The main dish

Millie (Sophie Desmarais) with Hélène (Irène Jacob) and Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré) in Philippe Lesage’s Who By Fire (Comme Le Feu) starting to move to Rock Lobster by the B-52s: “The use of music is very important in my films …”

Philippe Lesage’s striking Who By Fire (Comme Le Feu, 74th Berlin International Film Festival Grand Prize-winner of the Generation 14plus Jury and a highlight of the 62nd New York Film Festival), shot by Balthazar Lab has in its center a four minute dance scene to Rock Lobster by the B-52s that turns into a conga line. Beautifully choreographed, it unfolds as a well-deserved moment of relaxation for all present at the long intense weekend in the Canadian wilderness, albeit in a comfortable lodge owned by Oscar-winning filmmaker Blake, played mischievously by Arieh Worthalter (who starred opposite Vicky Krieps in Mathieu Amalric’s Hold Me Tight).

Philippe Lesage with Anne-Katrin Titze and Ed Bahlman holding up the B-52s original Rock Lobster/52-Girls record (1978)

We enter the story by car, in the company of Blake’s former collaborator Albert (Paul Ahmarani), his two teenage children Aliocha (Aurelia Arandi-Longpre) and Max (Antoine Marchand-Gagnon), and their friend Jeff (Noah Parker) who harbors aspirations to become a director himself. During the ride, we can already get a glimpse of the dynamics, which are heightened when their host picks them up in his seaplane for the next leg of the journey.

Blake’s editor Millie (Sophie Desmarais), his chef Ferran (Guillaume Laurin) plus his hunting and fishing master Barney (Carlo Harrietha) are already there and will soon be joined by arrivals from France, his friends Hélène (Irène Jacob) and her husband Eddy (Laurent Lucas). A dog named Ingmar and some rabbits who won’t survive much longer round out the ensemble. Long shots of long dinners, elegantly and revealingly staged, shuffle the dynamics and bring into fresh focus what we thought we knew.

“Young Spielberg” becomes Jeff’s nickname as he observes a strange new world of wine obsessions, mean tricks, and deadly serious fun and games. The forest, the lake and cliffs, and especially a raging river that the group canoes are the porous backdrop to man-made frictions mainly emerging from rituals of masculinity and vanity.

From New York, before his New York Film Festival premiere, Philippe Lesage joined me on Zoom for an in-depth conversation on Who By Fire.

Philippe Lesage: Hi. Nice to meet you.

Philippe Lesage on Rock Lobster by the B-52s: “Because there's a lot of tension during those dinners I wanted to have this kind of dancing scene …”

Anne-Katrin Titze: Hello! Hi! I would like to first congratulate you on the most fantastic conga line since Ball Of Fire, directed by Howard Hawks. Do you know that scene or the film with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck and the professors?

PL: No!

AKT: I just now noticed that it is also a film with fire in the title! Anyway, your Rock Lobster sequence is great. Tell me a little bit about this scene you placed in the middle!

PL: Thank you! The use of music is very important in my films in general. It starts very early in the process. When I'm starting to write a new film, I'm doing those playlists. And there's nothing more beautiful to me than imagining a scene with a certain kind of music. You're writing, and then, I don't know, two or three years, or depending on the financing, four years later, you're in the editing suite. And then you're realising that this is actually working what you've been imagining, with that music with that scene, that's one of the greatest joys in my work.

I'm writing a musical. Maybe it's not a typical kind of musical. I think that the film is both drama, but it has also a lot of comical aspects to it because, of course, it's a satire in many ways. To make people dance, to make people sing is something that I've been doing a lot in my previous films as well. So I wanted to really add this in the middle of the film. Because there's a lot of tension during those dinners I wanted to have this kind of dancing scene, where the characters are actually dancing for real and having a good time.

Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré) is the one who puts on Rock Lobster from the B-52s first album

AKT: They're dancing off the heaviness of the dinner!

PL: Exactly. Exactly! It's a relief. It's a kind of catharsis. There's a lot of people dancing in films, of course it's not the first time. I saw recently again The Big Chill with this beautiful dancing moment. But it lasts only for 30 seconds, I think. You know it goes very fast.

