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Interview added by
Cedric Klapisch
What drove you to make PARIS?
I've done a lot of filming abroad recently, in London, Saint Petersburg and Barcelona among other places, and I wanted to come home and return to my city. Moreover, there has always been a lot of Paris in my other films like LITTLE NOTHINGS, WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY and MAYBE, but never directly. I felt I'd been beating about the bush, and that it was the right time.
Was it also in reaction to the negative vision we sometimes have of the city?
It's true that Paris and Parisians have a bad reputation. They are thought of as snobbish, pretentious, bourgeois and disagreeable, and all that topped off with a grumpy nature. And this opinion is not far off the mark. There's a "never happy" side to Parisians, but that's also a French character trait: just look at French heroes in the style of Gabin or Delon, or the characters created by Céline, Léo Malet and Tardi.
Their Parisians are miserable and gloomy, they're hard-nosed and uppity. There's also something fine and healthy in this attitude. Paris is a melancholy city. There's a melancholy there that - bizarrely - is more about living and reacting and not about resigning yourself to things. The greatest moments in Parisian history were the Revolution of 1789, the Commune, the Liberation and May '68. Paris is known for its moments of healthy anger.
I've also often heard it said that Paris is no longer "in", that it's a dead town etc., and I don't believe that to be true. After losing the Olympic Games to London, there was a whole series of pointers that indicated Paris wasn't cool enough or not "capital" enough anymore. As a reaction, I wanted to talk about the Paris of today, in an era that is perhaps more ordinary. I even thought about giving the film the subtitle: "An Ephemeral Portrait of an Eternal City".
As someone who has done it a lot, do you still find it easy to film Paris?
I think that the more photographers like Willy Ronis, Robert Doisneau, Cartier-Bresson, Depardon and William Klein photograph Paris, the better they do it. So there is an "craftsman" side to cinema, the repetition of the same movement brings something, and there's something inexhaustible about Paris. So I don't exhaust myself. Indeed, I think it's because I've filmed Paris a lot that I'm only just staring to know how to do it.
Moreover, in WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY, you filmed Paris in deconstruction and now you're filming it in construction...
That was one of the starting points for writing the script. Baudelaire's phrase in reaction to Haussmann's construction madness: "The shape of a city changes more quickly, alas! than the human heart".
Old Paris is no more (the form of a city
Changes more quickly, alas! than the human heart);
[...]
Paris changes! But naught in my melancholy
Has stirred! New palaces, scaffolding, blocks of stone,
Old quarters, all become for me an allegory,
And my dear memories are heavier than rocks.
Le Cygne. Les Fleurs du Mal, 1861.
[The Swan, The Flowers of Evil]
When I made WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY, I was filming the renovation of the Bastille quarter, but it wasn't through nostalgia that I was filming the destruction of "Old Paris". And it wasn't as an attempt to denounce or advertise a new and more modern, bourgeois and trendy Paris either. I was simply trying to show that it wasn't necessarily one against the other but that the two coexist, and it's that same juxtaposition that makes it such a rich city. As Fabrice Luchini's character in the film, Roland Verneuil, says: "An ancient city does not define itself through the way it contrasts its vestiges and its modernity."
Paris today is neither the Louvre, nor the Quai Branly museum; it's the association of the two. I love that association, the fact that Paris is a link between its history and an avant-garde. Today, the Marais district is a blend of classical architecture from the 17th century, a gay neighborhood, a Jewish neighborhood, a bit of a Chinese neighborhood and a fashion center with prestigious designers'
boutiques. Its identity is linked to these successive strata. Whether it's in conflict or marriage, there are juxtapositions that engender vitality. And it's that interweaving of eras and community that is the fabric of Paris.
How would you sum up the film, PARIS?
It's the story of a Parisian man who is sick and wonders if he's going to die. His condition makes him look at all the people he meets in a new and different way. Imagining death gives meaning to his life, to other peoples' lives and to the life of the whole city. Just like a metro map, Paris is a network of interconnections. To be able to create a portrait of Paris, you have to go in all directions - it mustn't be linear. You have to respect the complexity of the city. And it's also that fragmented shape that brings out the proliferation and the lively side of Paris.
Tell us about the characters who come together in PARIS...
