At the occasion of the 6th April in his new film, The Future, led by Isabelle Huppert, Screenrush met Mia Hansen-Løve, basking in his won Silver Bear in Berlin for feature film as philosophical as dramatic.
Screenrush: How did the project The Future
Hansen-Løve Mia: I was looking for to finance my previous film, Eden, who was a very complicated film, which took time. I started to write The Future without being at all sure carry out the project, just to escape the horrors of film financing and think about something else. This topic has become, I began to take notes about a woman left by her husband, facing loneliness, bereavement, the difficulty of rebuilding, about which I find quite difficult. Gradually, I was driven and the film was finally written very easily, with an ease that surprised me.
The film feeds on my childhood, my adolescence.
how is your personal experience has fueled the writing of this project, is it autobiographical?
Autobiography is not the word I would use ; by definition, is writing his own life and that’s not exactly the case here. But as all my films, it is based on experiences that I do, people I’ve met people who are close to me, that matter to me. The film feeds on my childhood, my adolescence. All my films are in a way or another, perhaps more frontally in L’Avenir. Yes, my parents were both professors of philosophy, which is the case of the two protagonists of the film. At the same time, from the moment I think Isabelle Huppert for the film, the character acquires a certain autonomy from to where he’s gone.
The philosophy is central the film, what place it holds in your life? Making films is it synonymous with search of truth for you?
The philosophy meant a lot to me, not so much in the texts themselves because I have no training philo even if I made a little part of my studies. I’m an amateur in this field so I will not claim any knowledge whether in philosophy. However, I was fed as questioning relationship to the world; it’s the world of philosophy, his teaching, which was the world of my childhood, my adolescence. I grew up in an apartment that was full of philosophy books. Which lined the walls, it was mostly the works of Nietzsche, Kant, many German books because my father is German.
The environment of the books was never something hostile but something that I have always associated with some sort of heat.
The philosophy has been there throughout my childhood and adolescence in a form of presence that I have always considered benign. For me, the environment of the books was never something hostile but something that I have always associated with some sort of heat. Beyond this presence, there was also the philosophy in discussions as to ideas and also as that teaching. When I write scenes in the film where the characters evoke the books of philosophers and talk about ideas, I did not need to force me or to look far is something that comes quite naturally it’s part of my world.
the Future of characters just have a special report in the book in the film, he becomes an iconic object, almost sacred …
in any case, I wanted to take on the importance of books and the relationship to the book for this character [Isabelle Huppert] and I do not think I exaggerated or accentuated. I asked myself at the time of writing of the film: was it necessary to give this woman a different profession than philosophy teacher, a different profession from that of the environment in which I grew up? I realized that this was not possible because of the report to the book, to the object itself. How to film the objects always very interested because there is a permanent link in the cinema, between the unconscious and invisible matter. It can go through the book and other objects. Eden, it was rather the disks.
Eden TrailerIn any case, the presence of objects in terms of staging, is a question that I find very interesting and I wanted the assume because again, books, thought, literature, philosophy, are not fair backgrounds of the film. It’s more than that, this is where the heroine will draw its strength is quite decisive in L’Avenir. Yet this is not a thing I understood from the beginning, this is something I realized in the course of writing.
Rohmer is a filmmaker who has many for me, accompanying me. In the intimate relationship I have with the cinema, Rohmer is one who helps me the most, that brings me the most.
You admire the film by Eric Rohmer, pensez- you have managed to knit your character rohmérien by excellence with Isabelle Huppert and all search for meaning side, learn to grasp a new freedom etc …
I admire enormously indeed Rohmer’s films who is a filmmaker who a lot to me, accompanying me. In the intimate relationship I have with the cinema, Rohmer is one who helps me the most, that brings me the most. See his movies, this is what can best stimulate my imagination. However, I do not try at all to emulate, is that rohmérien Rohmer in the end. I could also tell other movies they are rohmeriens; what I mean is better if people can see a continuity or a dialogue between his films and mine. After this is beyond me and I think that we should not try to imitate great filmmakers like that, if there is something to emulate, it must be their freedom, their independence; do not try to be like them.
The fact is that his language, the rhythm of his films, their issues and in fact, his heroines have marked me a lot and it is possible that it has influenced the writing of this film. When I wrote The Future, I thought of two films Rohmer in particular, not as models, but I have found that there could be a sort of parallel that I have not decided. This is the Green Ray and My Night at Maud’s. The latter for philosophy and The Green Ray for the crossing of the summer by a solitary hero.
My Night at Maud’s TrailerYou have said in an interview that you feel out of step with age, does this shift helped you in writing to understand the characters of mature women like Natalie?
When I approach a character, I do not watch from the viewpoint of age; when I write a movie, a role, I identify with this role, be it a man, a woman, a teenager, I’m not long ago, a woman older than me. That does not mean that the question of age is not important in the film and that character then but in any case I feel a kind of empathy for the character that abolishes the question of the difference in generation . I do not feel further from that of Nathalie Paul in Eden or Victor in my first film All is forgiven. They are also very different characters to me and when I made my first feature film, half of the film rested on the shoulders of the actor [Paul Blain], who was older than me, who was a man; it was very different from me and yet I had an affection for him.
