Primary navigation
External links
Gaspar Noé
Gaspar Noé, Vincent Cassel & Monica Bellucci [leading actors] were interviewed at the National Film Theatre on the 11 October 2002 by Hannah Magill.
Gaspar Noé talks about his second feature, Irréversible, which justifiably caused enormous controversy at its premiere in Cannes. Told backwards in time, the story centres on a brutal act of sexual violence and its consequences.
Interview © BFI 2002
Courage
Pre-screening Introductions
Gaspar Noé: It's always easier to applaud before the movie; especially this one....
Monica Bellucci: This film is like life. A lot of pain; a lot of ecstasy. Enjoy.
GN: When she said ecstasy, you know, she was talking about the feeling. Well, both actually. Though none of the drugs used in this movie were real... At Cannes, people ran away, people fainted, people threw up but they were all just a bunch of wimps. I'm sure it'll be different here in London, because I heard you people were really tough around here. So we'll see all of you at the end of the movie; except maybe a few of you we'll check the names. Bye. Courage.
Post-screening Q & A with Gaspar Noé & Vincent Cassel:
Hannah Magill: I'd like to begin by asking you how you came to be working together. I know that you wanted to work together before this particular project came to fruition. Can you tell us about the process of coming together?
GN: One year ago I was getting to the pre-production stage of another movie I wanted to shoot in Tokyo, about a drug dealer. But the producer told me we couldn't get into pre-production before October. That was in May, before Cannes. I went to a nightclub for a few drinks and met Vincent. He asked what I was doing, and I told him I wasn't sure what I'd be doing that summer, but that I might be shooting an erotic movie that I'd produce myself, with a very low budget, and unknown people. He asked what was the movie about, and I said that it's the story of a couple, but it's very erotic, like In The Realm of the Senses. "I'd love to work with you." "Me too, but I don't think this is the right movie." "Well, just let me read the script." "There is no script, just a ten-page outline". But I asked anyway whether he thought Monica could be excited by the project? So I brought the script to them, and they were yes/no, yes/no. I didn't think they'd do it, or that I'd do it with them, but finally we came round to discussing who could produce the movie, and we met these two producers that Vincent had worked with before one was the producer of La Haine, and the other of The Brotherhood of the Wolf. And they said that if Monica and Vincent want to do this erotic project with you, go ahead, they'd find the financing. The problem was that Monica was starting The Matrix (Matrix Reloaded, the sequel) in September. So there was a very short time to pre-produce the movie and shoot it. Finally, I gave them the script and it was really too explicit, and I knew they'd refuse it. Which they did. But while we were having lunch with the producers I said ,"Why don't we just do another project: let's do a rape-revenge movie told backwards. With no explicit sex." They said, "You're joking". I said I wasn't. "Of course, we don't have enough time to write it down; but we could do a movie with a lot of master shots, and improvise. If I just write down the twelve scenes, then we can shoot the movie with twelve scenes that'll be told backwards." They said OK, but they didn't really believe me; the producers even less.... But they asked Vincent and Monica what they thought of it, and they said, "Yeah, we'll do it." And finally, because of their celebrity, much more than mine I scare a lot of people the producers went to the TV channels to find the finance, and because of the names of Monica and Vincent, the money was on the table. There was no title, no script. There was one condition, though: that the movie should be finished by the end of August. I said I wanted to do it violent. "I don't know if you've seen Pasolini's Salo, but I'd like to try something that will touch that kind of violence." But I think they hadn't seen that movie, the producers. The whole thing happened like that, but also because the energy of Vincent and Monica was heading in the same direction as the sort of movies that I wanted to do. So after a while it was "What can we do together?" "Whatever we want. The money's there." My previous movies had cost like $200,000 each, and suddenly I had a budget 20 times that. With six weeks to prepare and six weeks to shoot.
Vincent Cassel: It was five in the morning, in this club in Paris, and I hadn't seen Gaspar for a little while, and he came to me, a little drunk, and says, "Would you like to make the movie that Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise missed? I'd really like to do a pornographic movie with you and Monica." "What? What are you talking about? There's no way we could make this kind of movie with you." Then I came back home, and talked with Monica, and said it was funny, I'd met Gaspar, and he wants to make this porno with us, and that I'd said no, of course. She says, "What? You can't say that. You never know." So we started to talk with Gaspar, and I knew there was no way I would make a pornographic movie with Monica (or without, by the way), but we started to talk about everything but those things, and Gaspar gave us tapes of L'Histoire d'O and In the Realm of the Senses, and we watched and, honestly, with a lot of will.... it just wasn't possible. So we came back to Gaspar, and I said, "OK, let's find a solution. Maybe we could consider all those explicit scenes as stunts so we would have to have stunt doubles." "OK, no problem, maybe we could do that with digital..." So we just dropped it, and he laughed, "It's OK, we can make another movie." And first we thought of doing something with betrayal.