There are many different people, worlds that don't interconnect and social classes that don't mingle, but there is also fraternity. Indeed, there is a lot about sibling relationships. There's the brother and sister - Juliette Binoche and Romain Duris - she's a social worker who deals with collective problems, he's a dancer looking after his body. There are the two sisters in the 16th arrondissement - Audrey Marnay and Annelise Hesme - who work in fashion and have a carefree and easy life in Paris. Then there are the two Verneuil brothers - Fabrice Luchini and François Cluzet - one of whom, Philippe (Cluzet), is an architect and is building the Denis Diderot Biology Faculty in the new development on the Left Bank, and the other, Roland (Luchini), is a historian specializing in Paris.
There are other groups of people who are more or less close like the market traders who go between Rungis and Ménilmontant played by Albert Dupontel, Zinedine Soualem, Julie Ferrier, Gilles Lellouche and Emmanuel Quattra. There are also more solitary characters like the woman who runs the bakery played by Karin Viard, who is desperately trying to find a young employee, Benoît who's from Cameroon and who has crossed Africa en route for Paris, and Laetitia, the young student. I'm trying to show how there is always complicity in a place where there's only contrast and segregation. Despite the solitude, there is still solidarity, or simply paths that cross. A film often tells the story of one single journey, but here, we follow many individuals and thus many paths. In this film, the individual journeys create collective emotions. And through the film editing, one person's problems feed those of another. Indeed, that's been the complexity of this film since writing began: how to make a story from all of those fragmented tales.
Having Fabrice Luchini and Karin Viard in PARIS is a reminder of your first feature, LITTLE NOTHINGS, another film where many characters' paths cross...
There are reminders of all my previous films in PARIS. I wanted to make it a reference to the things I've already examined in the past. It's true that having Fabrice Luchini and Karin Viard makes you think of LITTLE NOTHINGS, but there are more than ten characters, all of whom are narrators. Funnily enough, after making LITTLE NOTHINGS, I told myself I'd never do it again because it was so difficult, but I guess I couldn't help myself!
In PARIS there are also many actors with whom you've never worked before, like Juliette Binoche, François Cluzet, Mélanie Laurent, Gilles Lellouche and Albert Dupontel, who are well-known actors too. That's unusual for your films...
In my films there have always been the same faces coming back, like Zinedine Soualem, Romain Duris and Vincent Elbaz, as well as lots of new actors. I like discovering new faces with each film. In PARIS, it was clear to me that I had to show diversity, so there are a lot of actors and yes, it's true, many well-known ones. When I decided to call my film PARIS, I was aware that I had to make something that resembled the city - that is to say something that alternates between the ordinary and the monumental. Crossing the Seine
or going past the Eiffel Tower are always special moments for Parisians. They may be clichéd but they are also daily elements of our landscape and can never be completely ordinary. I had to not stop myself from showing those things too.
And it's the same thing for the actors. They had to be anonymous people who are monuments of cinema. Working with actors like Romain Duris, Juliette Binoche, Fabrice Luchini, Albert Dupontel, François Cluzet, Julie Ferrier, Gilles Lellouche, Mélanie Laurent and Zinedine Soualem was anything but ordinary - it was something exceptional, something awe-inspiring.
This is your sixth film out of nine with Romain Duris, who has a role that is resolutely different to that of L'AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE and RUSSIAN DOLLS...
It's clearly an attempt to get away from Xavier! Romain and I needed to do that, just to prove to ourselves that we could still make movies together without mentioning him. Now, it's difficult for me to work without Romain. And the same applies to Zinedine Soualem. In making PARIS, we weren't looking for continuation like we were with RUSSIAN DOLLS; we were heading in a different direction. But that wasn't too difficult because Romain has learned a lot of things moving from universe to universe with other directors.
However, we did find it bizarre not having the same rapport as usual on the shoot. With L'AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE and RUSSIAN DOLLS, we were relaxed, whereas here, it was more stressed. Stressed in the sense that we had to create something more serious: Romain's character is gravely ill so we couldn't spend our time joking together on the set. That made us uncomfortable. Like it was out of respect for Pierre and his suffering.
In one flashback, we see Romain Duris as a dancer at the Moulin Rouge. Did he surprise you?
I still can't get over it. I may have made six films with him, but he surprises me every time! It was strange. That day was a sort of crowning moment in the film, especially as it was Romain's last day of shooting, so it wasn't exactly an everyday moment.
Seeing him dancing like that was disturbing because he stepped into the universe, the costume, the character and the choreography with such ease. He had both that slightly pathetic dancer's thing of trying to pick up jobs here and there, and at the same time, that classy thing that a Moulin Rouge dancer has. I liked the way he managed to embody these two aspects. When you make a film about Paris in which you talk about the Moulin Rouge and one of the main characters is a dancer there, you have to accept it.
It's not even a cliché anymore at that level - it's a caricature of the symbol of the icon. And if that works in the film, and if it doesn't come across as overblown or coarse, it's simply down to Romain's grace.
Your shoots have a reputation of being great fun. Was that the case with PARIS?
It was certainly a funny old shoot. I was very happy. It was a pleasure for me. A pleasure that is intimately linked to work and therefore to a lot of effort and tiredness. I have never had such a solid team. We were all happy to see each other every morning. Well I was, anyway. There was a really happy thing going on, and at the same time, it wasn't just a party because there was just too much work, too much concentration and too much seriousness. In the end, that mixture of seriousness and pleasure was pretty good.
Cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne and I have a very close relationship. We're both conscious of the fact we have a job to do, but at the same time, we both feel like children, capable of reassessing everything we've learned to do. There is a kind of discrepancy between our professional maturity and our immaturity on set. We were pretty keen to not take ourselves too seriously.
You met Juliette Binoche when you were working as an electrician on Léos Carax' BAD BLOOD. Now she's starring in PARIS and you're a recognized filmmaker. Do you think about how far you've come?
I try not to think too much about that. Let's say that to feel yourself rising up through the ranks only gives you vertigo and that's not the kind of vertigo I'm looking for. I like doing things unawares. I prefer being unaware to having vertigo.
That's not easy for someone who likes observing his characters from above...
That's true. When I was 25 and an electrician, I could only dream about it. I used to hope that one day, I would be able to make films. And now, I'm not just doing it, but I'm doing it with incredible people, and I'm fully aware of that. But what I like now, is not so much having the status of a recognized director, but more being able to enjoy the intense pleasure of doing this job and working. Making a film with Karin Viard, Fabrice Luchini, Juliette Binoche and Romain Duris is an incredible privilege. There are few drugs as good as that, and what's more, it's legal!
What is your favorite area of Paris?
I hope there isn't one. That's what's great about Paris -it's a place where you can get lost. I love that about it. There are so many areas and it's never ending. But I do have a thing about the quayside along the Seine and the Île Saint-Louis. During important moments in my life, I often find myself walking around there, and at the end of a shoot, I need to go there. To feel the heart of the city perhaps.
I've done a lot of filming abroad recently, in London, Saint Petersburg and Barcelona among other places, and I wanted to come home and return to my city. Moreover, there has always been a lot of Paris in my other films like LITTLE NOTHINGS, WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY and MAYBE, but never directly. I felt I'd been beating about the bush, and that it was the right time.
Was it also in reaction to the negative vision we sometimes have of the city?
It's true that Paris and Parisians have a bad reputation. They are thought of as snobbish, pretentious, bourgeois and disagreeable, and all that topped off with a grumpy nature. And this opinion is not far off the mark. There's a "never happy" side to Parisians, but that's also a French character trait: just look at French heroes in the style of Gabin or Delon, or the characters created by Céline, Léo Malet and Tardi.
Their Parisians are miserable and gloomy, they're hard-nosed and uppity. There's also something fine and healthy in this attitude. Paris is a melancholy city. There's a melancholy there that - bizarrely - is more about living and reacting and not about resigning yourself to things. The greatest moments in Parisian history were the Revolution of 1789, the Commune, the Liberation and May '68. Paris is known for its moments of healthy anger.
I've also often heard it said that Paris is no longer "in", that it's a dead town etc., and I don't believe that to be true. After losing the Olympic Games to London, there was a whole series of pointers that indicated Paris wasn't cool enough or not "capital" enough anymore. As a reaction, I wanted to talk about the Paris of today, in an era that is perhaps more ordinary. I even thought about giving the film the subtitle: "An Ephemeral Portrait of an Eternal City".
As someone who has done it a lot, do you still find it easy to film Paris?
I think that the more photographers like Willy Ronis, Robert Doisneau, Cartier-Bresson, Depardon and William Klein photograph Paris, the better they do it. So there is an "craftsman" side to cinema, the repetition of the same movement brings something, and there's something inexhaustible about Paris. So I don't exhaust myself. Indeed, I think it's because I've filmed Paris a lot that I'm only just staring to know how to do it.
Moreover, in WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY, you filmed Paris in deconstruction and now you're filming it in construction...
That was one of the starting points for writing the script. Baudelaire's phrase in reaction to Haussmann's construction madness: "The shape of a city changes more quickly, alas! than the human heart".
