life to life, different lives, virtual lives.

ADV: As a filmmaker and also as a spectator, how important do you think cinephilia is in filmmaking? Does it matter if a filmmaker is a cinephile?

LC: No. The fact is: apart from the pioneers, every filmmaker has been a spectator and hopefully has loved cinema. I think it shows in my two first films and it probably shows in all my films that I’m grateful to have discovered cinema, to have discovered this place, this island where I can sometimes live, because I didn’t know where to live. I don’t think any kid knows where to live. You prefer to live at the same place you where born in. You do your studies and you stay there and of course youth wants to travel, youth wants to experiment, so they have to find their land, they have to find a place, a home. So I felt very lucky that at 16 or 17 years old I found that place but cinephilia can be tiring. Some directors like to play with it. The New Wave played with it a lot and that was great. Nowadays it’s not interesting to show your cinephilia.

ADV: Who are you thinking of when you’re making your films? Are you the audience, are you the spectator you have in mind?

LC: I don’t think I have anyone in mind, especially in Annette. The more expensive the film, the more you hear about the audience because financiers and producers talk only about that, and, of course, in Annette we needed suspension of disbelief: the people are singing, there’s a baby puppet, it’s happening in Los Angeles but we don’t have money to shoot it in Los Angeles so we shoot it in Europe. There are many layers of unreality. I used to say I made films for dead people, and for people who weren’t there yet and I left the living audience to other filmmakers. Now I don’t know. I think the truth is you can have many projects but only a few of them become films or need to become films. And that’s when you get to a point when if you don’t do it, if you don’t make it into a film, it feels impossible to move forward in life, it feels impossible to give your next step, so that’s what a project is to me. Then, when a film comes out you do wonder: what’s the audience? Will it be a success, to my mind? If many people see the film, it’s better for you because it’s easier to make the next film, that’s important. A bad reputation for going over budget and I end up not being able to make films anymore. That’s terrible! But the truth is after the film comes out it’s like you’re expecting a phone call from someone. In my mind the audience is either God or a young woman from China, someone far from me who calls and says: “I needed this film, thank you”. That’s my fantasy.

ADV: What does success mean, then, to you as a filmmaker, because it’s definitely not the box office. Is it perhaps a sense of satisfaction with the film?

LC: Annette is about success, in a way, which is an interesting theme. I had it a bit in my film Pola X. What is it? Why do we want it? If we get it, how does it change us? Does it make us bigger or does it shrink us? I have no idea. Usually, when I finish a film I’m proud of it but it doesn’t last very long. I get very disappointed and that’s why I don’t see my films after I finish them. It’s hard to know what success really is: obviously being able to go on, being able to make another film and also when you travel and meet people —young people, it’s nice to meet young people— who feel your work has meant something. That’s success also.