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| Melvil Poupaud with Anne-Katrin Titze on Arnaud Desplechin: “For me he is one of the best metteurs en scène that I’ve worked with because of where he puts the camera, the choice of the lens, everything means something.” |
In the second instalment with Melvil Poupaud on Arnaud Desplechin’s Brother And Sister (Frère Et Sœur, a Rendez-Vous with French Cinema highlight in New York, which had its world premiere at the 75th Cannes Film Festival), screenplay with Julie Peyr (Deception, Ismael's Ghosts, My Golden Days, Jimmy P: Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian) we discuss inspiration from Forest Whitaker in Clint Eastwood’s Bird and Jack Nicholson In Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces, Grégoire Hetzel’s score (Louis Garrel's The Innocent, also in Rendez-Vous with French Cinema), a very particular smile shared by him and Marion Cotillard, a cowboy movie showdown in the supermarket, contradictions, and hungry ghosts.
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| Melvil Poupaud on Arnaud Desplechin: “He doesn’t want to be realistic or naturalistic. ” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
Magnetic Melvil Poupaud opens on Tuesday, March 7 with a screening of Carine Tardieu’s The Young Lovers (Les Jeunes Amants) at 7:30pm followed by a Q&A with Melvil inside Florence Gould Hall of the French Institute Alliance Française CinéSalon in New York with the support of Unifrance and in partnership with Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.
From Paris, Melvil Poupaud joined me on Zoom for an in-depth conversation on Brother and Sister, Arnaud Desplechin, and more.
Anne-Katrin Titze: Were there any movies you were discussing with Arnaud before the shoot?
Melvil Poupaud: Yeah, before he told me a lot about Bird by Clint Eastwood, especially for the state of the character played by Forest Whitaker, who is a junkie and the relationship he has with the girlfriend in the movie. The way they talk to each other on the phone, the pain they share. They cry, they are very close and they share a lot of drama and traumas, always trying to bring each other into a nicer place.
AKT: The phone conversation you have at one point with Faunia is so needed. You are in the parents’ apartment and the fire is burning and it is a very soothing moment. Of course Grégoire Hetzel’s music at this point allows us to exhale!
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| Faunia Vuillard (Golshifteh Farahani) embraces her husband Louis (Melvil Poupaud) |
MP: It is pretty much inspired by this Bird movie, this Clint Eastwood movie. And on my side I talked to him about Five Easy Pieces, Bob Rafelson’s movie with Jack Nicholson, because it’s also a man who escaped from his family, he did his life, shitty life, for a while at some other place and he has to go back to his family because his father had a stroke. So it’s this family drama for him coming back and dealing with all those issues, bringing back ghosts.
AKT: Yes, ghosts. Again ghosts. I just spoke with Mia all about this. Ghosts were everywhere because the ghosts are everywhere. I noticed something very interesting - a similarity between your smile and Marion Cotillard’s smile in Brother And Sister. A particular smile that comes with the hatred scenes. And your smile is never that smile in any other film. It’s as if the family relation is shown in your respective smiles. Did you work on the smiles with Arnaud?
MP: No! I like to get inspired by directors themselves. Especially when I feel that they’re writing something very personal, like auto portraits sometimes. And for this case I felt that I could get a lot from Arnaud’s way of talking, also his way of smiling and the fact that sometimes you feel like he’s smiling and laughing while he is saying something very nasty or very dramatic or very terrible, you know?
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| Louis (Melvil Poupaud) with his little brother Fidèle (Benjamin Siksou) |
That’s part of Arnaud’s way to direct actors. It’s like to play at one level but the under-meaning says something else. And the mise en scène says also something else. So all those layers of information that are part of real life - it’s much more complicated than those movies that are trying to reduce complexity to an understandable level. But with Arnaud it’s not like that. He likes contradiction, he likes to give a lot of information and likes to mix things up until the reality of the scene comes in. And for those smiles - I guess it’s through Arnaud’s influence that we became part of him and some of his character.
But the funny thing with Marion is that she didn’t want to talk to me during shooting. I knew Marion for a long time and I thought we were pretty good friends but during the shoot she wouldn’t talk to me. In the morning not saying hello. At one point I was a bit disturbed, I told Arnaud; “Is she okay with me? Is there any problem?” Finally towards the end of the shoot Marion came to me and told me “Melvil, I love you, you’re my friend, but during the shooting I couldn’t be close to you. I had to keep this anger.”
