As for the sex, Frank and Marussia have it sooo good. I’m trying hard to remember when was the last time I saw a married couple (with kids) with such an active, gratifying sex life… in the movies, I mean, for in real life that’s what’s marriage is all about, right? When Frank is kicked out of the used car-parts scheme from which he managed to make a buck, he starts to fear that Marussia may lose her desire and eventually dump him. “You can’t talk about sex without talking about money”, said Trebal to Chiaroscuro. “And I wanted to talk about love, but in the case of Frank, it’s about amour propre (self-love), and how money interferes in sexuality.” “Sex is the last resort of the poor, and of everybody in fact”, she adds. “The intimacy that one can share with someone else is the most precious thing in life, and I wanted to show that even these down-and-out people, they possess wealth, a carnal one. But this treasure must be nourished by the conditions of life, by money, and the same money that helps nourish this intimacy can also bring it to an abyss. So, love and sexuality suddenly are ruled by the language of the economy. Sex is transaction, a relation of force and power.” And as we talk about the economy, rising inequality and the crumbling of the middle class, Trebal asserts: “I’m interested in the class struggle, the exploitation of men, this savage process of de-industrialization. And I think it’s a pity the disappearance of the working class.” “I meet these people, ordinary people, and they were all heroes, they are full of fiction. I mean, faced to a violent, crushing reality, I see this ability of reinvention of these people to survive, even when the relation of forces is not in their favour.” Trebal says that she doesn’t want to tell a story of crumbling lives, of defeat, but, through Frank, “I want to show how far one is supposed to go to take part in society, to belong somewhere, for the sake of his or her own self-respect. I don’t want to show people satisfied with their condition at the margins, but the ones who will make whatever is necessary to buy their work.” Trebal’s perception of the working class may strike a chord with the cinema of Ken Loach, maybe the last living true socialist in film, “but Loach is not so frontal when dealing with sex”, remarks Trebal. But she admits that the Brit is an important reference, as much as Jean-Luc Godard of “Vivre sa Vieexternal link” (in her words, the film that most relates to her work). In the present film world, though, doesn’t she feel alone, exploring these themes that nobody seems to care about any more? “Not at all”, she says, almost triumphant. “I am in good company with [Pier Paolo] Pasolini, [Rainer Werner] Fassbinder… I see their films and I tell myself, it doesn’t matter the epoch, there are still films that inspire.”
7/13