AKT: Yours is four minutes!

PL: Yeah, so I decided to put the entire song. I really wanted to make it a kind of a moment of cinema, a moment that we would remember, and that I would be excited to shoot, and excited to see as a viewer.

AKT: The character of Millie is dressed for that scene to resemble Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face [dancing for Fred Astaire in the cavernous Paris nightclub]?

PL: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Sophia has something of Audrey Hepburn here. And the way she moves, which is very classy.

AKT: Rock Lobster for me, has some personal connections. I was on a film festival jury with Fred Schneider [of the B-52s, plus Christine Vachon and Gay Talese].

Christine Vachon (Killer Films) with fellow jurors Fred Schneider (of the B-52s) and Anne-Katrin Titze at the Players Club in 2013 Photo: Ed Bahlman

PL: Wow!

AKT: My partner, music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman told me that his shop 99 [at 99 MacDougal Street] was the first place where people could hear Rock Lobster in New York.

PL: Oh wow!

AKT: He's here to quickly say hello!

PL: Hi!

Ed Bahlman: Philippe, it blew my mind! You let it go, you didn't cut it short, perfect! From the living room to outside the house to back in - it can't be better than that.

PL: Thank you very much. Thank you.

EB: This is the original single [Rock Lobster] from the B-52s [Ed holds it up and then excuses himself].

PL: Fantastic!

AKT: Beyond Rock Lobster, your film made me think of the questions: Who gets attention and who deserves attention? In the interaction between the generations, I thought it was wonderful how you placed the people in the dinner scenes. The fact that they're static most of the time allows for us to distribute our attention and to look at how everybody is reacting to everyone else. These are fantastic dinner scenes!

Professors trying to figure the steps to the conga line in Ball Of Fire, directed by Howard Hawks

PL: Well, I thought I was going to have to edit the dinner scenes and I was kind of so so. But then we were on the shooting set and we had two days to shoot every dinner. That's good time. So we have two days for one scene, and basically we had three dinner scenes. I think it was five or six days in total for those scenes. We also shot those scenes where it's kind of, you know, the main dish. They are very important scenes. And the film is completely written around those scenes.

We were at the end of the shooting. It was like the last day, the last week of shooting when we started to do those things, because I wanted the actors to be completely immersed in their characters. That's why it was important for me that we shoot those scenes at the end where everything starts to go very smoothly. We isolated for three months in the woods, so we were also like a very united team and it was beautiful shooting. I already started to do long shots for almost every scene.

There's very few cuts in the film. The camera is moving sometimes, but it's really long. Those are long shots. I was thinking that it's going to be a bit weird that I suddenly in those dinner scenes start to cut and to have the reverse shots and so on. So we made this beautiful composition, and I chose carefully who was going to be seated where. We started with the first dinner scene. Of course it was shot in chronology and then I realised that it was working so well.

AKT: Yes, it does work really well for the audience.

Jeff (Noah Parker) waving to Blake (Arieh Worthalter) arriving on the seaplane

PL: And then I could redo the takes many times. I had time. To a point where, you know it gets better. But at some point it starts also to get worse, because people are starting to be tired. I then chose the take that I prefer. But those are my magical takes because they're almost ten minutes, sometimes, those things, and everybody needs to be completely in tune, and there's no place for a false note.

I think that the whole strategy to have everybody in the frame keeps everybody kind of very awake. Because everybody knows they are in the shot all the time. So they need to be in character. When you do a shot reverse shot, I think that sometimes the actor that has the camera not on them, they lose a bit the energy. And there was no way people could lose energy because they were always in the frame.

AKT: It's extremely intense, and the intensity comes partitioned. You have the young people in the back, and then you have these two men fighting their cockfight in the middle, and next come the ones who are more or less the servants. If this were Chekhov, they would be the servants who get to sit at the table as well. You develop these dynamics in the last dinner where nobody wants to sit next to Albert, because he's already so drunk.