Old Paris is no more (the form of a city
Changes more quickly, alas! than the human heart);
[...]
Paris changes! But naught in my melancholy
Has stirred! New palaces, scaffolding, blocks of stone,
Old quarters, all become for me an allegory,
And my dear memories are heavier than rocks.
Le Cygne. Les Fleurs du Mal, 1861.
[The Swan, The Flowers of Evil]
When I made WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY, I was filming the renovation of the Bastille quarter, but it wasn't through nostalgia that I was filming the destruction of "Old Paris". And it wasn't as an attempt to denounce or advertise a new and more modern, bourgeois and trendy Paris either. I was simply trying to show that it wasn't necessarily one against the other but that the two coexist, and it's that same juxtaposition that makes it such a rich city. As Fabrice Luchini's character in the film, Roland Verneuil, says: "An ancient city does not define itself through the way it contrasts its vestiges and its modernity."
Paris today is neither the Louvre, nor the Quai Branly museum; it's the association of the two. I love that association, the fact that Paris is a link between its history and an avant-garde. Today, the Marais district is a blend of classical architecture from the 17th century, a gay neighborhood, a Jewish neighborhood, a bit of a Chinese neighborhood and a fashion center with prestigious designers'
boutiques. Its identity is linked to these successive strata. Whether it's in conflict or marriage, there are juxtapositions that engender vitality. And it's that interweaving of eras and community that is the fabric of Paris.
How would you sum up the film, PARIS?
It's the story of a Parisian man who is sick and wonders if he's going to die. His condition makes him look at all the people he meets in a new and different way. Imagining death gives meaning to his life, to other peoples' lives and to the life of the whole city. Just like a metro map, Paris is a network of interconnections. To be able to create a portrait of Paris, you have to go in all directions - it mustn't be linear. You have to respect the complexity of the city. And it's also that fragmented shape that brings out the proliferation and the lively side of Paris.
Tell us about the characters who come together in PARIS...
There are many different people, worlds that don't interconnect and social classes that don't mingle, but there is also fraternity. Indeed, there is a lot about sibling relationships. There's the brother and sister - Juliette Binoche and Romain Duris - she's a social worker who deals with collective problems, he's a dancer looking after his body. There are the two sisters in the 16th arrondissement - Audrey Marnay and Annelise Hesme - who work in fashion and have a carefree and easy life in Paris. Then there are the two Verneuil brothers - Fabrice Luchini and François Cluzet - one of whom, Philippe (Cluzet), is an architect and is building the Denis Diderot Biology Faculty in the new development on the Left Bank, and the other, Roland (Luchini), is a historian specializing in Paris.
There are other groups of people who are more or less close like the market traders who go between Rungis and Ménilmontant played by Albert Dupontel, Zinedine Soualem, Julie Ferrier, Gilles Lellouche and Emmanuel Quattra. There are also more solitary characters like the woman who runs the bakery played by Karin Viard, who is desperately trying to find a young employee, Benoît who's from Cameroon and who has crossed Africa en route for Paris, and Laetitia, the young student. I'm trying to show how there is always complicity in a place where there's only contrast and segregation. Despite the solitude, there is still solidarity, or simply paths that cross. A film often tells the story of one single journey, but here, we follow many individuals and thus many paths. In this film, the individual journeys create collective emotions. And through the film editing, one person's problems feed those of another. Indeed, that's been the complexity of this film since writing began: how to make a story from all of those fragmented tales.
Having Fabrice Luchini and Karin Viard in PARIS is a reminder of your first feature, LITTLE NOTHINGS, another film where many characters' paths cross...
There are reminders of all my previous films in PARIS. I wanted to make it a reference to the things I've already examined in the past. It's true that having Fabrice Luchini and Karin Viard makes you think of LITTLE NOTHINGS, but there are more than ten characters, all of whom are narrators. Funnily enough, after making LITTLE NOTHINGS, I told myself I'd never do it again because it was so difficult, but I guess I couldn't help myself!
In PARIS there are also many actors with whom you've never worked before, like Juliette Binoche, François Cluzet, Mélanie Laurent, Gilles Lellouche and Albert Dupontel, who are well-known actors too. That's unusual for your films...
