Claire Denis was born in Paris and raised in west
Africa. When she was 14, her father, part of the French Colonial Government in
Cameroon, sent her to live with her grandfather in Sceaux, a suburb of Paris.
After attending lycée, Denis became a student at IDHEC, the French School of
Cinema in Paris, from which she graduated in 1972. While making a series of
short films, “Chroniques de France,” she started doing film production work,
culminating in her role as first assistant director to Dusan Makavejev (Sweet movie), Costa-Gavras
(Hanna K), Jim Jarmusch (Down by Law) and Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire).
Denis’s first feature film, Chocolat, was released in 1988, and was a featured selection in the
Director’s Fortnight at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. Her other features
include [S’en fout la mort] (1990),
and Nénette et Boni (1996), which won
the Golden Leopard Award for best film at the 1996 Locarno Film Festival. [J’ai pas sommeil] was released in 1993, and was selected for competition at
that year’s Cannes Film Festival. Denis has also directed a number of
documentaries, including Man no run
(1989) and Jacques Rivette, Le Veilleur
(1989), as well as the short films Keep
it for yourself (1991), Ni une, ni
deux (1991), La Robe à cerceaux
(1992) and Nice, very Nice (1995). She also co-wrote (with Anne Wiazemsky) and
directed U.S. go home, a segment in [Tous les garçons et toutes les filles de leur âge] series for french
Television. Denis, who lives in Paris, is in preproduction on her next film.
Jean-Pôl Fargeau was born in 1950 in Marseilles,
where he currently lives. He has co-written all of Denis’s feature films, and
is also a playwright, whose works for Theater include: Hôtel de
l’homme sauvage; Ici-bas; Wilhelm Meister; Brûle, rivière, brûle; Biaboya
alors? and Tirano banderas. Fargeau
recently co-wrote Pola with director Léos Carax.
The version of [J’ai
pas sommeil] published here was completed by Denis and Fargeau in february
1993, and translated from the french by Ian Burley. The original screenplay was 101 pages long.
1.
How did you come to consider the Paulin murder
case, upon which this film is based, as a possible film subject?
2.
Different ways. When he was arrested, in [19]87,
I wasn’t actually in Paris – I was in Cameroon, finishing Chocolat – so I wasn’t really that familiar with the case. I heard
about these granny murders in Paris, but not any specifics. It was only when
I’d come back, in January, that I heard more about it. And then, a year after
that, Paulin died in jail. But at first I didn’t have more interest in it than
anyone else did. Then, in [19]92, a production company approached me to work on
a project they had put together based on a true story. After a while, I decided
I didn’t like the story very much, so they said to me, “What would you be
interested in doing that’s based on a true story? We like true stories.” I
said, “Okay, although I don’t know that much about it, I’d consider doing
something based on the Paulin murder case.” I wasn’t sure I could make a film
out of it at that point, so I asked them to give me a month to do some research
on the case. So that’s what I did, on my own with one inter: talked to lawyers,
that kind of thing. After a month, I told them I thought it could work. They
were kind of interested, but not so much so. In the meantime, I started working
on the script with Jean-Pôl Fargeau. After a while, they tried to offer me another
movie, saying I could do this one after it was finished. So I said, “Well, it
seems to me that you don’t have a strong belief in this project; maybe it would
be better if I go away and do it on my own.” And then Olivier Assayas
introduced me to Bruno Pesery, who was very interested, and Bruno actually
ended up producing it.
3.
Jean-Pôl Fargeau has co-written most of your
other films, from your first, Chocolat,
to the most recent, Nénette et Boni.
How do you two work together?
4.
Actually, we have a funny way of working. We
basically live together while we’re writing. We work from morning to late
evening. I like this a lot.
5.
You said in a recent interview that you’re not
very good at writing dialogue. Do you deal more with directions, and leave that
to him?
6.