Jeff (Noah Parker) with Blake (Arieh Worthalter)

It's amusing in its horribleness. There's something about this whole time that I think many people can identify from gatherings in childhood - children watching adults behave in these ways that you just don't really fully comprehend, and that you don't want to see. The idols are crumbling in front of your eyes. And that's throughout the film happening, more and more and more. You see they are already old enough, the teenagers, to know this. They know it and have a bit of distance. But it's funny that we, or at least I, as an audience member felt that I was even younger than they, watching the adults tumble.

PL: Yeah, yeah, I really wanted to have that. My previous films they were really about childhood, and then teenage-hood. My goal was to have this impression that we are living at their level. It's not like I’m looking down on those people. It was extremely close to my own personal stories, those two first films. And the demons and genesis for this one, it was very important for me to have still the perception of a young person and look at the adults in that perspective. In the script everything was seen through the eyes of Jeff at the beginning.

Philippe Lesage on Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré): “For me she represents the future in a way”

And then also, there's a little switch there, because you become more and more as the film is unfolding, you come more and more on the side of the perception of Aliocha. And then she has the last word.

AKT: With Emily Dickinson!

PL: Yeah, exactly. So I really wanted to give her the last word, because for me, she's kind of the hope of the film, and she's the one also who refuses to be objectified. She represented this kind of very creative mind. I'm hopeful also that Jeff will learn his lessons, because he's young and sometimes behaving a bit stupidly. But he also has a really harsh time, and I think Blake is really playing with his mind and he gets under his skin in a very negative way. I'm hopeful for him as well, but even more for Aliocha because for me she represents the future in a way.

AKT: She's the one who changes the whole night by looking through the record collection. Great choice of the Emily Dickinson poem: They Shut Me Up In Prose. I want to also talk a bit about your names. She, obviously, is Aliocha from Dostoyevsky, named by her father. Another name stands out, the filmmaker’s dog Ingmar. Wild guess who he's named after.

PL: Yeah, yeah, of course.

Albert (Paul Ahmarani) with Jeff (Noah Parker) in the woods

AKT: There’s Blake, also not by coincidence. William Blake? His last name is Cadieux. Are you playing with his godliness or with the fact that his times are over and now it's “Little Spielberg’s” time?

PL: Yeah, Blake is probably coming from black as a name as well. It was a very masculine name, so I was imagining this in that character. When I say black, there's a darkness to it as well. He's talking about his Acadian roots at some point, casually. So I was imagining that his dad was probably coming from Louisiana, or something like that because obviously he has an English name. In my backup story I was thinking that because also he has a different accent than the other actors. Well, they are French Canadian, and he speaks more like the French.

AKT: Arieh Worthalter is wonderful in this performance.

PL: Exactly! For me he had probably a European mother as well. We have a lot of Europeans from Belgium or France, that are friends, they came to Montreal to study, and they stayed for the rest of their life. Cadieux is a very common Quebec name. But sometimes I find a name, and then I can find a meaning after because I think that the name pops up in my mind maybe for all those reasons, but unconsciously.

Blake (Arieh Worthalter) on the river

And then you are talking about the name. And I'm saying, Oh, that's interesting! Because, to be honest, I didn't think about God in his last name. There's always a story behind their names. Of course there's a little wink that I'm doing, it's the little funny joke that he's calling his dog after Bergman. He shares, you know, similarities also with Bergman, because obviously he lives isolated. The environment.

When I was on his island he's talking about this last wife, that he had lost. It seems that there's no more wife and no more women in his life, and that's also the feeling I got from the last years of Bergman. He found this big love of his life late in his life, and then she died of cancer and he didn't remarry.

And the name of the Albert character is also related because there's a documentary from the Eighties, called The Shimmering Beast, which is an amazing film by Pierre Perrault and it's about two friends who are meeting again also on a hunting trip. So there's an homage to that film, especially the rabbit scene where they're skinning the rabbits. It's a total quotation, the situation. The main character in that documentary is called Stefan Albert, and I found that Albert is kind of an old fashioned name, and for me it evokes something more clumsy.

