Audio transcription
For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.
Friday Night (Vendredi soir) and Trouble Every Day introduction and post-screening discussion with Claire Denis, Jean-Michel Frodon and Haden Guest. Saturday November 8, 2008.
HADEN GUEST 0:02
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. My name is Haden Guest. I'm Director of the Harvard Film Archive. And it's my great pleasure to welcome you here tonight, this very special evening in our retrospective dedicated to the remarkable films of Claire Denis. Tonight is a very special occasion because we have not one but two very special guests: Claire Denis and the remarkable Jean-Michel Frodon, editor in chief of Cahiers du Cinema. Claire Denis is of course one of the most important filmmakers working in Europe today. She's really an unstoppable force. Her new film 35 Rhums just was shown in the Toronto Film Festival where it was received with great acclaim. She's also just finishing another film called White Materials which we hope to be able to see at some, some point soon. In truth I think, one thing I'm learning from this retrospective is a way in which films seem to, Claire Denis’ films seem to inspire one another way, the films exists in the sort of dialogue, so this proximity of overlapping of production, I think, also informs the films themselves.
And that's the case in the two films that we're going to see tonight, two films that follow chronologically as well. We're going to be seeing Friday Night and then the incredible Trouble Every Day. These are two films that both examine the mysteries of sexual attraction in wildly, radically different fashion. And in Friday Night, we have a poetic and meditative portrait of a brief romance, a brief encounter, I should say. In Trouble Every Day, a frightening and mesmerizing portrait of lonely vampires. These are two films in which Paris figures quite prominently, in which Paris almost becomes a character unto itself. But it's an unusual vision of Paris in both films, Paris as a city shaped by desire. Vendredi soir / Friday Night marks a departure in many ways for Claire Denis, especially from her long collaboration with screenwriter Jean-Pol Fargeau, with whom she's co-written almost all of her films, this being an exception, because she co-wrote it with Emmanuèle Bernheim, adapting the 1998 novel of the same name. And also members of Denis’ celebrated troupe of favorite actors only appear fleetingly in this film. Instead, we have Valérie Lemercier, who's the lead in this film, somewhat unusual casting as she's best known in France as a comic actress. This is one of Denis’ most intensely subjective films. It's a film that adopts a first-person perspective throughout most of the film and it's quite remarkable and in so doing the lead actress is one of many dreamers that figure so prominently throughout in these films and that allow a certain intermingling of reality and fantasy that is so central to her work. One talent that is consistent throughout Denis’ films including Friday Night is Agnès Godard, the incredible cinematographer. And in this film, she offers some of her more experimental work, especially with the playful abstraction of light. Paris truly is a city of lights in this film, but I think in a way that we've rarely seen. We're really thrilled to be presenting this series and I need to thank a number of individuals who made this possible. And I'd like to start with Brigitte Bouvier who is the cultural attache of France and Boston. We work with many different cinemas, with many different nations around the world. But working with French cinema is a really great pleasure not only because France produces some of the finest filmmakers, I think anywhere, but also some of the finest cultural attaches. And Brigitte is certainly one of those. So please join me in offering her a round of applause.
[APPLAUSE]
I'd also like to thank Trisha Craig from the Center for European studies. And I'd like to thank the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies here at Harvard and especially David Roderick and Dominic Blur.
Now about Jean-Michel, I should say a few words as well. Jean-Michel will be joining us after the screening of Vendredi Soir in leading a conversation about the film and this is a really rare opportunity not only to hear Claire speak but to hear one of the foremost critics working in France today really offer penetrating analysis of a film, which he does in every issue of Cahiers du cinema, which you can now read in English, it is available online. And for those of you students at Harvard, there's a subscription through the library. So you can see it there. And for students at other universities where you don't have a subscription, you should demand it from your library because it's absolutely indispensable. Without further ado, please join me welcoming Claire Denis and Jean-Michel Frodon. (Just the order of business: we’ll have a ten-minute intermission after the screening, Claire and Jean-Michel will be joining us for a conversation about the film which will be opened up to questions from the audience. And then there'll be a ten-minute intermission followed by Trouble Every Day.) Claire Denis and Jean-Michel Frodon.
[APPLAUSE]
CLAIRE DENIS 6:09
I just wanted to mention something before the Q&A that the novel written by Emmanuèle Bernheim, who, by the way, worked also in Cahiers du cinema a few years ago, was inspired by, in the winter of ‘95 in France, there was a massive and huge strike and all the transportation subway and buses and train stop in November and December, and the country was almost blocked and then the people change their habit and sort of each hike or share a car, which we since then called covoiturage. And so the novel was inspired by this real moment, that's what I wanted to say and nothing else and we can discuss after the end and again, thank you and I wish you a very good screening.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 7:29
No more just we should also thank Haden Guest for having us here inviting us. We are very delighted to be here.