It depends. Some people I know, they start with
dialogue. Jean-Pôl and I do exactly the opposite: we start with atmosphere,
ambience. Very often we begin with a 10-page treatment.
Sometimes we know one of the actors; sometimes we know what music we’ll be using.
So we gather a lot of little details before we actually write scenes. Then we
do summaries of scenes, then add dialogue. Sometimes I work on one scene
while he works on another – it depends. Sometimes he’ll tell me, “Look, I have
an idea for that scene; can I try it first?” And I’ll say, “Okay, let me work
on something else while you’re doing that.” But we also work together on things
sometimes: acting dialogue[]. We have a lot of fun, actually, even when I’m
depressed: “This is no good, why are we doing this?” It’s really good to write
with Jean-Pôl, because sometimes, when I’m working alone, I can reach a state
of real desperation. With Jean-Pôl, he’s familiar with my tendency to be very
pessimistic, and I know his tendency to be very optimistic, so we have a good
balance.
7.
Could you talk a bit more about research? How
closely did you follow Paulin’s life?
8.
I did the research, told most of it to Jean-Pôl,
then I forgot all about it. I had in mind, always, since the very beginning,
that it would feature a girl from “nowhere,” and that it would start on the
highway outside Paris at dawn. I don’t know – it was absolutely clear in my
mind, like a painting. There was even a song I had in mind. And then, of
course, with Jean-Pôl, I had to figure out what to do with this girl, now that
I was beginning the film. I had this weird idea that the film should be
structured like a game, because Paris, you know, is shaped like this French
game called “le jeu de l’oie”. “Let jeu de l’oie” is in the form of a spiral, and
the last space in the center of the board is jail, which is where you end up if
you don’t roll the right number on the dice. So I thought, maybe she will look
for a place to stay, and that will set the game in motion, you know? And maybe where
she stops is where this guy – the Paulin character – lives. The other thing I
knew – and this came from the facts of the case – was that he had a mother and
a sister, and I really wanted that family element in the film; it was very
important. By Law I was obliged to transform some details. So instead of his
having a sister, I decided to give him a brother instead. He would be the
really good guy – the perfect guy, with the job, trying hard to succeed in life
– opposed to the brother. But I also somehow knew that the good brother would
seem very violent, and the “bad” brother would somehow be gentler. This, also,
came to my mind very quickly. Then we had to build this thing.
9.
Speaking of family, were you always interested
in delving into the russian and lithuanian émigré community – Daïga’s Aunt Mina
and her friends – in Paris?
10.
No. The girl coming out of nowhere was
originally going to be from Spain. I started working on that with Jean-Pôl.
Then I met this actress, Katerina Golubova, and I wanted to use her for this part,
so we changed her background to Russian.
11.
Could you talk about constructing the character
of Daïga a little bit?
12.
Well, I wanted this “outsider” character to be
like me, knowing nothing about the case. As I said, the first idea was for her
to be either an Italian or a Spaniard who would drive into Paris. I wanted her
to drive there so she would carry all of her stuff with her. The first version
of the script was written with a Spanish character. Then I saw a film in Berlin
directed by Sharunas
Bartas with Katia [Koridorius], and I fell in love
with the film, the director, and her. I was shocked, and went back to France
and said to Jean-Pôl, “We’re going to have to rewrite for her.” Then I went to
Lithuania to meet with her, and liked her even more, and convinced the producer
to change everything for her. The difficult thing was that she couldn’t speak a
word of French or English; and I couldn’t speak a word of Lithuanian. At the
beginning, I didn’t know how to direct her, because she refused to have a translator.
She said, “I want to be in contact with you and nobody else.” She told me she
would always understand me, just by using gestures and eye contact.
13.
Was there actually a doctor who consorted with
Paulin and his lover, or was that an invention on your part?
14.
Before we started working on the script, when I
was on my own doing research, I met a lawyer. Not Paulin’s lawyer – I couldn’t
meet with him, because although Paulin had died, his friend had not yet been
tried for the crime. Along those lines, I couldn’t talk to the arresting
officers, either. But many people gave me the name of this lawyer who had
represented Paulin earlier in a small case concerning drugs, and I really
wanted to meet him. To my surprise, it was very easy. He was this well-off guy,
living in a hôtel particulier in
Paris, who had just come back from Morocco. It became obvious as we talked that
he’d known him very, very well – he was not discreet about it at all. He made
it clear that he’d taken him to parties, helped him in various ways, that kind
of thing. It was weird, because at the very beginning he was like, “Oh, I
hardly remember him,” and then by the end, every time I was getting ready to
leave, he’d say, “Oh, wait, stay, I have one other story.” At the end of our
discussion, he said, “You know what? I’d like to work on the script with you.”
I couldn’t believe it. I said, “Oh, no, no...” Then I got nervous that he might
try to sue me for using facts from his story, so I went to another lawyer, who
reassured me that there was no problem. Anyway, he kept calling me, wanting to
“help” with the movie. He was very open.
15.
So the doctor character came from this lawyer?
16.
Well, in the newspaper accounts at the time, there
were always rumblings that there were not two but three murderers, although it
was never proven. And the lawyer kept telling me, “Paulin was not a born killer
– there was some kind of sexual thing in killing someone together with someone
else, like a ritual.” This kind of stuff. So I had a fantasy of him as the
third accomplice – just for fun on my part – but I made him a doctor instead.
And then also, because having three characters made the film much longer, that
part was reduced in later drafts.
17.
Just speaking about a few scenes specifically:
Daïga’s character, up until she spots Abel in his convertible, seems so
removed, so unaffected by everything she sees and hears. Did you always know
there was going to be a scene where she finally loses her cool?
18.
Yeah, but I was very frustrated when I wrote
that scene because I knew I couldn’t do it on the scale I wanted to. I wanted
to have her smash into, like, ten cars, but our budget was too low. We had only
one car.
19.
How did you come up with the scene at the
self-defence class?
20.
I read in the newspaper that after the Paulin
case, elderly women from the 18th arrondissement put together a
self-defence group.
21.
And there was a woman, like Ninon in the script
and film, who gave the lessons?
22.
No, the class was held by a man. I like the idea
that the owner of the hotel, Ninon, would also run the classes, so that’s how
that came about.
23.
So you and Jean-Pôl worked for two months and
then came up with a first draft?
24.
We stopped because I was completely desperate
with the script. And then we worked on another draft for a month or so, and
then we stopped again in September, because the producer told us he was doing
another movie, and wanted to shoot the film in the summertime. So, in February,
Jean-Pôl and I went to Spain for three weeks and wrote this draft. In May,
after I’d done location scouting, we reworked the script one more time.
25.
This is an unusual format for a screenplay,
particularly for a writer/director – there are no slug lines or camera
directions.
26.
I hate that stuff. I
can’t read it. I do my breakdown with Agnès [Godard] when I have the locations.
But I can’t stand sending actors something
that’s so boring to read. When I have to deal with all of the technical
stuff, I give drawings to everyone on the crew – which lens to use, that kind
of thing. Not storyboards, but very precise. For me, in
the morning when I’m heading to the set, I want to read something that reminds
me of the feeling I had when I was writing it. The technical stuff is separate.
Maybe it’s a weakness, but I think it’s too boring to read this kind of script.
27.
Along those lines, you’ve said before that
you think it’s important to have a hand in the writing of a film you’re going
to direct, because, as you put it, “I wouldn’t be able to understand the
emotions of a character if I weren’t involved in the writing.” You’ve co-written
everything you’ve filmed, right?
28.
Yes. Not because I like doing it that way,
but because I think it’s important. If I was offered a script to direct, I’d
still want to rework it.
29.
You spoke about writing the part of Daïga for
Katerina Golubova. Were any other parts written with actors in mind?
30.
Théo was written for Alex Descas, who’d been in
my film [S’en fout la mort], and I wrote the part of Ninon thinking of Line
Renaud.
31.
How did you find Richard Courcet for the rold of
Camille?
32.
In March, I started casting. I had had one or
two interesting meetings with actors for the part, but nothing definite. One
day, this young guy shows up in the production office and says to the casting
agent that he’s interested in reading the script. She said, “What for? Are you
an actor?” And he said, “I’m just interested in the project; I was interested
in the case, and am curious to see what you’ve done with it.” So the casting
agent was a very clever girl, and said, “Wait for Claire; she’ll be here in an
hour.” So he waited. And he was totally mute, wouldn’t say anything to me. I
said, “If you want to read the script, here it is.” He came back two weeks
later, and when I asked him if he’d read it, he said, “I don’t really
understand it much.” When he was 11, he was taken away with his teacher there,
who was the person who told him about the film in the first place. At this
point, I knew that, so I told him if he needed a job maybe I could manage to
find him something to do on the set.
33.
Did you feel like he would be right for the part
at this point?
34.
I wasn’t sure. One day he came in, and I wasn’t
having much luck with the actors we’d auditioned for the part, and I said,
“Would you like to try reading for this part?” He said, “No, no, I’m not an
actor. But I am interested in watching the casting sessions.” So we would look
at the videotapes together, and he would make his own comments, and finally I
said, “Look, why not just try this out during the next casting session.” So he
did, but completely clammed up in front of the video camera. This lasted until
June, a month before shooting was to begin. At that point, I had found a young
guy, 17 years old, in a nightclub, who my producers – everyone – liked a lot.
He had a great audition. So Richard was hanging around, as usual, and I said, “I
think I’ve found the right guy.” I showed him the tape. I told him that I was
going to give this guy one more audition and then cast him, but I also said to
him that I felt like I might be making a mistake in not casting him – Richard –
for the part. He said, “Why? This guy’s more clever, and I’m no good.” So I
said, “Please, just try to do an audition one more time.” So he tried again,
and frankly, he was still not very good. But when I looked at the tape with the
producer, I had the strange feeling he was going to be very good in the role.
So I told Bruno, “He’s the one.” So I offered the part to Richard, and he was
totally shocked. He never said, “Yes,” by the way, he just kept saying, “You’re
crazy...”
35.
And what about getting Béatrice Dalle for the
part of Alice?
36.
One week before we started shooting, the girl
we’d cast for that part said she was scared by the project: “I don’t want to be
a part of this movie. It’s too dark.” So I was really desperate. Béatrice Dalle
and I have the same agent, and she called me the next day and said, “I know
you’re in trouble, and I know it’s not me you wanted, but I’m here if you need
me.” But because she was older – more of a woman – than the character was in
the script, I had to change a lot of her dialogue on the set. Also, she only
had a week free to shoot, so I had to cut a lot of Alice’s scenes in the
script, like the one in which she’s caught shoplifting, or discovers the body
on the subway tracks.
37.
Actually, her character is called Alice in the
script, but her name was changed to Mona in the film. Why?
38.
Five days before shooting, I was in a café with
Béatrice, discussing the part with her, and I looked at her and said, “Alice is
not the right name for you.” She was so beautiful – she said she was
overweight, but it was not true. She was splendid, like a figure out of a Monet
painting. And I said, “It’s not right to call you Alice,” because I see someone
with that name being very thin, like a twig. So I came up with Mona, and
Béatrice agreed. I had to change a lot of the scenes with Alice for the film,
because the character we’d written was only, like, 19 years old. She was not a
very nice character; I really wanted her to be selfish, and impetuous like only
a 19-year-old can be. Also, I wanted several of the characters in the film to
have a good reason to kill. We thought of that while we were writing. In this
case, we thought, “Well, maybe Théo has a good reason to want to strangle
Alice.” You know, situations where a character is justified in saying, “I could
really kill this person.” And then you have Camille, who actually does it.
39.
Did you work differently with actors and
nonactors?
40.
With Richard, we never did on-set rehearsals,
because he was so shy with the crew and everything. I put him in a hotel with
Katerina, where I also stayed, and every sunday I would work with the two of
them. We rehearsed his dance in the hotel room, because he was completely
nervous about that. He didn’t want anyone to see him wearing a dress; he kept
telling me, “I don’t want my friends to think I’m gay.” And he always was
giving me a hard time, reminding me that it was “my fault” he was doing the
part. On the set, I would never raise my voice with him. If what he’d just done
wasn’t right, I would be very discreet and say, “Try something else.” But even
when he did something different from the way I wanted it, he was good.
41.
You’ve talked about how important it is for you
to do work that is “more closely related to the actors.” Could you elaborate on
that here, specifically regarding this script and film? It seems like there’s a
fair amount of changes between scripted dialogue and what ended up onscreen.
The scenes between Ninon and Mina, for instance.
42.
That’s because I rewrote a lot for the character
of Mina after we cast her. I also rewrote several scenes for Richard, because I
knew it wasn’t possible for him to do some of the stuff in the script.
43.
So there is very little ad-libbing?
44.
One scene, which is maybe my favourite, was not
in the script. It’s when Camille and Raphaël are in the hotel room, and Camille
threatens him. I rewrote this for Richard that day.
45.
So how long was production?
46.
It was a long pre-production, because casting
was difficult, then nine weeks of shooting.
47.
That’s pretty fast.
48.
Not so fast. For Paris, it’s not fast. The fact
is, it’s difficult to shoot there, difficult to get permits.
49.
Was Jean-Pôl on-set at all?
50.
Not really. He came once, I think. And shooting is boring if you have nothing to do. [Accurate.]
Besides, Richard was very shy, and the sets were tiny, that kind of
thing.
51.
I assume that most of the shifts that occurred
between this script and the finished film occurred during editing. There are a
substantial number of transposed scenes.
52.
Yeah, but some of them were shifted while
shooting, because of weather conditions, or actors being sick, that kind of
thing. Funnily enough, in editing we ended up more or less very close to the
script, as opposed to the shooting, where I changed a lot. Shooting was not
easy at all: Richard was tough, Katerina didn’t speak any French.
53.
The very first scene of the film, which takes
place in the living room with Camille, Raphaël and the doctor, which feels
almost like a tableau – was cut from the finished film, which opens with the
shot of the two policemen laughing in the helicopter, the second scene here. It
contains a line of description about the doctor – gazing “into his soul where
there is nothing to see.”
54.
I never shot that. It was necessary for the
script, but didn’t seem to be needed in the film.
55.
What about the scene in which the electricity
man comes to read the meter at Théo’s apartment?
56.
That scene was a total failure during the
shooting. Alex and Richard were very good, but the kid was a real problem that
day, and we lost time and the light shifted, and we were late on schedule, so I
always hated that scene.
57.
What happened to the scene in which Daïga walks
into the hotel room with Camille and Raphaël, and discovers them sleeping in
bed?
58.
That wasn’t shot. I didn’t feel I needed it,
especially with the other scenes in the room, like when she sees him talking to
the other maids, or when she cleans it later on and looks at all of his
photographs.
59.
There was a wonderful scene in a bar with
Raphaël and a character named “Alpha,” who gives a long speech about faith,
among other things. Was it shot?
60.
This one is very sad for me. It was cut, because
we were behind schedule.
61.
In the film, Daïga walks into a porn cinema early
on, and, after watching the movie for a few seconds, starts laughing
hysterically. It’s a great scene, but very different from the one in the
script, where she gets treated to a long, sordid monologue from one of the
patrons, who then takes her out for dinner. What happened there?
62.