In all my films, I see a secret link, very strong among all the heroes and heroines who are all in different ways in a form of search for meaning and love of life.
There was an element of affection and part identification, curiously, in his melancholy. There is something else, this is not the melancholy that brings me closer to Nathalie is his energy, his relation to creation, to ideas, to the transmission. Anyway, what makes me feel close to her, is that which gives it a certain strength can not be reduced to the possession of something concrete but has to do with an inner quest and this is a reflection of my own relationship to the world. This is what connects the bottom the character of Nathalie with my other films. Of all my films, I see a secret link, very strong among all the heroes and heroines who are all in different ways in a form of search for meaning and love of life.
All is Forgiven Band -announcespeaking of search for meaning, Nathalie just spends his time taking public transport, bus, train, car, it gives the impression that it is an eternal flight, as flee such time that passes, the monotony of his life tidy to perhaps find in these trips the sense of life that escapes him.
I think I wanted to show that it did not let down, it was someone moving. Think of it as a headlong rush but is she really has no other choice than this one? not the shot we see. It could, when her husband left her and her mother died , sinking into a form of depression and the film could be much most damning. This is not an overpowered character, I never filmed as a victim and I owe it to the character itself and also the interpretation of Isabelle Huppert who never victimizes, it’s something that I greatly appreciate. She did not see things that way and I think that his freedom is there, his strength is there and it went by the fact of being on the move and get out of his apartment, not to be locked in this place and seek fun, gaiety elsewhere, through the summer.
I can not imagine anyone else Isabelle Huppert in the role of Nathalie. She quickly came to me and it was the first time I wrote thinking of an actress.
Isabelle Huppert has an “overwhelming” screen presence, she takes a little everything in its path, the other actors had they no apprehension about it before turning and charisma was it not an obstacle to the existence of the other characters?
I can not imagine anyone else Isabelle Huppert in the role of Nathalie. She quickly came to me and it was the first time I wrote thinking of an actress. There was the issue of credibility, playing a philosophy teacher means having an intellectual authority, it is very difficult. Isabelle had it more than any other actress. Moreover, there is in his game a kind of humor, self-deprecating, lightness and modernity that corresponded very well to the idea I had formed of the character. What interested me in this choice was to show Isabelle in a light that we had not seen for a long time. We got used to see in the roles of women hardest, most borderlines, more theoretical somehow. Here, it’s boiled down to something much closer to everyday, closer to what it might be too.
It really interested me and I think it’s also interested to find this kind of innocence. I never felt that it was overwhelming for others because the actors with whom she worked were very comfortable with it; I think of André Marcon who often played with her and couples they know well and appreciate enormously. It is also well understood with Roman Kolinka there was great affection between them, I did not have the feeling that something weighed. It’s the same with Sarah Le Picard plays his daughter, they know each other well, Sarah is friends with the daughter of Isabella so she was not paralyzed by his presence. It is the film based on it, turns around, she’s in every scene, I do not leave, the film is with her, that’s true. But the actors around her were rather very comfortable.
Isabelle Huppert and Fabien character, played by Roman Kolinka have a tenderness report but never really ambiguous, we feel although the report student-mentor, have you also had this kind of report for your school with a teacher that you used to build this duo and their relationship?
instead, I l impression that there a lot of ambiguity between them but the film did not deliberately operates because it can not go further. There is an impossibility that this love story is real. It can not go beyond something very unconscious, there is a kind of taboo. Nevertheless, if we are attentive, more the film progresses and we see their relationship evolve, maybe we do not plan and it remains unconscious, but it feels like something more carnal them, especially in the last scene. But it can not remain in the state of affairs in power, insatiable. Besides, Rousseau’s text which opens the last part of the movie about the sublimation is quite explicit about this. As for me, I actually had a lot of relationships student / mentor.
Very young, I had a lot of relationships with older people, not necessarily romantic relationships but in any case relations with older men who helped me, who taught me, who gave me that were benevolent.
Very young, I had a lot of relationships with older people , not necessarily romantic relationships but anyway relationships with older men who helped me, who taught me, who gave me that were benevolent. It meant a lot to me and I have also seen it with my parents, especially my mother who had very strong relations with many former students she continued to follow for years. This is something that I found beautiful and that meant a lot. In general, youth is just as present in this film than in my previous films because Nathalie draws strength from her relationship with young people. This is something that I have observed, that touches me and which I wanted to speak.
Are you intended to denounce, through the character of Fabien the droop of bourgeois intellectuals like Nathalie, who have an idea about everything but remain at the bottom far from the reality of the French?
Report not because I do not do movies to denounce. I’m not in that mindset. For cons, I wanted to express the tension that may exist between two trends of thought left. The film does not really take sides with one or the other, even if at times it does. In the background, in the film, the characters who embody these two trends, Nathalie and Fabian, are characters for whom I have a great deal of sympathy. I feel like this for them, they interest me, although I’m not necessarily agree with everything they think, as Fabien points out in the film about some authors, it not necessarily agree with everything they advocate, I have curiosity and understanding for ideas that embody both.