Then Jeff is named after my brother, who inspired that story. Because my brother, he was invited when he was 13 years, 14 years old, so a bit younger than the character of Jeff, to spend a couple of days at the hunting and fishing cabin of this great director. And that was my starting point. And then my imagination started to work. And then I created that story. That is, of course, very different.

Jeff (Noah Parker) on the river

AKT: You don't want to mention the director’s name?

PL: I don't want people to know because I don't want people to think that Blake is him. And also because the family of this director also helped with the film and stuff. And I really don't want to name him.

AKT: Did you pick your actors partly because of their outdoor prowess? Did you warn them: you have to be able to swim! You have to be really good on the water. This scene on the river is incredible!

PL: They took some kind of basics of the canoe lessons and they went in the river with guides. They had a weekend of practice.

AKT: Wow! That's not bad, it looks dangerous.

PL: It's funny you mention it, because the scenes that I kept in the film are actual accidents that happened during the shooting. They're really flipping.

AKT: It looks real.

Rock Lobster by the B-52s, collection Ed Bahlman Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

PL: They were so concentrated, and especially Arieh, he's an unbelievable actor. He was staying in character, even though they just had this little accident. And so the scene where he's taking out the canoe, which is absolutely, extremely difficult to do, because it's so heavy, he is able to take the canoe out of the river. That's the super Superman, that's fantastic. What you don't see is that there were all the security, you know, the water security guys, they were waiting. And I didn't say “cut.” So they were waiting, ready to jump in the water and to save him.

So I was just hoping that he would not do anything because he was completely in control. And then he just kept being in his character, and took the canoe out of the water. That was not planned. That was just an accident, but he understands that I'm still rolling, and it keeps giving me so much. I mean, who would do that seriously? The water was cold. I mean, it shows so much the dedication and strength, and generosity, as well.

AKT: It's good footage for sure. So none of that was planned by you before the accidents happened?

PL: Not really because I changed the edit. And I tried to work with stunts and I'm not used to that. And I was not satisfied with what we had to shoot. And there was this problem also, that with the stunts you need to cut a lot in order to have the cowboy switch. It was stupid that at the end of the film I start to cut like crazy if I never did that in the rest of the film. It would look very strange. No, I'm taking other risks. So I was very lucky enough to have those accidents.

Who By Fire poster - Film at Lincoln Center Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

AKT: The cinematography is impressive. Also for the scenes on top of the mountain with the two guys.

PL: Yeah, that's one of my favourite scenes, actually.

AKT: It felt almost like the Lorelei. The gun, the arrow, these masculine symbols are there, but at the same time it's the lure of the vastness of nature that they are so distant from, although they are in it.

PL: Yes and also a kind of moment where Jeff is starting to be on the edge of craziness. We understand why, of course, because Blake is suddenly some sort of rival. It's horrible when you want to trust the adults and you want them as mentor. And not only do they refuse to be mentors, but also they become sexual rivals. It's a lot to take. It's a lot to take for Jeff.

AKT: I want to tell you a reaction. After the New York Film Festival press screening last week I was on the line for the ladies room, and there was a big discussion going on between several of the ladies, asking: Who died, who died, who died? They were all wondering and discussing.

PL: I mean, he's not dead!

AKT: No, he's not dead, I know. I commented that nobody died, and they thanked me, relieved, I suppose.

PL: We hear him! Did you hear him breathe?

AKT: Yeah, I heard him breathing. Some of them did not hear him breathing. Just a little warning, you may get the question tonight, too.

PL: Let’s hope the sound is very loud tonight, so that we hear him breathing. In the first script he was dying, and then I shot the two versions. And then I said, I'm going to make up my mind in the editing suite. And this is what I did. There was a version where he was dying, and there was a version where she's actually doing the reanimation. And it works. This is more beautiful that she managed to without giving up, that she managed to reanimate him.

AKT: Right, there’s resurrection, there's a future, it's not the end. Thank you so much for this. I wish you the best for tonight!

PL: Thank you for the interview. And yes, maybe we'll speak when I do another film! Ciao bye-bye!

Who By Fire opens in Los Angeles on Friday, March 21 at the Laemmle Royal and is screening in New York through Thursday, March 27 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Lincoln Center.