09/09/2023 - VENICE 2023: The French director moves away from the workplace and out to a quiet seaside resort, where a famous actor is wallowing in an existential crisis

(© Philippe Quaisse)

Once again, Stéphane Brizé is in town, competing at the 80th Venice International Film Festival just two years after Another World [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Stéphane Brizé
film profile] did likewise in 2021. Out of Season [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Stéphane Brizé
film profile] is quite literally another world compared to his previous films, as he moves away from the workplace and out to a quiet seaside resort, where a famous actor wallowing in an existential crisis secludes himself but is contacted by an old flame of yesteryear. Stellar leads are performed by Guillaume Canet and Alba Rohrwacher, with Brizé himself in a typecast supporting part.

Cineuropa: When we met in 2021, you were presenting Another World, the third part of your trilogy on workplace themes. Was there an urge to do something different after that journey?
Stéphane Brizé: Actually, I first started to write a fourth story in the workplace “trilogy”, which was really not bad at all, but there were things in the script I felt I’d already discussed in previous instalments. This was in COVID-19 times, when we were all at home with plenty of time to reflect, and I was increasingly drawn to telling something involving timeless emotions and universal feelings. The idea of a couple meeting again after ten or 15 years apart, at an empty seaside resort, had been with me for some time.

Such a Pretty Little Beach with Gérard Philipe, The Lacemaker with Isabelle Huppert, and A Man and a Woman, of course – there’s almost a little genre of its own, of French films taking place around empty seaside resorts, isn’t there?
And don’t forget Les Valseuses. There’s just this great poetic quality to be found in these places – some really beautiful images. That’s why we revisit them from time to time. I contemplated having A Man and a Woman playing on the television in the hotel room, partly as an homage to my good personal friend Claude Lelouch, but there was just not enough time to get it in. It would have fitted really well, though.

There’s also a possible homage to Bill Murray, especially his work with Sofia Coppola in Lost in Translation and Jim Jarmusch in Broken Flowers, via the tragicomic performance by your leading man, Guillaume Canet. Would you agree on the comparison?
I fully understand the Murray parallel. Those characters he did for Jarmusch and Coppola had some kind of “floaty” quality, fumbling around in the air, unable to grasp where they are in life at that moment, really lost – much like Mathieu is here. As for the comic part of the tragicomedy, I wanted to inject some mockery into the pains of this well-off celebrity character that Mathieu is; it would have felt indecent to do otherwise after showing the very concrete hardships of the working class in parts of the trilogy.

Why did you choose a film actor as the main character, and why did you choose Canet to play him?
I ask myself the same questions at times. Possibly because I wanted to address something “indecent”, as it were. It’s not the profession of acting per se that’s of importance, but I wanted his job to be one in which there’s something both heroic and ironic – heroic because he represents human experience and emotions via his portrayals, and ironic because if an actor doesn’t make a film or doesn’t show up on stage, who cares? Again, there’s room for mockery, as he’s a rather laughable fellow. I didn’t know Guillaume Canet personally, but I chose him because I have noticed through his acting an ability not to show who he really is. Also, there’s a certain amount of sadness, partly from his own childhood, which is something he has mentioned in interviews. He just felt very right for what I needed here, and this mask he seems to be wearing just touched me. There are, of course, parts of myself in Guillaume’s character, as well as in Alba’s.

You actually play a character in the film, the theatre director from the play that Mathieu has abandoned, seen in photos and heard on voicemail; it’s a convincing typecast performance. What made you take on this role?
It was cheaper, you know, than hiring an actor… No, seriously, during the editing, I used my own voice, and it didn’t sound too bad, so I just kept it. There’s also something funny about playing a director in a film you directed, telling your leading actor that he’s just shit.

Will you return yet again to that fourth part of your workplace journey?
I have to rewrite it. The idea of this new story is not one, but three, ideas. But I just finished this film, just eight days ago. So right now, I’m on a bit of a holiday.