[APPLAUSE]
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JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 7:59
Well, maybe just to start I would begin with what Haden Guest was underlining when introducing the screening, that in a certain way it is different from most of your other films. It's based on a novel. Not by Jean-Pol Fargeau, it is not an original script. Actors who work before, they're not exactly the same kind of actors you've been ... Where does that come from and what does that change?
CLAIRE DENIS 8:39
I think I was really thrilled by Emmanuèle Bernheim's novel. And I immediately thought of Valérie Lemercier. Not realizing at that time, that maybe she looked a little bit like him but I was unaware and when I show the test to Emmanuèle, Emmanuèle blushed and she was extremely embarrassed. But me, I like Valérie Lemercier anyway I think she's a fantastic comedian. And so the choice of a Vincent Lindon was almost to have someone very different from her. I don't know. I have no one, who is … I could not consider an actor I've been working with already, I wanted someone that was also a stranger to me. The perfect stranger. I think that was good for me to be completely in a different... and myself a stranger to them when they are inside of the car or whatever I thought it was going to be very difficult for me to work with people I was used to work with for that film. And I never regret it because I think Valérie brings to the film ability but also her extreme shyness and the fact that she [never confronted] a part like that and afraid [of] kissing in front of a camera and like a very young actress as she's onstage, she’s tameless. I mean, she's frightening on stage; she is afraid of nothing. But certainly within the car with the camera at close range, I felt she was extremely—not fragile because she's strong—but touching and shy and she was always hesitating naturally. So when I describe all of this it's just [to try] to explain that even with a perfect stranger, I felt at ease.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 11:49
There is an obvious—apparently obvious—decision which is from the very beginning—though it does not impose itself—to film everything from very close, like, caressing the surface, even when she's still finishing the boxes and which could be filmed in a more naturalistic way, that we would be already inside a very physical and at the level of the skin. How did you design this?
CLAIRE DENIS 12:24
There was something very special in the book, if you read it one day, the book is written in the first person, it’s “I” and this person is packing and expressing everything, even the first page, I think, she says she sits on a bed for the last time and she can hear the noise of the spring in the mattress, you know. So all this was written very precisely, almost you know, like Emmanuèle writes? Almost too precisely. And by the very beginning of working on the book, I told Emmanuèle that for me I wish no voiceover; I had decided that it was better to try to do it without a voiceover, and it would, therefore, try to be with her. But it was a little bit risky. Maybe sometimes I regret it, but I think it would have destroyed my relation to the film if, while shooting, I would have been thinking all the time, there will be a voiceover. The fact that I knew that there was not going to be a voiceover, I had to be, not inside her, it's not a subjective, but with her and also I knew I was going to film in a real car because when I was offered to film in a car cut in four on the stage, I started to realize I was not ready to do that. So, knowing that I was going to be in a car with two actors with Agnès, her assistant and a boom and me and sometime the continuity–
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 14:42
It’s a small car?
CLAIRE DENIS 14:47
...you know, I knew that it was going to be a close-up film.
[LAUGHTER]
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 14:55
But it goes even beyond because this relation with surface and with a kind of plasticity of everything like human skin is not only about the human beings but also about the objects and even the atmosphere with the rain and everything, it generates from your very unique in the cinema way to unify like it was only one materiality, the people, the street, there is the smoke, the rain everything becomes thick, then could be reshaped constantly. This was to be close to the book or it was like … ?
CLAIRE DENIS 15:38
It was to be close to the book, I think. But as we were preparing the film, I realized that also I was expecting it. I chose the book also for that in a way, you know, there was something I really wanted in that book is to try to film it like that, which is something maybe I would not have done if it was written as a script by me and Jean-Pol Fargeau because the fact that it was a novel, existing novel written by somebody else gave me sort of distance that strangely enough made me not afraid to get closer. Which I think in a script, I would not have dared myself to get...
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 16:49
To get closer?
CLAIRE DENIS 16:50
...surfacing, everything surfacing and feeling.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 16:55
It is very interesting to remember that there is Beau Travail, Trouble Every Day and Friday Night as, my point of view, three levels of both choreographing every element and then going to a closer range every time to the materiality of bodies, and reading the book was also an answer to go further after having made these two previous films?
CLAIRE DENIS 17:31
No because you know me well enough that I don't foresee so much. I have a tendency like a bull in my work and it's only after I realize probably the process of things, but honestly when I read the book, I felt immediately as if I could, almost shoot the film the next day, you know, it was already very familiar to me.
