Talking to Jethro Massey on the occasion of the debut of Paul & Paulette Take a Bath [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Jethro Massey
scheda film] in the Venice International Film Critics’ Week, one takes note of his particular Parisian adopted identity, as he’s lived and worked in the city for two decades. It’s a unique background for an otherwise British-raised filmmaker, and his dark-comedy debut gains mileage from the tension of very different things being rubbed together – elements such as first dates and historical war tourism, and a guileless American like Paul (Jérémie Galiana) and an ennui-laden Parisian like Paulette (Marie Benati).

Cineuropa: Tell us about the journey from your previous filmmaking work towards making your first feature. And what was the initial impetus for the premise and story?
Jethro Massey: I've made films since I was a kid, and it was what I always wanted to do. I moved to Paris 20-odd years ago and sort of found my way. I got a camera at a time when online video was taking off. So, I managed to find a way to make a living doing that, and a little business I set up grew to a point where I could say to myself, “Listen, I can do a feature now.”

It was a very small production. We had a crew of about 15 people, with two main actors as well. I had experience in Paris, including with crews and locations. For the film itself, I was writing another script, which I'll make one day, and this image came up on my Facebook feed of a guy I know in Winston Churchill's bathtub. There’s something in today's world where everybody's posting photos of themselves, and that reminded me of another photo that I'd seen of the photographer Lee Miller in Hitler's bathtub, which is one of those images that when you see it, you just think… what's the word?

Cognitive dissonance?
Yeah. And it felt like there was really fertile ground to explore that, these characters that go to places where terrible things have happened. So, I wanted to write a story that would take these two characters to this bathroom. As I'm in France, the smart thing to do was start on the Place de la Concorde with Marie Antoinette's execution, and then work out the story that would take them from one place to another. We watch all these films that have so much violence in them, and we have a fascination with it. It doesn't make us bad people. But why are we so drawn to it? I don't think we ask ourselves that question much. And it seemed like something I didn't have the answers to.

If we’re being reductive, the film has quite a stock scenario: boy meets girl in the City of Love and so on. Were you self-conscious about this, or did you just go with your creative gut, knowing the end result would be original and idiosyncratic?
Doing a first film, I wanted to tell a story that would work. When you're making something on a low budget, a two-hander is good. And it's personal: I came to Paris myself. I was walking down the street, eating a pain au chocolat every day, walking past the Arc de Triomphe, going, “My life's a dream.” I was working in a pub, but marvelling at the fact that I was living in a place that everybody dreams of coming to. But it doesn't go where your typical romantic comedy goes. I trusted myself to take it somewhere else.

Why were you so interested in having these documentary inserts about various atrocities across their romance? There’s this abundant interest in dictators, Vichy France, political violence…
If I’d been living in the UK, I could have made it just as well in London. But the more time you spend in Paris, the more you realise that it's a city that's built on blood and bones, like many major European capitals. They’re built on stolen riches. Some of that history is ignored, and I think it suits the country, and politicians, probably. You walk down these streets in Paris and you may see the plaque on the wall, but you don't really think about what it was.

What was your biggest challenge when making the film, from development to shooting and post-production? And are you looking to scale up and co-produce with another country or company for the next feature?
The biggest challenge was that I had a lot of hats on: I was the producer, the director and the writer, and I knew that the most important thing was pulling together a great creative team. But I directed the film very simply. I don’t want to produce unless I have to. For my next one, I want to find a great creative producer that I can work with.

I live in France, and I've got a good sort of team out there, but I want to carry on shooting in English. However, it probably makes sense for me to do post-production in France. So, you know, there are plenty of opportunities for a good co-production set-up.