And this own movie she had in mind about the relationship between the brother and the sister, which was helpful to me. Because during the scenes we had together - only a few scenes in the movie - I was looking at her and I felt she had so many things going through her mind. She was loaded with so many energies and anger but also love and passion, it was easy for me just looking at her or exchanging smiles to connect with all the world she had in her mind.
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| Alice (Marion Cotillard) with her husband André Borkman (Francis Leplay) |
AKT: That makes sense. One scene in particular is an emotional roller coaster. I am referring to the scene with the father in the hospital when you are shaving him. There is a line of dialogue “You will die,” then comes the poisonous smile, and at the next moment you explode. That explosion is something I know very well. There exist moments when somebody triggers you and there is no stopping. Did you shoot that in one go?
MP: Pretty much, yeah. Arnaud likes to. For me he is one of the best metteurs en scène that I’ve worked with because of where he puts the camera, the choice of the lens, everything means something. We do it many times from different angles. I guess my character in this film is about to explode. He’s been remote for a while with his wife, outside the world in a way. He is loaded and when he comes back it’s almost like a cowboy movie when he comes back to the city.
AKT: On horseback!
MP: Exactly, on horseback! Its about the confrontation that’s about to happen. It has to happen. He has to face his enemy, or his sister, his love, or whatever she is. That’s what Arnaud said about me, he said I had an appointment with me during that movie for this part. And hopefully I was on time for this appointment.
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| Melvil Poupaud on Marion Cotillard: “It was easy for me just looking at her or exchanging smiles to connect with all the world she had in her mind.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
But both me and my character, and Arnaud, we had to empty our bags and to let things go. And this character is like this; he’s just waiting for the moment when it’s going to blow, when those things are going to be talked over and finally settled. It’s a good energy finally. It’s not like the anger that keeps you in your mind, ruminating. It’s the energy that wants things to happen, even if it’s a drama, if it’s a fight, but then we can get over it and come back with our lives.
AKT: Yes, in the end something is overcome. Not all the details are explained, but you don’t have to in life.
MP: Exactly.
AKT: Which is one of the messages I took from the film.
MP: And in life it’s like this. For instance, I was talking about this gunfight between me and my sister, Marion. Usually in a cowboy movie you would have them on Main Street in a city. Here it happens in a supermarket at night, while she is grabbing some things to eat and I’m wandering around and we crash into each other. But it’s deceptive and we have nothing to say and it’s all this anger, this drama that we have been talking about for hours and years, finally it’s as simple as that. You bump into someone.
AKT: In a supermarket, brought there by Cosmina Stratan [that is, her character Lucia] because of her ghostliness somehow. The hungry ghost manoeuvring everything. The fantasy aspect is always there. Arnaud doesn’t shy away from that. As in - you fly over Roubaix! It’s wonderful.
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| Frère Et Sœur poster |
MP: It’s what I like about Arnaud, he allows himself to go in many directions and to be able to quote many different styles and to travel through cinema and references, still being stylish and very Deplechinesque. He doesn’t want to be realistic or naturalistic. He likes too much cinema and he has too many loves for, I don’t know, Fellini or different kinds of directors. If you know how to master those references you are having a dialogue with your ancestors and your predecessors. You have to be a very good director to be able to do this and not be like the fan, or the guy who knows cinema, or just a cinephile making movies.
AKT: I am thinking now of your childhood experiences that we talked about in 2016 with Jacques Lacan and your mother. Lacan said that ghosts are from the realm of the Real, not the Imaginary or the Symbolic. I think that’s what Arnaud gets right.
Read what Melvil Poupaud had to say on Mathieu Amalric in Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale and Kings And Queen, Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning, a touch of François Ozon’s By The Grace Of God, James Joyce’s The Dead, Eric Rohmer’s A Summer’s Tale, and Woody Allen’s Coup De Chance with Lou de Laâge, Niels Schneider, and Valérie Lemercier.
Brother and Sister screens on Sunday, March 5 at 3:30pm, followed by a Q&A with Melvil Poupaud and on Tuesday, March 7 at 6:00pm at the Walter Reade Theater.
One Fine Morning is currently in cinemas in the US.
Unifrance and Film at Lincoln Center’s 28th edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York, organised by Florence Almozini and Madeline Whittle, in collaboration with Unifrance, runs from Thursday, March 2 through Sunday, March 12. Rendez-Vous with French Cinema is sponsored by Villa Albertine, TV5 Monde, Maison Occitanie, FI:AF, and Benefit Cosmetics.
Magnetic Melvil Poupaud inside Florence Gould Hall of the French Institute Alliance Française CinéSalon in New York opens on Tuesday, March 7 and runs through April 25.