In my films there have always been the same faces coming back, like Zinedine Soualem, Romain Duris and Vincent Elbaz, as well as lots of new actors. I like discovering new faces with each film. In PARIS, it was clear to me that I had to show diversity, so there are a lot of actors and yes, it's true, many well-known ones. When I decided to call my film PARIS, I was aware that I had to make something that resembled the city - that is to say something that alternates between the ordinary and the monumental. Crossing the Seine
or going past the Eiffel Tower are always special moments for Parisians. They may be clichéd but they are also daily elements of our landscape and can never be completely ordinary. I had to not stop myself from showing those things too.
And it's the same thing for the actors. They had to be anonymous people who are monuments of cinema. Working with actors like Romain Duris, Juliette Binoche, Fabrice Luchini, Albert Dupontel, François Cluzet, Julie Ferrier, Gilles Lellouche, Mélanie Laurent and Zinedine Soualem was anything but ordinary - it was something exceptional, something awe-inspiring.
This is your sixth film out of nine with Romain Duris, who has a role that is resolutely different to that of L'AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE and RUSSIAN DOLLS...
It's clearly an attempt to get away from Xavier! Romain and I needed to do that, just to prove to ourselves that we could still make movies together without mentioning him. Now, it's difficult for me to work without Romain. And the same applies to Zinedine Soualem. In making PARIS, we weren't looking for continuation like we were with RUSSIAN DOLLS; we were heading in a different direction. But that wasn't too difficult because Romain has learned a lot of things moving from universe to universe with other directors.
However, we did find it bizarre not having the same rapport as usual on the shoot. With L'AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE and RUSSIAN DOLLS, we were relaxed, whereas here, it was more stressed. Stressed in the sense that we had to create something more serious: Romain's character is gravely ill so we couldn't spend our time joking together on the set. That made us uncomfortable. Like it was out of respect for Pierre and his suffering.
In one flashback, we see Romain Duris as a dancer at the Moulin Rouge. Did he surprise you?
I still can't get over it. I may have made six films with him, but he surprises me every time! It was strange. That day was a sort of crowning moment in the film, especially as it was Romain's last day of shooting, so it wasn't exactly an everyday moment.
Seeing him dancing like that was disturbing because he stepped into the universe, the costume, the character and the choreography with such ease. He had both that slightly pathetic dancer's thing of trying to pick up jobs here and there, and at the same time, that classy thing that a Moulin Rouge dancer has. I liked the way he managed to embody these two aspects. When you make a film about Paris in which you talk about the Moulin Rouge and one of the main characters is a dancer there, you have to accept it.
It's not even a cliché anymore at that level - it's a caricature of the symbol of the icon. And if that works in the film, and if it doesn't come across as overblown or coarse, it's simply down to Romain's grace.
Your shoots have a reputation of being great fun. Was that the case with PARIS?
It was certainly a funny old shoot. I was very happy. It was a pleasure for me. A pleasure that is intimately linked to work and therefore to a lot of effort and tiredness. I have never had such a solid team. We were all happy to see each other every morning. Well I was, anyway. There was a really happy thing going on, and at the same time, it wasn't just a party because there was just too much work, too much concentration and too much seriousness. In the end, that mixture of seriousness and pleasure was pretty good.
Cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne and I have a very close relationship. We're both conscious of the fact we have a job to do, but at the same time, we both feel like children, capable of reassessing everything we've learned to do. There is a kind of discrepancy between our professional maturity and our immaturity on set. We were pretty keen to not take ourselves too seriously.
You met Juliette Binoche when you were working as an electrician on Léos Carax' BAD BLOOD. Now she's starring in PARIS and you're a recognized filmmaker. Do you think about how far you've come?
I try not to think too much about that. Let's say that to feel yourself rising up through the ranks only gives you vertigo and that's not the kind of vertigo I'm looking for. I like doing things unawares. I prefer being unaware to having vertigo.
That's not easy for someone who likes observing his characters from above...
That's true. When I was 25 and an electrician, I could only dream about it. I used to hope that one day, I would be able to make films. And now, I'm not just doing it, but I'm doing it with incredible people, and I'm fully aware of that. But what I like now, is not so much having the status of a recognized director, but more being able to enjoy the intense pleasure of doing this job and working. Making a film with Karin Viard, Fabrice Luchini, Juliette Binoche and Romain Duris is an incredible privilege. There are few drugs as good as that, and what's more, it's legal!
What is your favorite area of Paris?
I hope there isn't one. That's what's great about Paris -it's a place where you can get lost. I love that about it. There are so many areas and it's never ending. But I do have a thing about the quayside along the Seine and the Île Saint-Louis. During important moments in my life, I often find myself walking around there, and at the end of a shoot, I need to go there. To feel the heart of the city perhaps.
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