I love that scene. This was impossible. It was
all shot, cut – even mixed – but everybody asked me to cut this scene and the
one with the doctor and Camille making love. Nobody was comfortable with those
scenes: “This is horrible, disgusting.” It was not like I was surrendering to
the power of money or anything. It’s just that the film was too long.
63.
It’s very funny, as written here, because Daïga
has absolutely no idea of what the man’s saying, even though he thinks she
does.
64.
Well, as I said, Katerina Golubova didn’t speak
any French, so before the scene was shot, I told her what he was saying. We did
four takes, and each time he was asking her about the blow job, she would
giggle like crazy. But in a naïve way.
65.
Is that what happened in the porn-theater scene
you decided to use in the film?
66.
Well, she was giggling all the time, actually,
so yeah, we used one of those takes.
67.
There’s a scene in this script where Théo and
Alice have dinner with Alice’s parents; in the film, it’s just her mother who
comes over to the apartment.
68.
Well, Alice is supposed to be, like, 19, and
Mona was around 30, so it seemed ridiculous to have a scene in which her
parents come over for dinner. So we just switched it to her mother, which
seemed more believable.
69.
There are two points in this script where you
and Jean-Pôl wrote in italicised passages of various images of the West Indies,
but they never made it into the movie. What happened there?
70.
Les images
de l’îsle. I had this dream that I would have time to go to the islands and
shoot some images of the Caribbean, but we didn’t have enough money to do it,
unfortunately.
71.
There’s another scene in which the doctor comes
home after he’s visited Camille and is greeted by a Sri Lankan servant.
72.
That was shot, but cut. I liked this scene very
much, and stayed in until the final cut.
73.
So it was cut for time.
74.
Yeah. Everybody thought the film was too long.
It was about two hours. At the time, Bruno and I felt it should be shorter.
Maybe today we’d do it differently.
75.
What about the scene at the very end where Théo
meets up with his father outside of the police station? That’s definitely not
in the movie.
76.
I shot that scene and then I cut it, because I
felt that maybe it was better to have him walking alone. It was enough.
77.
Paulin was an actual transvestite, but in the
film, Camille doesn’t dress up in drag completely, and is obviously meant to be
seen as a man. Was that your decision or Richard’s?
78.
The thing is, Paulin was a drag queen in a
nightclub in the beginning of the [19]80s, but this film is not a “period
movie.” So in 1993, in which we were setting it, this nightclub still existed,
but it was completely out of fashion. So I went to visit a few other places
that might work. There was one in particular, that was like a jail, very much
inspired by Jean Genet, which was actually closed down by the police just
before we started shooting. In that place, a drag queen would not be the right
thing, so we went looking for something that would be invented for that place,
that would be both male and female. Richard and I sort of choreographed the
scene together and came up with what we wanted: no falsies, long nails, the
band in the hair – those kind of things. So he was also very male, with his
wide shoulders, and this worked as something that was in-between, that was more
in the spirit of the place.
79.
It felt more like a piece of performance art.
80.
Yeah, that’s right. I told Richard that it
should be a dance where, in one sense, he’s offering his body – dancing very
close to the people in the club – but he had to seem tough enough so that they
don’t dare touch him.
81.
You remarked somewhere else, “There’s a moment
in your life when you could be anything – even a criminal. It’s not in my
history, but why it’s not I don’t exactly know.” Could you elaborate on that
here?
82.
It’s a long story, a lifetime story. When I
was a kid, I was always asking my father and mother, “Would you still love me
if I was in jail?” I was obsessed with this. “If I was a grownup, and in jail,
would you come visit me? Would you still care for me?” They kept telling me,
“What a silly question! You will never be in jail.” And I’d say, “How do you
know? I could end up a thief, or a murderer, you don’t know. How can you bet on
me like that?” I wanted them to swear that they would come and see me in jail
if I ever did anything bad. It was very important to me; I’d wake up in the
middle of the night thinking about it. Whenever I read in the newspaper about
this or that murderer, everyone who’s interviewed says, “He seemed such a nice
guy.” And inevitably the reporters will speak with his relatives, and the
mother or brother or whoever will always say, “Oh, he was so gentle, so nice.”
