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Did you start out with the idea of making films about AIDS or was it a particular per-
son or event in your life that inspired you?
- Obviously, it’s a mix of both, but I wanted to make a historical film.
Why another film about the history of AIDS?
- Firstly, because there haven’t been very many, in France at least. And even in the U.S., it’s not
exactly become a separate genre like the “Vietnam movie”. And then because there are times in
history when an event shines a light on a society’s collective imagination. By paying very careful
attention to what people say, we’re able to hear what affects not only the individual, but also the
whole culture.
So, you return to the 1980s with people dying of AIDS?
- Yes, because I have a sense of having escaped my destiny and that’s what gave me the urge
to make this movie. Otherwise, it would have been a slightly abstract historical ambition.
It’s a movie defined by its period, but not a documentary...
- I deliberately turned my back on the documentary esthetic. I made it like an action movie. But it’s
an action movie based on considerable research and documentation.
Like some of your other films, such as 'J’embrasse pas', we once more have a
young man from south-west France coming up to Paris, a bit like you did...
- I find it strange, this constant preoccupation with linking a filmmaker to a character. Finding a
connection between somebody’s private life and fiction is a vision of the process that is tainted
by the current obsession with celebrities. When I create characters, I actually want to become
someone else or picture myself in someone else’s shoes.
Your male protagonists offer three different takes on homosexuality...
- That interpretation strikes me as very arbitrary because I wouldn’t describe the characters at
all like that. I can never accept that a character be reduced to his or her sexual orientation.
Withdrawing behind an identity is very dangerous in this particular instance. Everyone is a person
in their own right and is no more a variant of homosexuality than heterosexuality. What interests
me is that a character stands up and casts a shadow, and also that he should be in motion...
elusive, just like life.
But you realize that you subvert a number of taboos that have returned with a venge-
ance in present-day France? For example, Mehdi is a police officer of North African
origin, the father of a small child, a wage-earner who lives with a wealthy novelist...
- The aberrant situations and unlikely characters sketched by Fassbinder or Pasolini are infinitely
more subversive.
But less relevant to French audiences in 2007. In this case, Mehdi is Arab and bi-
sexual...
- In a dialogue about the baby, there is a brief allusion to circumcision. That’s all. Other than that,
for me, the character is that of a police lieutenant. I chose Sami Bouajilah for the part because
he’s a great actor. There’s no reason to confine actors of North African origin to characters that
reflect those origins, and I don’t think the film plays the card of the sociological survey. Especially
as North African police officers back then were not at all representative. There were not very
many of them. As for his bisexuality, I have no idea... Above all, I think it’s important to consider
these issues beyond the framework of the heterosexual vs. homosexual dynamic. I don’t know if,
for Mehdi, his affair with Manu is the first time or the last time. I don’t know if he’s been with other
guys or might do so in the future. Even I don’t know that. I don’t believe in the transparency of
human relationships, nor do I believe in the transparency of the filmmaker in relation to the char-
acters he portrays. I show them at a certain moment in their lives and that reveals certain aspects
but it’s the tip of the iceberg. The rest, even if we get glimpses of it, is left to the imagination of
each person in the audience.
Your vision of the couple formed by Mehdi and Sarah is disturbing in an age when the
couple is the cocoon, the gold standard... And here we have a woman whose res-
ponse, when her partner suggests that they should try fidelity, is to say, 'I love you
too much for that. I’d feel imprisoned, especially with a womanizer like you'.
- I had a model for them. I thought of a couple who gave each other a lot of space, who had a
kind of non-possessive, non-exclusive pact. But things aren’t always so rational within a couple.
After what happens between Mehdi and Manu, the lines are blurred. They shift. The way in
which Sarah imagines and recreates Mehdi’s affair, which excluded her, could be interpreted as
way of appropriating it and taking revenge. Mehdi thinks so and says as much, but I refuse to get
psychological. In the later part of the film, I feel that the affair with Manu makes the bond between
them unshakeable. I think it goes beyond whether they are driven apart or brought closer to-
gether. It’s both at different moments. It would be wrong to think that the pact of infidelity that the
couple agrees upon at the beginning of the film is impregnable. Their pact is only human and,
therefore, relative. It could be a way of protecting themselves.