What interested me was to see something that I found quite a contemporary twinge there may be the side of a rather intellectual milieu left between two tendencies of the left: a left centrist and left more leftist. I did not necessarily express my political views frontally but I stand anyway rather the side of the shade, not on the side of ideologies of any kind. I’m more on the side of complexity. In some places, I’ll share the views of one and another place, the point of view of the other. But in any case, the film does not take sides against one another because there may be caricatures and stereotypes on both sides and also the truth on both sides. This does not mean I’m relativistic, I think we have to assume a form of complexity that is opposed to a form of relativism.
There is for me a form of contrariness as children will seek to annoy their parents. I have a bad side pupil of this view then, contrary to appearances elsewhere.
Do you think that French cinema is cautious when it comes to address the Thought theme?
There is for me a form of contrariness as children will seek to annoy their parents. I have a bad side pupil of this view then, contrary to appearances elsewhere. I know that from the moment you make a film on intellectuals, on philosophy, it’s back right away for some to “school theater” clichés as I think this is precisely the opposite. It’s not at all what is expected of auteur cinema today, we expect this kind of cinema be it social etc, there are a lot of clichés that. I like, when I feel very strong clichés which are conveyed in to do the opposite and give the stick to get beat. I do not know if it is a form of masochism, we can see it as insolence as masochism, there maybe a little of both. We can also see a kind of moral necessity to go almost contradict the commonplace and go impose something knowing that the risk of being locked into certain stereotypes while defending a certain idea of cinema.
I think we’re at a time when it is important to defend thought.
it’s kind of how I operate. When I approached this film, I thought, “Well, we’ll still tell me it is a film of bourgeois intellectuals” while I think there are very few films on intellectuals in french cinema today, I do not think at all that this is a dominant trend. There are very few films where, in particular, shows the intellectual and women who assume this relation to thought. Even when I think of Rohmer films, there are no women like that. This is Trintignant is prof in My Night at Maud’s. There are many misconceptions that are not necessarily verified and it was especially challenging for me to reinvent this character and then to try to dust off all those shots. I think we’re at a time when it is important to defend Thought.
You have received the Silver Bear for best director in Berlin, what does it to you? Is it more important to be rewarded as a woman? To expand, the Caesar also rewarded several women this year, what do you think?
It is clear that the jury awarded me the Silver Bear, there was a majority of women. I do not define myself as a feminist because I try to stay out of ideologies. Someone told me the other day when we were artists, there was a duty irreverence, something impossible to tell the world where it is, it must have the courage even to say. I do not define myself as a feminist but I’m not insensitive to that question either. I’m not a specialist in the matter, I do not have very clear ideas about it: is what it would take quotas, to what extent it would be nice to push for there to be more films made by women caught in the great festivals? I’m not comfortable with these questions. I feel that it would grow, it is not so much where prices make films festivals, is being able to make movies.
Beyond Price this seems important for women today is to make movies, not to be rewarded for doing so.
it means a lot to have got this award because it is a form of recognition that can help me especially to my next film and that’s what matters to me most. I did not used to get the price of this importance there, symbolically, it means a lot, obviously. Beyond price, which seems important for women today is to make movies, not to be rewarded for doing so. If we have to change something in the operation of cinema, whether to promote something, it’s making movies. What seems important is primarily the works; freeing me, makes me happy, flourishes me more than to have a price, it is able to express myself and to have the freedom to do so. This is the land on which there is certainly a lot to gain for women in France and more elsewhere.
Adèle Haenel said recently in an interview with Télérama: “ The white male and cinema, I’m tired. That’s why I do not want to see Bridge of Spies Spielberg , which may be very beautiful, but what is these guys who put hats and go save the planet? If we kept always show the same characters, maybe that would change the public . “Do you have any reaction to that?
I want to say” yes, I too am sick “(laughs). No, I do not know, I also like a lot these films but I understand what she means, I also want to see something other than the guys who put hats and go save the world, this advocacy of manhood. Cinema whose virility is the engine as a subject, as a representation based on the fascination of manhood can distract me, please me and seduce me but it’s not that towards which tends my cinema. I obviously looking for something different and beyond the issue of masculinity or femininity, I struggle to see the world in a binary fashion.
From the moment there is singularity, there is always the feminine and the masculine.
what interests me through the films, is to have a meeting with filmmakers who have a singular look, wearing a look at the world, whether men or women. From the moment there is uniqueness, there is always the feminine and the masculine. When there are only muscles etc, is that we are in a system of stereotypes, which always renews the same patterns and it is rather that bothers me, not the fact that it is only male.
= & gt; OUR MEETING WITH ADELE HAENEL FOR oGRES
Finally, there relatively few filmmakers who have the audacity to create a movie in which they invent and impose a relationship to the world is not the one inherited these schemes there. In France, from this point of view, it is not too badly housed. We can not say that in France, one is overwhelmed by the “white male” cinema.
Can you tell us something about your next project?
This is a film called Maya that I will turn to India next winter with Roman Kolinka if we can find the funding.
Interview by Vincent Formica in Paris March 17, 2016
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