It’s almost never the case where people say, “Yeah, we could tell he was a
murderer.” It’s very rare. This was certainly the case with Paulin.
Everybody I spoke to who knew him said the same thing. Oh, by the way, Line
Renaud, who plays Ninon in the film, had actually met him. As I said, I wanted
her to play the part of Ninon, and sent her the script. When she called me, she
asked, “Claire, is this script inspired by l’affaire
Paulin?” I said it was, and she said, “Did you know I met him?” It turns
out he came to her office once, wanting a job on a revue she was putting
together. “He was so nice. He stayed the entire day in the office with my
mother.” She started laughing. “After he was arrested, I told my mother, ‘You
were lucky, Mom.’”
83.
That parallels Ninon’s situation in the script:
she, too, has a mother who is left alone with Camille.
84.
That’s Line’s real mother. I had written the
part of the mother without knowing this story, and then Line asked, “Who’s
going to be my mother in the movie?” And I said, “I don’t know, we haven’t cast
it yet.” She said, “My mother’s dream is to be in a movie before she dies.” so
I put her in it. Anyway, the idea behind the film was to try and capture that
feeling you have when you read about a criminal in one of those newspaper
accounts, and you see the picture of the guy, and read what the neighbors said,
and you start thinking, “What happened to this guy? What went wrong in the
process of his life? When did the line between good and evil become so slippery
for him?”
85.
This kind of subject matter seems perfect for
the suspense film genre; did you ever consider treating it in that way?
86.
You know, maybe I’m wrong – and maybe I won’t do
it again – but I’m happy I treated it this way this time, without suspense. After
we finished the first draft, I sent it to a very famous screenwriter in France,
who said, “Claire, you must be crazy. You’ve got to put the murder at the
beginning, so that we know what’s going on, and we’ll be frightened from the
very start.” And this writer is someone I really respect – he’s a friend – and
I begin to think, “Maybe I’m blind.” I spoke to Jean-Pôl, also. But it seemed unfair to the spirit of the movie. The first
murder scene, we felt, really had to be after the first act. That way, there
would be no opportunity for the audience to look at him any differently. Then,
when the first murder scene is onscreen, it really is, at least for me, cold.
It’s like a real murder.
87.
Well, you’re seeing someone you’ve gotten to
know a little bit commit it, which is very disorenting.
88.
That scene, by the way, I did deliberately shoot
in a suspenseful way: they enter the yard with a tracking shot, the trees
moving, the sound of the steps, the elevator. That kind of thing. But if this
had occurred at the opening of the movie, Camille would never have had a chance
to be looked at as a human being, just as a killer.
89.
That scene is even more traditionally
suspenseful in this version of the script, because the delivery boy knocks on
the door while Camille and Raphaël are still in the apartment.
90.
Yes. I changed that, because I wanted them to
actually see the delivery guy coming up the stairs as they were coming down;
that would give them the idea to help older women carry up their groceries as a
way of getting into their apartments. Also, it relates directly to that next
scene, when Raphaël helps the lady with her groceries.
91.
That brings up another interesting point: you
have the two murder scenes, both in the script and the film, occurring one
after the other. Why did you decide to do that?
92.
I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to
have two murders taking place close together, so the idea of repetition is
there. But only at the end, when the cop reads off the list of all of Camille’s
victims, do we get a real sense of the scope of his crime. Jean-Pôl and I had a
long discussion about that. I thought maybe we could treat it like music: you
repeat a note, and then it’s a leitmotif. Then you don’t have to repeat the
whole thing again. I think it’s much more effective to have the judge reading
off the names at the end, with Camille nodding for each one.
93.
This film’s entire structure is unconventional,
especially for its subject matter: rather than moving in a linear fashion, it
is much more like a mosaic, whose parts don’t really add up to a whole until
the film is over.