Also, if I consider Emmanuèle's writing, we are very different, you know? But there was something familiar for me. It's maybe also in the situation she's describing that is the intrusion in someone's life, and I think more or less I have to realize it exists in almost all my films, I don't know why exactly but I think it's as if she was not accepting a stranger or intrusion of someone that is unexpected. It's a little bit dull for me. I don't know why. I think hospitality is interesting to make films with.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 19:30
[LAUGHS]
CLAIRE DENIS 19:35
No, I'm not joking. I think there is something of that in the purpose of working a sort of abstract hospitality, sometimes dangerous or risky, I should say. But I guess yes, it is probably what drives me.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 19:59
Are there questions from the audience?
AUDIENCE 20:12
Haden was mentioning earlier how Paris in this film and the next film becomes like a character. And I feel that in all of your films, the location or the setting becomes a very powerful character. I was wondering if you could say something about the process for you of deciding the location, the setting and then how you create that in the final product of the film?
CLAIRE DENIS 20:45
Very honestly, this is something I– Let's go back to the first film I actually shot in Paris, like I Can’t Sleep. I was very surprised that [after[ the film was released that people would tell me how this part of Paris, the north of Paris was vivid in the film, because I had the feeling that I was missing Paris. Paris was there and I was not watching Paris. And I was afraid of that, you know, that I was missing an element of the film that was also the geography of the film as we were speaking the other day. And now, I think, maybe not only for Paris, but I am always when I'm shooting on location, that's number one. And number two, when I choose a location, I try to avoid to pan or to show a lot the location, I try to be very only when it's needed. I try to avoid the description, landscaping, even sometimes when I am shooting and I look in the street as I say, “Ah, it's beautiful this moment, I should.” I think in Friday Night the only time is the domed purple sky. That's the only time I really... and the roof at the beginning. Well, otherwise it's always inside the scene. Not as pure landscaping. Also we had a rule in Beau Travail; I told Agnès, “No landscape without the soldier.” "Even if I tell you 'film that,' you refuse. Only with the soldier. Otherwise no landscape." Because I think to show landscape as a sort of reverse angle of the story is absolutely not normal. It's four days we are here. And I've not been making tours like a tourist, but I think I capture—fragments by fragment—the feeling of here, and I think I could describe a piece of this part of the world. Like the walk we made this morning, I don't need much more in a way, you know? Therefore, I think I trust that by not showing, landscaping the film, the inner geography of the story will suddenly emerge. And if it's a city, it becomes sort of partner of the film. I remember when I was working with Jacques Rivette, I was doing location scouting with him. Jacques Rivette is a French director you might know. He told me because he had been Jean Renoir's assistant. He told me that when he was doing location scouting with Jean Renoir, Jean Renoir was telling him "Really remember that it's when shooting on location, it's good not to choose only a location you think is fine or nice or you like, but a location that is in danger, that might disappear or that might be transformed. Always choose usefully the location, as if a location should not be only an aesthetical choice, but a very reasonable choice." And I think I do believe in that.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 25:44
But even so, it's really significant those films which are being shown tonight open with the same kind of large shot—which kind of inscribes what is going to come afterwards which we will never need again—[of] landscape, because there are the roofs of Paris in this one and the bridges over the Seine in Trouble Every Day, have done it once for the whole film to a certain extent. It is a crime to film in a...
CLAIRE DENIS 26:15
Yes, but in the case of Trouble Every Day it's the musician Stuart Staples' song; [He] gave it to me before I started editing and he told me his song for the end credit. And I listened to the song and I said, "No, this could not be the end credit," because in the script, the opening scene was in the plane with the American couple and the song changed everything for me. So we decided to put the Seine River and the bridge and suddenly it became like exposing the city. Like blood in the vein or something like that. Not something like that. When I was in it I thought it was looking like blood in the vein. But I think the song really transformed something in the film because in the script, this film was starting in a very claustrophobic way inside the plane. Absolutely not open on Paris. So that's a case where sometimes it's good to know a good musician.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 27:50
[LAUGHS] A question?
AUDIENCE 27:57
I'm not quite sure what the question is, but I felt so strongly that throughout the film, everything was—I think because the days here, it's been an interesting time perhaps for you to be here with the cloudy day, I mean, just in terms of this film, at least, with these cloudy days, and the clouds and darkness of what we are seeing. And yet that and the very last scene. All it takes is that very last scene— maybe it's not necessary, but it brings it together in some way. And you realize that at least for me, maybe nobody else feels that but I felt like I was her and I was a stranger to myself and to everyone else. And the stultifying clouds that represented something deep inside were relieved in a way by this external world that really wasn't me at all. The other was me. But this brought me back to life and gave me the strength to go on with clouds.
