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How did you discover Moravia’s novel?
- Laurence Ferreira Barbosa, who was working on the casting of BAR DES RAILS, suggested Moravia’s book to me, as she found it had points in common with my film.
I imagine she meant in the relationship between a mute adolescent boy and an adult woman.
I was fascinated, drawn in by the novel. I devoured it like a thriller. But I hadn’t thought of making
an adaptation of it all. The book hounded me: each time I started to write a story, I realised it always revolved around a female character driving a man crazy with dependence. So I told myself, it really was this story that I wished to tell. But the real reasons always remain obscure. In fact, I am like Martin with Cecilia. I made the film to know why I had to make it. I started the adaptation work alone; then I asked Laurence Ferreira Barbosa to help me, naturally. I had already collaborated with her on the 'GENS NORMAUX N’ONT RIEN D’EXCEPTIONNEL' script.
I knew we got on well and I needed a female point of view. The book is very monomaniac, concentrated. I wanted to add a female character, that of Martin’s ex-wife, to re-balance things.
Why did you have this desire to re-balance the points of view?
- I was afraid to fall, despite myself, into a certain misogyny, which isn’t even in the novel, unless one reads it at a very basic level: the woman reduced to the state of the object, gaping hole in which one loses oneself.
When Martin starts saying of Cecilia: 'Her vagina is more expressive than her mouth', you laugh at him, not her... You see immediately that she is more interesting than he says. In fact, the audience is often one step ahead of Martin. We understand very quickly that Cecilia dominates him, despite her apparent submission... Basically, maybe the film is even feminist!
What did you like in the story?
- Everybody can identify with this story, even without having actually met a girl like Cecilia... We always start with this mistake in love: thinking that the other is like oneself.
We all break our nose against this. Possession will exist in a relationship as long as we have sexual relations. This makes the subject timeless, universal.
With Moravia, it is the difficulty to grasp reality, to really relate to the world, which gives rise to the feeling of boredom. Do you think this theme particularly relevant today?
- When Moravia wrote the novel, he explained that boredom was the ‘privilege’ of the rich.
I think boredom has become more democratic today! People have problems finding work, occupations and ideals. We are in an era where boredom hits all levels of society.
Everybody knows the feelings of idleness and the anxiety of not finding a point to one’s
life, being aimless. That’s why we brought Martin’s character forward in relation to the
novel, to make him socially more 'normal'.
Cecilia is outside all intellectualisation of life...
- Yes, she has something archaic, nearly prehistoric with this way she has of making love like an animal throwing itself on its food. She is a woman without morals, without notion of good and evil, without a point of view on her existence. She is ageless, timeless.
She is the one who gives back to Martin his taste for life...
- In cinema, you find many 'femmes fatales' who destroy men.
Cecilia is the opposite: she isn’t fatal. Martin is already destroyed when she meets him.
The novel’s originality lies in turning round the clichés. Normally a character is mysterious at the beginning and unveils itself as the story unfolds. Cecilia’s mystery, on the contrary, deepens.
All is paradoxical. He wants to possess her but he is the one possessed.
How did you meet Sophie Guillemin?
- In the novel Cecilia is very young - 17 years old - but I finally decided to look among older girls, given the difficulty of the acting scenes. I was then faced with another problem - the 18 - 20 year old girls I saw were far too mature, too confident. And I had ready-made ideas: I was looking for a Lolita a man could chase.
The miracle was to stumble across Sophie. You don’t look for a girl like her, simply because you cannot imagine her. You cannot see her in magazines or in films. You stumble across her. I think this meeting was very lucky for the film. You cannot reduce her to one thing: she is both childlike and very womanly, round and fine. Her stature and her earthy side stop her character from falling into abstraction. She really embodies reality. She resembles the models of painters at the beginning of this century and I think that the next century is waiting for girls like these...
Cecilia retains a real opaqueness throughout the film...
- Sophie Guillemin shows a lot of cheekiness, of intelligence in her eyes, while using her voice with real innocence, candidly, and also with neutrality. Too conscious of herself she would have become a Machiavellian character. She needed to be neither seductive nor manipulative. Otherwise the dialogues would have taken on a whole other meaning. Sophie Guillemin has a great strength of character, which shows in the film. She always manages to re-establish the balance between the two characters.
What convinced you that Charles Berling was made for the part?
- I wanted someone double, capable of playing an intellectual, of having a certain irony, and at the same time something more physical. I discovered Charles in LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN at the theatre. He was playing Jean-Pierre Léaud’s role and already had this madness with words and
thoughts going round in circles. But it’s mainly while observing him in everyday life that I was convinced he could play the part. He is very lively, very extrovert and at the same time rather secretive and modest.
And choosing Arielle Dombasle?
- She seemed in perfect opposition to Sophie Guillemin. They are like the two faces of the world:
nature versus culture. Arielle seemed very close to the character. She is a woman of the world
but at the same time, she is full of originality. I was keen to get this eccentricity. I used as a reference these female characters in Woody Allen films, these brainy, rather highly-strung New Yorkers.
Why did you make her wear glasses and a black wig?
- I cannot justify it, really. But it’s as if I wanted something of her character, while refusing some-
thing of her image.
Did you direct your actors a lot?
- No, but I often asked them to go faster. The only one to retain her 'orientalist' rhythm is Cecilia.
Her impassivity is a counterpoint not only to the neurotic rhythm of the other characters, but also
to the rhythm I wanted to give the mise-en-scene. Martin always pesters her vigorously and Cecilia answers him calmly. He embraces her with words. I had been struck, while reading the novel, to what extent the rhythm of the dialogues followed the jerky rhythm of the sexual act.
Were the love scenes difficult to shoot?
- From the beginning, I had warned Charles Berling and Sophie Guillemin of the importance of
scenes, and they took on their roles without fail. Sophie is very free with her body.
She doesn’t try to hide herself. I never had the impression I was manipulating her or making her
do things against her will. She knew exactly what she was doing and why she was doing it.
One day, when I told her, slightly embarrassed, that we were going to shoot yet another love scene, Sophie answered, 'Well, after all it is more fun than saying lines!' Finally I think I was the one who was most ill at ease during those scenes!
The humorous tone, obvious in your film, seemed less present in Moravia’s novel...
- Personally, I find the novel very funny and Cecilia’s lines often hilarious. Having pruned the novel, perhaps its deep irony resurfaced. Moravia said himself that he would have liked to write comedies. It’s true that the people who read the script saw a much darker story. But the film rediscovered this humour through Cecilia’s detached point of view.
I realised this clearly while editing: many scenes ended on one of Cecilia’s terrible retorts. Personally, this made me laugh a lot. But Yann Dedet - the editor- was horrified by this evil spitefulness. He ended up saying to me, 'You actually agree with her!'
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