Interview courtesy of Artificial Eye.
Mathieu Amalric began in working in movies as a props person before moving his way through the ranks as an assistant editor then first assistant with directors like Louis Malle, Romain Goupil, Alain Tanner, Joao Monteiro, before going on to act in films such as Arnaud Desplechin’s Rois Et Reine (which garnered him a Cesar and Lumiere award for Best Actor in 2005), as well as taking the director’s reigns himself, producing a number of shorts and acclaimed feature length movies including La Chose Publique.
Mathieu shows his talents both in front and behind the camera in the Cannes-recognised On Tour, which hits UK cinemas this week…
Where did the inspiration for On Tour come from?
To tell the truth, from Laetitia Gonzalez and yaël Fogiel, the producers, who, when the mixing of La Chose Publique wasn’t even finished (way back in 2002!), said to me: “Now then, what’s next?” So, totally empty but very touched by their interest, I left for several days with Marcelo Novais-Teles, a friend who I often like to kick ideas around with. And it was a text by Colette, The Other Side of Music-Hall, that I’d been carrying round with me for a long time, which came back to the surface. It consists of notes made during a tour, written for a newspaper, which published them as a serial, sublime sketches of her life as an actress, a somewhat scandalous pantomime (Colette was then aged between 33 and 39), lost in the provinces: “We run towards the hotel, to the stifling dressing room, and the blinding footlights. We run, impatient, chattering, clucking like poultry, towards the illusion of living fast, of being warm, of working, of barely thinking, of carrying within us neither regret, nor remorse, nor memories...”
We searched for contemporary equivalents; in striptease, in night-life, elsewhere, but nothing came - we couldn’t find this attraction for movement; Colette’s taste for provocation bursting with health, like a declaration of freedom by the body. Everything brought us back to stories of necessity - to prisoners.
Is that when you thought of the New burlesque girls?
In fact, it was thanks to an article in Libération which delivered a contagious account of their appearance one night at the Zèbre, a Parisian cabaret. Across a double-page, there were already photos of Dirty Martini, the most Fellini-esque, and Kitten On The Keys, the one who plays piano. And suddenly, we had the sensation that Colette was there, in this playful and torrid sensuality, this intimate and political affirmation of the potential beauty of everybody, regardless of age and however non-conformist they may be. The dangerous pleasure of performing; the timidity, the physical bravery, and the tantalizing fragility.
That was the start. But at this stage, based solely on scraps of paper and some photos, as if to allow the imagination to blossom. I mean, I didn’t want to meet them straight away in the flesh. I wanted to have a story first. And it was just then that the French independent producer Humbert Balsan committed suicide. This hit me hard with the realization of the possible end of our mortal selves. What do you do when a force of resistance like him disappears?
Those are two apparently unrelated events…
Of course, but it’s often the clash of two elements which gives rise to a story. Tenuous at first, but which obsesses you and feeds almost off itself, then on everything. Marcelo and I had always explored another avenue: my fascination for producers, their folly and their bravery. Where do they find the strength to continue?
And we made the link. The story of a man struggling against his melancholy. A former TV producer who makes a momentary comeback thanks to these girls who he wants to proudly display in his country, like boastful proof of his resurrection, of his return. Who wants to remain, in his unpleasant manner, a prince, whatever it costs him. But without a kingdom, and above all without power – apart, that is, from the pointless power of his liberty. A man with no home, who no longer knows if holding on means knowing when to leave the stage (which he’s done), or knowing when to stay in the spotlight (which his friends have done).
So where did you see a show for the first time?
In Nantes, at the Banana Hangar, thanks to Kitty Hartl, dance programmer at the Lieu Unique theatre who, in a certain way, is the model for Joachim. I met the girls with Philippe Di Folco, who came on board to finish co-writing the screenplay; he’s a writer and a man curious about everything - passionately erudite. Three intense days and nights to superimpose, with smiles on our faces, our intuitions onto the reality. After that, I went to see some festivals with 150 acts in three days, in San Francisco, New York, Naples, and so on. And I put together my own troupe, step by step over at least two years.
New burlesque gained wider acceptance through the media-savvy Dita Von Teese...
The actresses in On Tour are those who made possible the revival New burlesque. In the beginning, it was a lesbian movement, which started in 1995 with a group called the Velvet Hammer. These girls have politics in their bodies, a resistance to formatted physiques which requires no words. Nowadays, New burlesque has been somewhat appropriated into the canon
of Las Vegas with its more conformist bodies.
Mange Ta Soupe was a film about your family, Le Stade de Wimbledon showed the woman you loved. For the first time, you direct yourself in On Tour. Is this a step into self-portrait?
Goodness me, I don’t know - I haven’t really thought about it. I didn’t want to appear in On Tour. Everyone except me seemed to know I was going to end up doing it! It became a joke which didn’t make me laugh, because I was genuinely looking for someone. And then, yes, three weeks before the shoot, despite my misgivings, and protesting, it ended up being me.
Did the fact that you were acting in the film help you approach the directing differently?
Yes, it was quite practical, I must admit, and created an amusing complicity. I could orient the movement, generate surprises, and receive them. Within the frame, you realise when it’s the moment to make the drama come to the fore. During the scene on the train, for example, at the start of the film, I said to myself: “OK, you like Ophüls, and like in Le Plaisir, you’d like to see all these women sleepy and lascivious in a compartment. But that doesn’t make a scene!” So I picked up my phone and I started shouting. An actor senses if there’s something to get your teeth into, if there’s a scene to be acted out. And immediately, the girls and the gorgeous Roky were all playing along.