CLAIRE DENIS 29:42
I agree with you. Because when we shot the sky, I told Agnès, let's do that shot. Because it's really when you say the day breaks and you see the night going away, you know the dark clouds and this purple light coming with also in front daybreak you know, le jour point, and it's softer than break, it means that the night is... and she feels as you say. It's beautiful what you said about feeling stranger to yourself, you know, I really completely agree with what you felt. I thank you very much.
AUDIENCE 30:46
I noticed that both films showing tonight have hotels in them and a scene with the woman washing her feet in a sink. Is there any significance?
CLAIRE DENIS 30:59
The what?
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 31:00
[UNKNOWN]
CLAIRE DENIS 31:02
Ah, l’hotel, j’aurais compris. Les hotels, les gens se lavent. You mean in both films tonight? Ah, yes. Number one: I like hotels. This is for sure. So maybe I have a tendency to be attracted by stories that take place in hotel you know? No, I think going in a hotel and bathrooms also are important. I don't know, I think that my answer is completely stupid because your question just surprised me. Yes, I like hotels and bathrooms in hotels and...
[LAUGHTER]
...and washing all this you know. I also have coffee machine, washing machine. There is a lot of coffee machine in my films you know and now I am starting a new series with a washing machine?
[LAUGHTER]
… no but it's true. I have this kind of attraction. No but it's not funny, it's true. Because I think for me hotel, bathroom, bathtub, washing it's the thing you do on your own without thinking; it's a retreat also, you know? Yes. Especially in that film, she has no home anymore in a way you know. But it's not a motif. It's probably... some people hate hotels and she's only secure at home and me I'm part of the people who probably feel absolutely the opposite. You know, I am protected in a hotel because I am nowhere and I'm no one. I absolutely adore that. When I'm home, I have my burden on my shoulder. If I go to my bathroom, I have to clean it, you know. So everything is a burden in my house. In hotel I feel free. So that's probably why.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 34:10
Please can you wait for the mic because it's recorded?
AUDIENCE 34:20
If you were to speak with the voice of the woman in the film, what would you be saying in that last scene, when she starts to run in slow motion and is sort of lifted from the ground just at the end?
CLAIRE DENIS 34:39
In the book, she could not find a car and she takes a cab. She's in the cab, and she's feeling her skirt with her hand and she smiles. And after thinking all the time where I spend in a car, I decided to cut the cab aspect and to have her running. And I realized I really prefer that to any cab because she's not only running, she's walking fast and running, from small streets and suddenly the first ray of sun is there and life is back in a larger street. And she feels light and free, you know. So for me a voice. I don't think there would have been a voice there as there was, I think no voice in the book at that moment, it was just, she was feeling her skirt and she felt tight under the skirt. And she felt good, you know. And I think it was something of her freedom and suddenly feeling herself and maybe strange to herself also.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 36:38
The other mic is coming.
AUDIENCE 36:43
Returning to the final scene in the film, the, I guess the strategy of using sort of slow-motion with a longer shutter speed was something that I hadn't seen in any of your other films. I was curious how much of that was suggested by the novel and how much of that was something conceived for this film specifically.
CLAIRE DENIS 37:04
What could be suggested by the novel?
AUDIENCE 37:06
Oh, the sort of slow-motion aspect?
CLAIRE DENIS 37:07
Ah, at the end, the last scene? It's, it's really because I like Valérie so much. And she's not smiling often. No, it's true. It's not a joke. And I really enjoy so much that moment and it was the last shot we made. And when I saw I was on the car with the camera, and Agnès, when I saw a smile started, I wish I had thought of slow motion. So we did it digitally. But I hesitate a little bit because it was the first time I was implying using slow-motion like that. There is another short slow-motion in the same when they go downstairs in the toilet and but we made it with the camera and it's probably 28 frames. It's a very minimum slow-motion, not like the end. The end it was a sort of selfish slow-motion for me to have more of the smile, and she's running with such a... she is like jumping. I’m sorry, my answer is very poor but that’s the truth.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 39:01
From my point of view, to a certain extent there is the possibility of this slow-motion during the whole film and it's accomplished only at the last shot, because there is an accelerated shot at the very beginning. And then there are several like letters dancing, anchovies of the pizza, which are opening a possibility that something like that might be given to her. And to you, ultimately join–
CLAIRE DENIS 39:28
Yes, yes. Yes but the smiling pizza was in the novel. She saw that the pizza was smiling. The letter dancing was in the novel. So it's true. But when I was shooting, I did not realize the smile at the end. Sort of I knew she was going to smile, but she did it at the very end, you know, and it's great. I said "She's not going to smile." She said, "This is the end of the shot and she's not going to smile," and yes, she did it. So I think there was also, as you say, sort of frustration contained all the time and suddenly: yes.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 40:18
Yes, because this smiling pizza also reminded me... Which is different from the novel: something so realistic in the film and at the same time has the possibilities, the promise of magic at any moment, which would happen. I was recently in a symposium, which has been discussing extensively, the rays of the building as a UFO in [UNKNOWN] film, but to a certain extent, it's already there as a pizza and years before. Inside a very realistic story, something can happen which just boosts everything.
