Catching Up With... Arnaud Desplechin

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Paste: And the Charles Mingus song in the movie is “Reincarnation of a—”

Desplechin: “... of a Bird,” yeah.

Paste: So it fits.

Desplechin: Yeah. I think it was appropriate for the scene [laughs].

So each time it's a way to try to dig the meaning of the scene, you know. Plus the character who had this letter, which is so violent, so brutal. When Henri is writing to his sister, the lines are really brutal, and when we discussed that on the set with Mathieu, we knew that we wouldn't be brutal, that in a way it was much more interesting to act it like a sort of regret, you know, to focus on the very last lines, "little sister," the fact that he's sorry for his sister, you broke up your toys, you know, I'm really sorry, you want to fix them.

So, to be full of love instead of full of anger, you know? And so I thought Elizabeth would have such a bad time during the movie that to offer her a lullaby would be nice. So I tried the lullaby by Gerswhin, and I knew this wonderful French jazz player, and he added some improvs on the lullaby. So, not to be mean, not to be low with Elizabeth's character, it was a way to take care of her and her son.

So it's always things like that.

Paste: There's a moment in Vertigo. They're walking in the woods at one point, and there's nothing special going on, but because the music is really eerie, it gives it this sort of ghostlike quality. And in your film there are many scenes, like when the women are shopping, where the music is very tense, like there's something that's about to happen, something sinister. It isn't necessarily a sinister situation, but I like how the music can affect it in that way.

Desplechin: Yeah, it's funny because it's a scene where the two women try to impress the other one. OK you're gutsy, I will show you I'm gutsy. You're a bitch, I'm a bitch. Come on, look. There's something like that between the two girls. You're funny, I can be funnier.

Plus there is a real friendship, which just happens, and they don’t know what to do. Why are we friends?

But also Junon escapes. She escapes because she doesn't want the marrow transplant any longer, she doesn't want to risk anything, she's bored with sickness, she's bored with the fact that she will die, she's bored with the fact that she's getting old, you know. Next year I will have this leukemia, and it's the last dress I'm buying. You know, I just— I won't be a woman any longer, I'll just be a pitiful human being, shitting in my bed in the hospital.

So there is a sort of emergency pace in it, which is: it’s the last time I'm doing it. Because I'm getting too old, it's the last time that I can pretend that I'm light, so that's why I thought the music was not to cheat with the scene but to reveal a facet of the scene that is relevant.

Paste: You have a lot of fun with film grammar in the movie, too, with irises—an effect that mostly died out with silent films—and a series of slow dissolves that happen during some of the dialogue. It’s almost a sleepy quality. How do you decide when to use that and when not to?

Desplechin: During the shooting, mainly. Even the dissolves, I guess. For the iris, everything is done during the takes.

Paste: In the camera, while you're shooting [as opposed to adding it in post-production]?

Desplechin: Yeah, I don't remember the first time I used it, but I knew how because I used it when I was in cinema school.

And I loved when the first time that Scorsese worked with the French [cinematographer] from Cuba, Néstor Almendros. It was on this short feature film in New York Stories, and I remember so clearly the first time I saw the film in a theater, you know, Scorsese working with this director of photography I loved so much. And both of them together, you know. It was the story of this painter played by Nick Nolte.

And they used the iris because he was coming from France. And I knew because each time you are going to rent a camera, if you say, "By the way, could you give me an iris? And how much is it?" It's nothing. An iris is like that [holds thumb and index finger apart to show how small]. No one uses it. “Oh, you can have it for free.” It's nothing. You just— you put a bit of tape around the lens, voila, and everybody does their work, the traveling, the focus, the diaphe, and I can do like that [motions with his finger as if pulling a little lever around the lens] and it helps focus the attention without adding any pathos. It's not like a zoom, but all of a sudden attention is focused without telling a spectator what they're supposed to feel.

So let's say it's a tribute to Scorsese [laughs] when he was working with Almendros.