Exclusive Cedric Klapisch Interview

4 months ago 21st Jul 09:03

Cedric Klapisch is a French director who, unlike many of his European counterparts is happy remaining in his native country making French movies and promoting French talent instead of working in Hollywood.

Shooting movies all over the world this week the filmmaker returns to his home city of Paris for his new film aptly named Paris.

Starring Juliette Binoche the film follows male dancer Pierre (Romain Duris), who is diagnosed with a serious heart condition that, even with a transplant, could end his life, he takes stock of his surroundings.

Meanwhile, all around him, Parisians are getting on with their lives, working and loving, and sometimes dying, too.

Meanwhile I caught up with Cedric to discuss his new film, it's complicated and interweaving structure and narrative and the impression he tried to create of Paris.

Paris is the new film can you tell me a bit about it?

The reason I wanted to make this movie was to make a portrait of Paris and to show that Paris had changed, and very often what I saw about Paris was not what I thought about Paris, so I really wanted to make a new portrait and show my way of seeing Paris.

You are a director who has shot all over the world why did you decide to go back to where you belong?

Because I probably discovered by shooting somewhere else that I belonged to Paris and to France and I realised that when you travel a lot you probably understand better what you like about your home town. I think I probably wasn’t ready to do this movie before but after making a movie about Brussels and London it was just nice to make a portrait about my city.

And what has the response been towards the movie so far?

Well it has been released on in France so far and the response was great because there were one million and eight hundred entries so we were just glad that it was a good result.

You shot the film predominately in autumn and winter why did you chose to highlight those seasons?

First of all when I have shot Paris before it mainly in spring or in summer and I really wanted to chance my way of shooting Paris and also because I think there is something autumn like about Paris I thought it was just more interesting to shoot in autumn and winter because of the colours and the sadness and the bluesy side of the city that I wanted to show.

The film is very much about taking stock of what is around you, in particular from Pierre’s point of view, where did the idea of the film come from or what drew towards that idea?

I think the movie is a lot about death and how death can make you feel alive and push you to enjoy life, so when you have people around you who are sick or dying then you can be sad with that but you can also push yourself to seize the day much more. So I think that is what I was saying about the kind of bluesy atmosphere in Paris it makes you aware about what’s nice about life and what’s enjoyable in life.

All of the characters have their own stories how difficult was it to incorporate all of these without losing sight of Pierre’s plight?

That was the hardest thing about this movie, was to make one movie with more than ten stories, and I tried to first just look at the whole architecture of the project; Pierre is probably the centre of the story but not the hero of the story and his feelings of enjoying every moment because he’s not sure if he’s going to live for a long time and then after we see that everyone’s problems are kind of ridiculous, everyone has problems and everyone thinks that their problems are important where as sometimes when it a life and death problem it’s more important. So I tried to show a different portrait of different Parisians but always with the filter of Pierre’s eyes.

And how much of the film had to be cut in order to fit everything in?

Almost half because what was working in the writing and in the script didn’t completely work once edited so I had to choose things to find what I was saying about finding one story to represent the whole story was really during the editing.

It was really a question of pace and feeling I didn’t want to mix those stories with coincidences and things that were too obvious, this character leads to this one, and to respect that in a city we all meet each other but we all have different lives and that people from different social back ground mix up and people from different origins mix up so they just leave one close to the other without mixing so I wanted to respect that in the story.

Whereas in the narrative it’s really hard to respect that because narritively you need to link between things so it was hard to respect the fact that in a city like Paris people don’t have links together.

The film features the likes of Juliette Binoche and Romain Duris how did you go about the casting process?

During the writing the principle characters in mind, so I had thought about Juliette Binoche being the sister of Romain Duris, so I wrote the story with them in mind, the same with Albert Dupontel, Karin Viard or Fabrice Luchini.

For the rest of the characters were made from classical casting so it was really a mix of people I had in mind and people I tried to fit together.

The film is left fairly open ended, we don’t find out what happens to Pierre for example, why did you decide to leave the film like this and not tie off loose ends?

Because life is like that, you know that you are going to die some day but you don’t know how. In this movie I wanted to be sincere with life and I wanted to be sincere with the fact that this open end is really a way of respecting the fact that we don; know how things are going to end, and I think the nice thing about life is that we don’t know what is going to happen.

the city plays an integral part to the story what impression did you want to leave the audience with of Paris?

It’s really about diversity about the fact Paris is a mixture of very old things and very modern things, it’s a mixture of countries because you can find American things, African things and very traditional French neighbour and it’s a mix of all this. The identity of Paris is all of that because you can’t really say that Paris is only old or only modern it’s really a mixing of different sides so it’s really diversity that I wanted to show.

In recent months French movies like La Vie en Rose and Persepolis have found success outside of France are European movies finally beginning to travel and why have they struggled in the past?

I don’t know if I can answer that but I do think that in the last five movies the French movies have changed an I do think that it is the beginning of the end of the Nouvelle Vague it lasted for a long time and created an image for other countries where we were supposed to intellectuals, timid and cerebral and I think the movies are not as cerebral as they were before.

So I think the idea of entertainment and lightness is probably new in France and we allow ourselves to be light and speak about human relationships in a more factual way so I think that’s new and this does change movies. And the good thing that I like about it is we no longer think that a movie should be sad or funny it can be both and i really like that.

Directors like Timur Bekmambetov have found success in their own country and have moved on to Hollywood do you share this ambition?

No because it’s a great place to make movies right now in France and when I see some of my colleagues who go off to Hollywood and have a hard time fitting in I think I feel comfortable in France making French movies.

I respect directors in other countries I respect Almodovar because he is very Spanish and I know he refused to go to Hollywood and I think he made the right choice because it's more interesting for him to be what he is in Spain rather than making American movies.

And it's probably the new tenancy in Hollywood because before people like Hitchcock came from all over Europe to build the new Hollywood and I think it's not like that anymore there is a European culture that's building up and that's proud of being different and it's interesting to be part of that.

Finally what is next for you?

I am working on a comedy right now, I wanted to do something different from Paris I wanted to do something lighter, so that is what I’m starting right now.

Paris is released 25th July

FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw