2024-08-21 08:12:12
A dangerous narco decides to change everything. Like Jacques Audiard who films here, between melodrama and musical comedy, the rebirth of a character, but also of his cinema, freer than ever…Interview with a director at the height of his art.
Photo caption: LA BELLE ÉQUIPE_ Jacques Audiard is full of praise for his actress who corresponded with him during the long preparation of the film. “We nourished each other.”
I didn’t think you’d ever do a musical.
Jacques Audiard: Well, neither did I! It was a very long road, and I first considered an opera libretto… At the time ofA very discreet heroI had already toyed with the idea of writing an opera with Alexandre Desplat. We wanted to make a small opera in the style of Brecht or Nixon in China by John Adams, and then it got lost. After A prophetwe had discussed with Thomas Bidegain a musical comedy about go fasts… So there was this desire for a musical comedy or a small opera. Then the first inspiration was a text by my friend Boris Razon, a brief chapter where I had a start. And also in The Sopranosthis gay character, surprised in a queer club, and his life becoming hell. It was this pain that interested me…
A melodrama with telenovela overtones, set in Mexico but filmed in Paris, a musical comedy in Spanish about a narco who decides to become a woman. It all seems quite improbable, even risky, very far from your world.
(He seems to hesitate) No, maybe it’s the same thing in another form. With this film, I come back to how we put an end to the violence of ancestors, of fathers, as in The Sisters Brothers. It’s biblical. I have an increasingly musical vision of films, more poetic, and there is this challenge that means that I don’t shoot in my mother tongue, which I don’t understand at all… When I shoot with Tamil actors, their codes of expression are totally different, but musically, something satisfies me.
Emilia Perez is a film about a transition, but is it also a transition in your cinema?
You can string together all the metaphors, if I dare say. And then, it’s even a film that is, in the strict sense, formally transgender: it goes from the telenovela to the narcos film, passing through the musical comedy. It’s a film that develops by changing form. It’s the second time I’ve tried something like this, after Of rust and bone. I am considering Emilia Perez as a kind of metaphor for a fluidity of beings and narrative forms.
After all your films about toxic males, men who fall, there are almost none left in Emilia Perez ?
They are changing. It is true that the assembly of men is something that does not suit me at all, but they can learn to change. In Cannes, in Karla’s speech, I really liked when she said that men can change. Let’s be optimistic!
Emilia Perez seems very personal, moreover, you wrote it alone.
Yes, I started on my own, Tom. [Bidegain] happened along the way, when the musicians arrived, and there we worked together on the songs, the placement of the songs, all that stuff…
I think you didn’t want to give Karla the dual role of trans woman and bad narco from the beginning?
Maybe Karla has a better memory than me, but I think it’s less radical than what she says. The Sisters Brothers, I wanted a trans woman and during the tests, they stuck a moustache on her. And she got facial edema. So there you go, I said to myself, let’s be careful now (he pauses, as if he doesn’t really believe it, editor’s note). But don’t ask me what I think of Karla…
What do you think about Karla?
I tried a lot before I found her or she found me, rather. I don’t see how I would have gotten through it without her. Karla is a great writer and she educated me with all her letters about trans culture.
For music, Camille wasn’t your first choice?
At first, I thought of Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Damon Albarn. It’s strange, but all these people were too busy… Then Gonzales started composing very, very quickly. I wanted demos, but for him, it was definitive and I didn’t understand that he wouldn’t come back to it. It stopped there, I can’t work like that. With Camille and Clément (Ducol)it was a work in progresswe redid everything ten times, everything was thrown in the trash several times.
Used as an aside, the songs take the form of confession, sometimes focusing on a single character.
No, I don’t think so, I didn’t have that idea. These are not moods, but simply songs that move the story forward. But I don’t dominate everything…
…You are just the director.
That’s it!
You hired the Franco-Belgian choreographer Damien Jalet because he had worked on the remake of Sighs ?
I didn’t even know him. I had first contacted the company La Horde, but they were overloaded and they recommended Damien to me. I wanted something that didn’t look like choreography, but more like what we see at the beginning, those steps from the market to the courthouse, or when they cock the guns. But I didn’t have enough time…
Regarding the staging of the dance scenes, I have the impression that you are going against all established patterns, with the sequence shot, the full-length camera, no cuts…
But I could never have done sequence shots! In the first scene, I use Damien’s dancers almost as a set, because I don’t have much depth of field. And with Zoe [Saldana]who has the heaviest numbers, we cut into three or four segments. She sings, she dances, she is impressive. Damien is a real wizard, look at Selena Gomez’s number!
How long did you shoot for?
About ten weeks, but we should check. It’s long! But there were always three files to manage at the same time. In the evening, Tom looked at the rushes, made me notes during the night. And Virginie Montel, the artistic director, who took a very important role, centralized everything that makes up the image.
However, I have the impression that the director is the brain, the boss on the set.
I’m not interested. I had a great team that supported me. I like the sum of the parts to be greater than the whole.
This was your sixth selection at Cannes. Is it still as strong?
Oh my God! It’s an anguish, an anxiety, I’ve never been able to capitalize on my rewards.
Yet you are one of the greats…
One of the great what?
One of Cannes’ darlings.
But that doesn’t change anything, my friend. It’s my film, I’m showing it to the public for the first time, on a screen the size of a building. And there, an aggravating circumstance, my actresses hadn’t seen a single frame… It’s a leap into the void.
You’re doing well again.
The award for actresses is wonderful. During the week, I was thinking, “Karla, that would be really great.” The four of them, it’s a sensation unknown on earth. Adriana Paz is the first Mexican actress to have been awarded at Cannes; she is wonderful. Four award-winning actresses, that’s unheard of, with Karla as a bonus.
A word on the unleashing of hatred on Twitter and Marion Maréchal.
This is monstrous! Karla is suing him but it won’t change anything. I’m afraid that a project like Emilia Perezwith all the strangeness that it has, it ended with people from the National Rally in power, via funding by the regions. We must expect bad times, from all points of view.
Could you work for Netflix or a platform?
Sure! The only question is, what are we going to do?
So what are you going to do?
Nothing at all, it surprises me and it worries me. I no longer have a head start, I have already fired it with The Olympics. I want to reread all of Faulkner.
A film with sound and fury, then?
August Light, The Wild Palms, Absalom, While I Lay Dying… Of the great texts, I also want to read the new translations of The Iliad.
Are there still a lot of films in you?
I don’t know at all. Emilia Perez could be the last.
It seems unlikely to me.
And why not? I look young, but inside I’m an Aztec mummy (laughs).
Interview with Marc Godin
Photo Axel Vanhessche
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