CLAIRE DENIS 41:04
Yeah, it's true. Obviously it's the kind of scene you can discuss after. While making the film, this smiling pizza was a nightmare for me because one day I was thinking we'll do it and the other day no, no not the smiling pizza. [LAUGHTER] So it was a fight and then it looked ugly the first test we made with a smiling pizza. You know: disgusting smiles. All this sort of saying, when you do it frame by frame you can control—so the wrapping for instance, we do it frame by frame. This is nice because it's something we can do by ourselves, but of course the smiling pizza was made digitally and I had a problem with that. But in the end, I really decided to be confident in the smiling pizza.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 42:17
Is there a question...there?
AUDIENCE 42:21
Absolutely nothing has been said about the part of the man. And so, therefore... I haven't read the book. He's almost just used as a prop and you leave him in bed, and she takes off and we care about whether she runs down the street or not. But we apparently don't care at all what happens to him and I find that a little difficult to be– I mean was it meant to be that way? Was the novel written that way? So he was just as I say, a prop?
CLAIRE DENIS 43:02
I see what you mean. But a prop is is not what I felt while shooting [or] what I felt while directing the actor. I think he chooses the car and she's surprised because he’s expected in another car you know. So it's also by chance they met, you know? But I think for a moment in the film they both fell in love for a moment and they're not props to each other because they split once. When she arrives at the cafe and finds him there. I think it's a little bit more than just an object. It's the attraction probably what– It's their destiny that probably does not give them the chance to have another day together. I think it's that direction I thought the film was going like, it could be much more than that. If she was not moving the next day, and probably felt that so when he turned his back to her on the bed, it's because for me, he has sort of elegancy not to grab on her, to give her a choice when she's leaving, I always think he is not sleeping really. He can hear her voice you know. Though I think it's there is a possibility he knows she's leaving. Just sort of this is my way of seeing things. Because I would never, never even in my worst moment consider someone as a prop especially in a situation like that. So I wouldn't think this character would do. Maybe It's because she felt that attraction immediately with him, that she's a little bit afraid, and he sort of gives her a chance to leave, you know? I think it's more elegant than prop. I don't think they [are] using each other. Seeing they met by chance. I don't know if she likes his smell in the car. She likes the smell of his cigarette or little things that little by little made both of them attracted [to] each other.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 46:57
But it would be fair to say each of them belong to his own story and...
CLAIRE DENIS 47:02
Yes, yes.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 47:03
...and the story is a woman's story which is being told but the story would cross on the one night and would reciprocate. But he has a story. He's a human being with a story.
CLAIRE DENIS 47:13
Yeah, there was a moment where it was Emmanuèle, I wanted to shoot two films at the same time and to do Saturday Morning, which was going to be a story of the man, you know? And we didn't dare to do so. But a long time we were thinking about Saturday Morning and this guy waking up alone and going in a cafe. And I even thought he was going to take a train, Gare du Nord for Lille. I don't know why he was going to Lille anyway, because he was shaving in the train? Because I had already written at the beginning of Saturday Morning.
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 48:07
We can feel that there is a potential storyline there. [INAUDIBLE]
CLAIRE DENIS 48:14
Why Lille I don't know?
JEAN-MICHEL FRODON 48:17
Oh, Lille is right. This is where he's going. For sure.
Okay, I think we should have now to give opportunity to see the next film. Just to say also that I think it's really striking how much these two films are both different and coherent and prove what is an artist at work, doing different works and doing something so much growing and building together. Thank you, Claire.
[APPLAUSE]
CLAIRE DENIS 48:52
Thank you, Jean-Michel, thank you very much for bringing me here. And also I would like to thank you all who invite me in your class to the students and Brigitte and Philippe and Benedict, all of you because it was short and always is difficult to speak about films in a, like that in a compressed time, but I was very touched and then thank you Haden.
[APPLAUSE]
And Lucille, I forgot to thank Lucille.
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