GN: It's worth mentioning that the erotic movie was told backwards; not totally, but... Because my first two movies were very linear, and you get tired of that. And there are directors around who match non-linear narratives with real notions, so you think, "Why should I do linear movies?" Things like Memento; much more interesting because they're much more mental than linear narratives. When you're jumping from one project to another, in one night, you have to ask what you can do there. "Let's take reverse chronological order on this project." I'd always thought that one day I'd do a rape movie, showing a rape as it could be in real life. Then the idea of the master shots was maybe coming from the project I'd wanted to do in Japan, which was supposed to be done with a lot of master shots. "Let's do the movie told backwards."
VC: It was like two months from the night we met in the club to the day we started to shoot the movie.
HM: And you went from wanting to do an erotic movie with no stars to doing an un-erotic movie with big stars...
GN: The good thing about all the talking we'd done about that erotic movie is that when we came to the love scene, which we shot on the first day of shooting, that was the scene Vincent and Monica were most concerned about. Not the rape scene, not the violence in the movie; it was showing their intimacy. I can understand why. But when you do a movie it's better to get rid of things that are problematic at the beginning. So we just rehearsed twice with a video camera. The set was ready, we had two run-throughs with a Mini DV machine, found it was 16 minutes, and I called for the steady-camera. And I had to wait in the kitchen, because I couldn't be behind the steady-camera. But it meant that at the end of the first day of shooting, we already had the 16 minutes shot that is at the end of the movie. If in one day we have 16 minutes, maybe in one week the movie will be finished...
VC: My first question that day was to ask because there were no lines, of course how long the scene should be. And he just said, "Anything between two and twenty minutes..."
GN: The movie was shot on Super 16 (and then transferred to high-definition video and then transferred back to 35mm 'scope). So the Super-16 camera has a 300 metres can on it, it gives you 21 minutes. So, beside that restriction, nothing.
Telling it Backwards
HM: In terms of telling the story backwards, do you think that makes a difference to the impact of the violent scenes? They come at the beginning rather than the end, so there isn't the usual big emotional build-up, build-up, build-up, then release. Was that deliberate, reversing a tradition of how rape-revenge movies work?
GN: I think you just get linked to the characters in the middle of the movie. At the beginning they're just two heavy rednecks. And in the middle of the movie when you come to see the rape scene then you see their more civilised aspect. You're getting into them, emotionally; then retrospectively you understand their whole behaviour. Someone told me the movie's not a drama; it's a tragedy. I asked what's the difference. In tragedies, you know what's going to happen next. People cannot fight against their fate. Whatever's going to happen, it's been written by someone above. In this case, written by the director...
HM: Is that a very negative view of human nature? That in a sense the bestial instincts within people will eventually come out?
GN: I don't think there are good instincts or bad instincts; it's just people trying to fight for their survival. And at times they get into revenge trips that are stronger than their brain.
HM: How do you feel about the shooting of the rape scene and the very violent murder scene at the start? Is it troubling to shoot something like that? Do you feel a distance from it as an actor?
VC: Well, you'd better have a distance from it. But altogether, the movie was pretty fun to shoot.
HM: For Monica, too?
VC: Yes, she told me she'd had a lot of fun doing it. Of course, it was very tiring to do the rape scene, and she didn't want me on set for it, which I understood. (I just went to the southwest of France to surf meanwhile). But we were calling at night to see if everything was OK. I mean I knew the guy, the actor, who used to be a world champion Thai boxer, so there was nothing I could do anyway... Between the takes he would talk about his kids and so on, so there was no ambiguity really, and I knew that, so it was more about not hurting her. The floor was made out of rubber, and because he's a boxer, he knows how to control his movements and everything. I was never worried about Gaspar I knew the movie wasn't about stealing something out of us; but more about working together. We knew what the result was supposed to be, and what we were looking for. And when we went to Cannes I realised we had just what we were looking for. [Ironically:] Scandal.
HM: It can be a problem with films that contain rape scenes that they can seem too much like sex scenes. We're used to seeing scenes portraying sex; but to shoot a rape scene in a way to make it un-erotic, is that difficult?
GN: It wasn't really about making it erotic or un-erotic. The rape is seen from the victim's point of view. The rapist, if you really consider it, is really quite cartoonish. He's almost too bad to be real. Anyway, because the camera is following her from the back, and is put on the floor, like she's stuck to the floor, you are in her head. The people who get pissed off with that scene, it's never women, it's mostly men. Mostly aggressive or control-freak men. Because they feel invaded by the movie. Men, in general, have always been afraid of being raped, from when they were kids, and as soon as they're put in a position where they have to consider a rape from a woman's point of view...
HM: But in terms of your use of a fixed camera, and not using any cuts in that scene, is that to break down the use of her body?
