THE FAME GAME
Redoubtable star Louis Garrel, who is in Jerusalem for tonight’s screening, talks to Melanie Goodfellow about reincarnating Jean-Luc Godard on the big screen What drew you to playing Jean-Luc Godard? Both the cinema and the personality of Jean-Luc Godard have always interested me, but when Michel first talked to me about the role I wasn’t that keen. I was wary of playing a figure with such a high public profile. But then he sent me the script. I liked the combination of love story and comedy that also captured an important period in recent French history, as well as a key moment in the life of an artist.
Louis Garrel in Redoubtable
a figure who remains an enigma despite his once-enormous presence in the media, especially in France. “There is a real Jean-Luc Godard who exists, but no one really knows him,” says Hazanavicius. “My aim is not to create a carbon copy of Godard. I’m inventing Jean-Luc Godard out of the Jean-Luc Godard created by Jean-Luc Godard, and Anne Wiazemsky’s account is another variation of a Jean-Luc Godard also created by Jean-Luc Godard. “He is a complex character,” he continues. “He is not necessarily very nice as a person. He has a capacity for cruelty but can also be incredibly friendly and generous. He has this charisma and desire to be in the public eye but at the same time craves privacy — there are lots of paradoxes.” Light touch Wiazemsky was at first reluctant to grant an option on the book but when Hazanavicius mentioned how much he liked the humour in her account, she agreed to let him adapt the work. “She’d turned down a number of other filmmakers and in fact she turned me down at first too,” he says. “Before putting the phone down, I said it was a shame because I’d found the work so funny to which she replied, ‘Really? So do I but no one else seems to. I thought I was the only one.’ It all moved on rapidly from there.” Louis Garrel’s performance as Godard — opposite French-British actress Stacy Martin as Wiazemsky — won praise in Cannes. Garrel’s physical likeness to the director in the film is also remarkable, but Hazanavicius says it was not any resemblance in real life that drew him to Garrel for the role. “Garrel is actually very goodlooking, while Godard is not that handsome,” he says. “But what Godard did have was charisma. It’s often hard to convey charisma on the big screen but I thought someone with Garrel’s looks and physique could pull that off.”
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‘While we were shooting, Godard asked if he could see the screenplay, so I sent it to him. I never got a response’ Michel Hazanavicius
Like Hazanavicius’s Oscar-winning 2011 film The Artist, set against the backdrop of Hollywood’s silent era, Redoubtable pays homage to a key period in cinema and French history through its aesthetics and style. “I tried to recreate the atmosphere of the 1960s through the cinema of Godard, playing with the way in which he used images and experimented with narrative forms and editing in a similar fashion, as a sort of homage to his work,” says the director. Godard fans will spot visual allusions to classics such as A Married Woman, Contempt, Weekend and Pierrot Le Fou, as well as lesser-known works such as Wind From The East, made during the Dziga Vertov cinema collective period. “Spectators who know Godard’s works might have fun spotting these influences but those unfamiliar with his filmography should be able to simply enjoy the aesthetic for what it is and how it captures the period,” says Hazanavicius. Wiazemsky has told French press that she is pleased with the film. Hazanavicius has no idea, however, of Godard’s opinion. “I sent him a note the day the film went into pre-production. While we were shooting, he asked if he could see the screenplay, so I sent it to him. I never got a response,” he reveals. “When the film was finished, I sent another note saying I could organise a screening but I didn’t get a reply. To be honest, I wasn’t s expecting a response.” ■
It’s a complex role in which Godard is at once cruel and comic. Was it difficult to bring these two elements together?
‘I was wary of playing a figure with such a high public profile’
I played the character written by Michel. In the film, Godard is someone who wants to go in a certain direction but Louis Garrel those around him won’t let him go there. It’s not that he is necessarily mean. He met the woman he loved under a different set of circumstances but as he goes through this period of change, this creates a tension. The story is a bit like a Russian doll, if you like. You have the backdrop of a country in crisis, in which Godard is an artist in crisis, that in turn creates tension in his personal relationship, so you then have a couple in crisis.
This is not the first time you have starred in a film set against the backdrop of 1968. Is it a period of French history that interests you? When I was a high-school student, I would get involved in demonstrations — it’s a sort of rite of passage in France and a mark of becoming a citizen. We’d look on the students of 1968 with a mix of admiration and envy for the way in which they brought the country to a halt. We were fascinated by what they’d done. It was an obstacle too because we didn’t want to simply imitate a past generation. One of my first roles was in [Bernardo] Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, which takes place against the backdrop of the 1968 protests, and then I played in my father Philippe Garrel’s film Regular Lovers, which is again set then. After that, one of my own shorts featured a scene capturing the shoot of a film set in ’68, and then Michel approached me with this role. It’s got to the point where characters from the different films are beginning to bump into one another at demonstrations. It’s as if my fascination with the period has trapped me in some way [laughs].
What are you working on now?
Louis Garrel in Redoubtable
I am currently on the set of Pierre Schoeller’s Un Peuple Et Son Roi, about the French Revolution. I am playing Robespierre, another highly political figure but this time not treated in a comic manner.
July 13, 2017 Screen International at Jerusalem 7