In that sense, would you say the film examines a kind of freedom that was there historically from the 70s to the early 80s, before AIDS?
- Yes, those are what I call the “happy days”, which is the title of the first part of the film. Sexual
freedom enabled people to experiment with relationships in a harmonious way without shame and
without constant discussion. Sex and friendships could be experimented with, free of feelings of
guilt. We’re light years from Puritanism and pornography, which are two sides of the same coin.
Doesn’t the film highlight the fact that modern society has lost its nerve and fallen
back on traditional values?
- I don’t know. I’m not a theoretician. I make movies about what I feel is important. What is true of
this film, and every film, is that it questions right and wrong. And who decides what’s right and
what’s wrong today? Doctors and lawyers. I think that from the onset of the AIDS crisis, the med-
ical establishment capitulated on questions of morality, so that leaves only the law courts, and
their executive arm is the police. That’s perhaps why it seemed so obvious to have a doctor and
a police officer in this story.
Let’s talk about the female characters. They are both artists...
- It’s true that both women are involved in creative pursuits, but they have a radically different
approach. Emmanuelle Béart’s character, Sarah, writes children’s books and has started work
on her first novel, but she has writer’s block and isn’t sure she’ll ever finish it. She is at odds with
her artistic discipline and that confrontation takes up a lot of room in her life. Unlike her husband,
she is deeply perturbed by the arrival of their first child. She doesn’t know how to handle the
baby and that impacts on her sexuality and literary ambitions. When she sees how attentive Me-
hdi is with the child, she draws him to her and invites him to make love. Julie Depardieu’s char-
acter is an opera singer who doesn’t see her profession as an art form. For her, the voice is a
muscle and she has a sportswoman’s approach to her work. She also clearly states that she
isn’t cut out for relationships and starting a family. At the end, Julie says that there is nothing to
keep her in Paris. Her approach after Manu’s death is to try to live life for two. Maybe, when she
arrives in Munich, she’ll get lucky and meet someone. But I don’t know that. Being able to be alone
is a great adventure these days, a form of resistance to social pressure. It’s just as audacious
and important as forming a couple and I regret the negative connotations of the word 'solitude'.
In this story, I think that characters like Julie and Adrien know how to be alone and that it’s a
strength, an opening, and not sad at all.
Is it fair to say that you are wary of too much pathos?
- For me, I never make a conscious effort to reject the emotional dimension of a film, if that’s your
question. At the same time, I have no problem with shifting the emotion. For example, I prefer
people to be moved by Manu when he runs, climbs a tree or bursts out laughing, than when he’s
sick. In my eyes, that wouldn’t be emotion, it would be akin to taking the audience hostage and I
reject that. It’s an ethical position that’s fundamental to my work. But I don’t reject emotion. On the
contrary. I simply content myself with moving it around rather than placing it where it almost be-
comes predictable. On the other hand, I hope that audiences find Manu moving in the upbeat
scenes in the opening half of the film. 'It’s good times shared, not compassion in bad times, that
makes good friends'. I also think that, after Manu’s death, the aria his sister sings at the opera is a
moment of grieving. But singing has an innate vitality even if it is overshadowed by Manu’s ghost.
The following summer, Adrien takes a new friend on vacation with him. Why didn’t you end the film with Manu’s death?
- To quote Fritz Lang, 'Death is not an ending'. As Sarah’s mother says, 'It’s a miracle being alive'.
It’s this sense of a miracle that I wanted to conclude, and open, the film, and broaden the horizon
by revisiting spaces that Manu had inhabited and rediscovering them without him, with another
character traveling through. Perhaps loving Manu and bearing witness to his life makes the other
protagonists stronger.
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