April 30th, 2008

Interview with Claude Lelouch

By Robert Levin

With “Roman de Gare,” Claude Lelouch, the French New Wave icon best known for directing “A Man and a Woman,” continues to stand alongside contemporaries Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and Jean Luc-Godard in actively pursuing a fifth decade in filmmaking. His first feature released in the United States since 2002’s “And Now…Ladies and Gentleman…,” the film stars Dominique Pinon as a murderer interested in finishing off a woman (Audrey Dana) he meets in a gas station. Or maybe he’s a writer unconventionally researching his next novel. It’s never particularly clear, nor is it meant to be. The film, a playful meta-thriller, blends a conventional stylistic sheen with the sort of convention defying narrative aesthetic Lelouch and his colleagues made famous. WSN sat down with the filmmaker at the February press day.

You seem to have a fascination with automobiles. What is it about cars and driving that you find so fascinating?

Cars are the place I feel most comfortable because I can be alone and I can see others. I’ve written all of my films in cars, it’s my office. I do a thousand kilometers, I leave my family, I leave my things, I leave everybody and I take off for five, six thousand kilometers all alone with my recorder and I write all my stories like that. I can’t write in an office. I can’t write in a calm place. In the car I’m alone but with others at the same time and I see life, I see landscapes and I’m in action and that’s what my temperament is all about. I’m a man of action. I need to move. I can’t write just sitting still.

Has the Internet had any effect on your sensibility?

No because I enjoy working based on my own memory. It’s too precise, too specific. I’m not a scientific person. I’m an artist. I prefer working based on my memory [rather than] on other people’s memories and it’s not my generation either. I like working based on my observations and I like my stories to be based on characters I’ve met. That’s why I travel a lot. Because this way I can meet different characters and people. I prefer truly traveling [rather] than traveling via the Internet because you can travel via the Internet but it’s not the same journey and it’s full of frustrations. I enjoying finding things I’m not looking for. I like meeting people like that. I love coincidences, happenstance.

Can you talk about the casting of Dominique Pinon?

I was looking for someone with not an easy physical appearance. The film is about, what the French would call, having an ugly face. It’s a film about appearances. Above all we had to make sure the audience would never figure out the ending of the story. If Dominique Pinon had a seductive appearance the film would have not had the same taste to it or feel to it.

Can you talk about the puzzle like nature of the narrative and the appeal of working within multiple genres?

That’s what I like the most in cinema. I love films that combine genres because life is a mixture, a combination of genres and I try to
make films the resemble life. All of my films are a combination of genres. Maybe this one more so than the others. I try to make films that look like what I see in life. If one morning someone steals my wallet in the street it’s a thriller and then if I walk into a restaurant and see a pretty woman it becomes a love story. Then if that afternoon I listen to some music in car it becomes a musical comedy. It’s this whole mixture which I think makes the charm of this movie.
With the complex puzzle structure of the film, how did you think through it and organize it?

”Roman de Gare” is a film about lies. Everyone lies and everyone needs to lie. The whole film is constructed on this. Human beings need to lie in order to embellish themselves. That’s why people put on make-up, dress up, do plastic surgery. These are all lies. Human beings are not like a bank note. A ten-dollar bill does not try to pass itself off as a twenty-dollar bill, where as human beings do. We try to pretend we are worth much more then we actually are. These are all the themes included in “Roman de Gare.” The most sympathetic characters are actually the curliest ones.

After directing for all these years, what have you learned and has it gotten easier?

I’m self-taught, I learned cinema on my own. Every time I make a film I’m going back to school. I’ve gone back to school 41 times. [Laughs] And I hope to go back to school a few more times. I learn many new things with each new film.

Has your use of technology changed?

Yes it has a lot, because cinema is a technological art form. I’m really in tune with technique. I’m a technique person by nature. I’m the one filming all of my films; I’m the one behind the camera. I do the editing; I take care of each step of the film. I make films like an amateur filmmaker would. I do everything.

Did the actors know everything that was going on in the movie? Or did they know what they needed to know and nothing else?

Each actor only knew his or her part and didn’t know the other parts. If they had read the whole script they wouldn’t have acted in the same manner. They also had to be surprised.

Would you say your films are about Paradox or the unexpected?

Yes indeed. In my films there are no good guys or bad guy. The good guys become bad guys and the bad guys become good guys. Sort of like the weather. Some days you’re nice and some days you’re bad. We are both heroes and Judahs. If you look at each of our lives, all of us have done things that are wonderful and things that were less so. We all thought once about killing someone. All thought about the perfect crime. God being the greatest serial [killer] of all time, since he kills everyone and he succeeds at committing the perfect crime each time. God is a model.

Do you enjoy tricking the audience? If so why?

Yes of course, because when an audience goes to a cinema it’s to be entertained, so I play with it. It’s a game between myself and the audience. I try to transform the audience into an actor. I think it’s more fun for the audience to get into the film then to just watch it, but that’s my cinema. When I made “A Man and a Woman” the audience was either in love with Jean-Louis Trintignant or with Anouk Aimée. They weren’t just watching a love story they were experiencing it. There’s a big difference between watching and experiencing a film. I love it when an audience really gets into a film and experiences it.

French movies seem to hit American theaters in waves. Did you pay
attention to these waves or do you just make your films and don’t
really pay attention to it?

I pay a lot of attention to other peoples films. Film is still my favorite type of entertainment. I almost see a film a day. It’s really important for me to see other people’s films. I love movies both as a filmmaker and as a spectator.

Which ones do you prefer?

I like everything. Any method is a good one as long as it leads to a good film, but I have a preference for popular films. Quality popular
films. I prefer films by directors who also write the script. That’s the type of cinema I prefer. I like it when the film director is not
the scriptwriter’s slave. Nowadays directors have become the slaves of producers, stars, the scriptwriters. That’s why I like Woody
Allen, [John] Cassevettes, and I like all the directors who write their own stories. I like cinema were there is no intermediary, where the author is speaking directly to the audience.

Do you see any current trends in French movies or is it just one big blur?

No there’s a world trend right now. There’s American Cinema on one hand and then there’s the rest of the world. In the rest of the world film directors are still important and I think in America Cinema directors have become slaves and we are going to free them.

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