And then Christophe Beaucarne, the director of photography, and I were concerned with just one thing: striving so that the spectator goes with the characters, and doesn’t care who’s making the film. It was like an obsession which translated into some very specific questions about the directing: the right distance, discretion, warmth, fluidity of movement, and also live sound.
The issue of documentary and drama comes up repeatedly in On Tour...
All the time. The question came up from the writing stage, then during the preparation for production – which, incidentally, I find increasingly difficult to dissociate from directing. Deciding where you spend the money is already part of the directing process; that’s where the film is really defined, in fact. So you might as well get the project set-up right.
Then we had the intuition that to preserve the spontaneous energy that is vital for shows, we should set up a real tour. We thought the camera alone would not be enough for the girls, that they needed a packed hall. And we would sleep in the hotels where we’d film. From Le Havre to Rochefort, passing through Nantes, we put on a free show for anyone who signed a release form. We could never have afforded all those extras! We only had two-and-a-half hours to shoot each sequence, even those including the dialogues, but that created urgency, a precision which paradoxically bolstered the drama. Because the numbers were always watched, experienced by one of the characters, and the directing was built around that.
There were, of course, some extraordinary moments, so many that the first edit lasted 3 hours 15 mins. What followed, with editor Annette Dutertre, was a struggle between drama and documentary. And unsurprisingly – though with, at times, some terrible regrets – the drama, the characters became the central force.
The film shows places that we usually experience in passing, like hotel chains. Why did you want to film in these ‘neutral’ spaces in provincial France?
Colette spoke a lot about these places where you don’t see anything. That’s what you feel on tour: you’re somewhere, without really being there. And I found there was an amusing misunderstanding: Joachim is fantasizing about America, while the girls are fantasizing about France and Paris. But on tour they see almost nothing of it, or just that side of it.
There’s an unsettling scene at a highway gas station between Joachim and the woman at the cash desk…
It echoes Les passantes by Georges Brassens: just an exchange of glances, she who you could have loved... I like the idea of tours and circuses that go from town to town, the encounter between the residents and those who are just passing through. Very secret, unexpressed sentiments float around at toll booths and highways. And then there’s the incredible actress, Aurélia Petit. And all those uniforms, too: cashiers, air hostesses, hotel staff, social obligations, obligatory obedience...
However strange and empty they seem, the hotels in On Tour become the locus of gaiety and abandon. The film is really a comedy!
Comedy? That depends on the moment. Joachim is so up-tight. But sure, the New burlesque girls have a knack of transforming any place into a party. They never wallow in moaning. I love ham actors, people who like to make a table of people laugh, who go too far, but who we still need to have around. I’m always afraid they’ll sink into despair. With the girls in the troupe, it’s the same. There was no need for them to recount their past; their faces and bodies tell their own story. And yet, they can really transform a dull chain hotel into a place of desire.
Joachim feels that he is “surrounded by witches,” but who is he really?
Aha! We come back to the impenetrable mystery of the figure of the producer who, as the producer Jean-Pierre Rassam used to say, has the duty of shouldering irresponsibility, whatever the cost. And a producer is also an actor if he wants to survive, to charm, to terrify, to dream. Suddenly I’m thinking of Corneille’s Matamore: “When I want I terrify, and when I want I charm.” The cigar, the glitz, the schmaltzy costumes, they are all just decoys, tools of the trade, traps. Here, as a tribute to veteran producer Paulo Branco, I wore a moustache. What’s more, after making love, Mimi seems to think it’s a dressing-up costume. At that moment, Joachim is just a man who’s sleeping at last.
Is there an instruction manual for filming women between themselves?
I don’t really believe in male filmmakers who supposedly know what’s going on inside women’s heads. Rather, let’s just embrace the fact that cinema allows us to waken the adolescent boy in us who fantasizes about girls’ bedrooms.
A moment during the shoot comes back to me: on the balcony when Mimi is telling Dirty about her adventure in the bathroom. We shot several takes, they strolled about, Mimi’s character remaining a little shamefaced and taciturn, but warming up in contact with her friend; that was the planned scene. Fine. We’re about to change shot when an impulse comes to me: “Oh, Mimi, why don’t you tell Dirty what just happened?” Mimi recounts, in her own words, then Dirty reacts, acting (because, once again, as show girls, they’re always ‘dramatizing’). And there I am, behind the camera, headphones on, and thanks to their generosity and their playfulness, I entered the girls’ bedroom!
The mere fact of filming these women becomes an event. They have such charisma!
I admit that the narrative stunt of bringing these American girls to France saved me from a certain ordinariness, that’s for sure. Everything suddenly became interesting, fresh. We shared mutual fantasies, we exchanged our territories.
When you use the word territory, we come back again to this vision of a man amongst women...
Philippe and I would say: first of all, the power of the group. Joachim initially doesn’t look at them individually, then we move in on one. Chance or destiny, whichever you like, conspire for them to come together and something happens. Which in fact brings him back, soothed, within the group. It is the women together who ‘adopt’ him at the end. AE
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