Exclusive Cedric Klapisch Interview

21 July 2008

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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.

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