Dienstag 13.12.2011
20.30 Uhr
L’ECOLE DE LA CHAIR / DIE SCHULE DES BEGEHRENS | Frankreich / Belgien / Luxemburg, 1998 | 100 Minuten | Cannes 1998: Wettbewerb | Regie: Benoît Jacquot | Buch: Jacques Fieschi, nach dem Roman von Yukio Mishima | Kamera: Caroline Champetier | Montage: Luc Barnier | Produktionsdesign: Katia Wyszkop | Darsteller: Isabelle Huppert (Dominique)| Vincent Martinez (Quentin) | Vincent Lindon (Chris) | Marthe Keller (Madame Thorpe) | François Berléand (Soukaz) | Danièle Dubroux (Dominques Freundin) | Bernard Le Coq (Cordier) | Roxane Mesquida (Marine)
Q-Does it seem that The School of Flesh could be your breakthrough film internationally, with a big star, Isabelle Huppert, and a narrative pleasing a larger audience?
My friend, Olivier Assayas, saw it three days ago. He liked it, and said it’s not in the same "regime" as the earlier films. In the others, the story was always "destructing" itself, and it was difficult to know what the story was. This story is simply told. Maybe that’s why you think there will be a meeting with a large audience. About casting Huppert: I don’t realize at which point it’s important about having a great star. In France it doesn’t matter that much. There, Sandrine and Virginie in my previous films are also very popular and very great actresses.
Q-Once again, Caroline Champetier is your cinematographer.
The last time was la fille seule, and this was the same kind of "bete," the challenge to be as close as possible to the figure of a woman. Caroline wanted very much to photograph Isabelle, who is her favorite actor, and I thought maybe it was important to have a woman filming a woman. Caroline knew where I wanted to go with the camera better than anyone, and in both movies I had the big question: what does a woman want? Before, it was a young woman. Here, a less young woman.
Q-So where do you look with the camera on Huppert for this subtle investigation?
In the relationship between the situation and maybe her face?... (Changing his mind) No, it’s something between the actor and the character. With Huppert doing the role, I decided to do more with the actress than there is character. Filming that, I tried to know, to arrive at some little precis of an answer. Maybe I’ll know in four or five films. I’ve never filmed a mother. I’d like to film a mother, in relation to her children.
Q-This film is built on closeups of Isabelle Huppert.
Of ten shots of her, nine are closeups. Extreme closeups. This movie is about sex and sexuality. It’s about flesh, but it’s all on the face, a paradox for me. Godard said, talking about Hitchcock, "He filmed women’s faces like they were their asses." There’s something so specific in film. The closer you are to faces, the closer you are to the sexual nerve. There are also one or two scenes of my couple making love. I asked myself whether to do them. I finally decided it would be very mechanical just to see their faces.
Q-Your lead actor, Vincent Martinez, who plays the young gigolo?
It’s his first movie. He’s 21, brother of the actor, Olivier Martinez, who is very famous in France. I chose him very quickly. Directors say, "I saw 100 people." I saw four or five boys. He was one of the first ones. I tested him with Isabelle. At once, she told me, "That’s him."
Q-Does the camera love certain actors?
Not the camera. It’s a mechanical eye, a go-between the director and light. The camera loves a face if it is loved by the director and light together.
Q-What if the director loves a face but light doesn’t?
(Laughs) There’s nothing on screen. A blank spot. But if the light loves a face and the director doesn’t, sometimes there is something. I think the light is stronger than the director!
Q-For this film, you are shooting in the homosexual milieu of Mishima. Was that a challenge?
I’ve never forgotten that it was a homosexual story. I had some special consultants who would tell me, "These kind of people are OK. These kinds of places are OK." I was very interested in the constant inversion of everything. The main female is a male character, Obviously, Mishima identified with that woman. I don’t know exactly who I identify with.
Q-Talk about working with Huppert.
She’s not acting for an audience. It’s not for the scenario, the script, the part. She’s acting for the director she decides to work with. As an actress, she needs only a few indications. She doesn’t ask more: something about costumes, one or two psychological cues, and that’s all. She wants to act as if she’s going on the set to sleep and dream. She has a day life and shooting a film is her night life. For The School of Flesh, we read the script together. She read it to me. That’s all. We talked about how her character, Dominique, would be dressed, how short her hair would be. That’s it. And Isabelle likes very much la fille seule. She asked me to do something like I’d done with Virginie Ledoyen. So the first energy of this film is similar to what I’d done before: a long shot on the face.
(A Talk With Benoit Jacquot - Peter Brunette and Gerald Peary. Aus: Cineaste, Vol.XXV, No.3, Summer 2000, pp.23-27)
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