94.
For this story, yes, I couldn’t Imagine treating
it in a linear way. During the research, I also met with the psychiatrist who
treated Paulin after he was arrested, as well as the one who was enlisted by
the court to decide whether he was criminally insane or not. One of them was
sure he was responsible and aware of what he was doing, but the other was
undecided. I couldn’t make up my mind. And that’s when I came up with the idea
of the perfect stranger – the girl from nowhere. Like her, I would never know.
Even the police were mystified by his motives. In his deposition, he just gave
the plain facts, he never said, “I hate old laides,” or “I needed the money.”
Actually, the dialogue in that scene in the film – “the world’s gone crazy” –
is exactly what he said when he was arrested. He gave absolutely no
explanation. His lover, however, freaked out, and said he was basically
innocent, that he’d been beaten up by Paulin repeatedly. He said Paulin was a
demon, the devil. He fell into a very religious kind of thing. Interestingly,
when the film was released, the guy’s lawyer contacted us and said she’d like
to see the movie and show it to him. He apparently like the film very much,
because he said it showed clearly that the Camille character was “the devil.”
And I told the lawyer that that’s not exactly what the film is saying, it’s
more like he was just a lost guy. But he saw what he wanted to see, I think.
95.
The film also evokes the state of flux – the
enormous amount of energy – particular to a large city. You’ve written scene
after scene with garbage being dumped and picked up, utilities workers reading
meters – people engaged in various tasks specific to their small but
significant roles in this urban macrocosm. Was that something you wanted to
explore here?
96.
Maybe it’s because I never think of myself as a
city person, because I didn’t grow up in a big city. I mean, I live in Paris,
but I don’t consider myself a Parisian. I think, being an outsider, I probably
described the city in a very naïve way, focusing on these kinds of things, like
Daïga. But I love cities. I used to live in a district in the north of Paris,
where there are a lot of clothing manufacturers. At night, when the sweatshops
would close, the garbage cans on the streets below would be filled up with
these pieces of clothes: one sleeve, a collar, various other remnants. And
before the garbage truck came, there would be a crowd of people, like a silent
Army, who would gather up this piece and that piece. Nothing was wasted.
97.
Well, another one of your concerns is depicting
members of the underclass, particularly immigrants, who exist on a level
“below” that of mainstream, “official” culture. I’m thinking of the first scene
in Nénette et Boni, where someone is
trying to sell stolen lottery tickets to a crowd of middleeastern immigrants.
98.
Well, I think there was a time when the
different immigrant communities integrated better. Now they don’t. People are
“loose,” existing within their own Language and their own Culture, but they
don’t have the structure of a Culture strong enough. Especially people from the
French Caribbean Islands. They are French – they have French identity cards –
but they are not from France. They are loose people.
99.
Have you seen Nashville?
100.
Yes.
101.
Did its subject – several days in the life of a
city in which people keep crossing paths, often unwittingly – have any
influence on [J’ai pas sommeil]?
102.
I’m interested in that kind of film – that goes
back and forth between characters. It’s funny, because Short Cuts was released while we were editing. I was amazed by that
film. Raymond Carver is a writer I’ve always liked a lot, because if you read a
bunch of his short stories in a row, it gives you a feeling of – I’m limited
with my English Vocabulary here – brotherhood, I think. This accumulation of
stories, all these little parts of life, they’re all familiar to you.
103.
The cumulative effect of the “little parts of
life” is certainly central to your films.
104.
But I’m interested now in changing, maybe doing
a genre film, just to change. It’s good to do a film a certain way when you
really feel there is no other way, but when it becomes a habit – a “style” –
it’s dangerous. When I did [J’ai pas sommeil], I had no other way.
(The interview with Claire
Denis was conducted by Tod Lippy in New York City and Philadelphia, where her
work was the subject of a retrospective at the 1997 Philadelphia Festival of
World Cinema.)
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