GN: I didn't do it rationally; I didn't think about it. The whole movie's about being in the brain of someone who wants to take revenge. They don't take revenge on the right guy; they kill the wrong guy; whatever. But you are with them when they are taking the revenge, and so the camera is as excited as Pierre or Vincent during that scene. In the case of Monica, I did the camera myself. I was preceding her, and then suddenly I put the camera on the ground, and I just couldn't move it again. I would have felt ashamed of shaking the camera above her. That would be like sharing the rapist's point of view. So you don't even think about it, you just do it, and say this is what it should be like.
VC: Three months later, Gaspar came up to our home and said he had something to show us, because he'd added something to the rape scene; and it's the dick. The dick is CGI, and he asked us if it was right.
GN: Because when the guy was coming up you would notice that his zip was closed, and I saw there was something that didn't work there. He's just raped her, and you don't see his penis. So I added it with the guy who was doing all the special effects in post-production, and I knew we should show it to Vincent and Monica especially Monica, because she was the person concerned. And she said that it looks great, looks much more real. And you're not really expecting that detail, especially in a movie with an actress as well-known as Monica.
The Violence in Life
Audience question: Why did Vincent take on the role?
VC: I did it because I saw the first two movies he did, and I thought he was very interesting even though he was very shocking. Anytime I see a movie that provokes a real reaction from the audience, I am very interested. We see so much crap, so many things that are formatted; we're so used to seeing violence where people explode all the time... It's only when somebody tells a story that could happen, to anybody, to any of us, that it will provoke these kinds of reaction. People get mad, people start to lose their minds and say incredible things like, "You're a fascist," "The government should forbid the making of these kind of movies." With this movie, for example, some people very close, from my own family even, looked at me after the screening, and it was like they didn't know me. We get used to everything, but to a movie like this you can't get used. I don't actually want to see the movie again I saw it twice, that's enough for ten years. But I have the feeling of having made something special, instead of just another movie from this huge industry. That's why I wanted to do the movie, and I think Monica wanted to do it for the same reason. As for why Gaspar does this kind of movie... I don't want to know.
Audience question: regarding the violence in the film.
GN: Violence is in life. I know so many people who've been raped; though I don't know any who've been killed. I know closely men and women who've been raped. It's part of the human experience to meet violence. If it's not when you're five, it's when you're ten, it's during work-time, whatever. But you cannot clean out the violence of reality when you do a movie. The difference is, it's a useful movie. Salo is a useful movie even if it's very symbolic. There are many movies that deal with the animality within human beings. People are just fighting for their survival. And sometimes they get into neuroses of power that bring them to be violent with other people.
VC: The other actor in the movie, Albert Dupontel, always says that the most violent book ever is the Bible.
Audience question: Was every shot a single take?
GN: No, they were shot from, let's say, six times to twenty times. Maybe Vincent would have worried most about the love scene at the end of the movie that was shot at the very beginning, but for me the hardest scene, the nightmare, was the party scene. That one we shot 20 times, as I just couldn't control 100 extras, doing drugs, drinking... half of the crew doing drugs... everybody trying to seduce a girl on set. I felt like dying the weekend after shooting that scene.
Audience question: regarding the film's look.
GN: In the whole movie there was a progression from the shakiest camera ever to a very flat, liquid camera. And the colours go from dark red and black and brown to like greens and yellows and blues. I think the first time you see blue in the movie is at the end when you see the sky.
Audience question: regarding pre-planning
GN: You can consider a movie as music. I wanted to start chaotic and then get flat. I couldn't time the scenes beforehand; didn't know if a scene was going to be three minutes or fifteen. I just had to be with the actors on set with the camera, to see how long they'd be. For example, the scene with Monica, or the subway scene, or the scene with them at the end on the bed the actors' proposals were always going to be better than anything I could impose on them. Bring me ideas, I'll let you know whether they sound true or false. For example, when Monica did that thing with her hand, I wouldn't have thought of that; she came up with that. When on the subway the actor starts asking Vincent about how he makes Monica come, no-one expected him to say that, not even Vincent or Monica. So that makes the whole scene full of life. I used to say I was orchestrating the movie, not directing it.
VC: Depending on what take had been edited, the movie would have a different sense, because we never said the same thing twice.
Audience question: regarding digital post-production
GN: There were lots of accidents. Sometimes the mike would be in shot, but we knew we could erase it digitally later. I told everyone we should never stop a take unless we were really short of negative or there was a huge camera problem. There were many technical problems that we erased in post-production some sound problems, like when there was a huge sound in the middle of a scene in the apartment when they're supposed to be alone. But we knew we could erase it later. And there was one scene where the crew me, the camera assistant, the guy holding the mike were reflected in the window of the apartment, but we erased it later. If the movie had been shot as movies were shot ten years ago, you would have noticed all these problems. Hopefully this high-definition post-production permitted a lot of things that are good for the movie.
Audience question: regarding Straw Dogs and censorship
GN: I'm not provoking the British censors, it's not my problem. It's not a concern when you're doing a movie. I was thinking of Straw Dogs when I did this movie, and when I did my previous movie, because it's a movie that impressed me more than maybe even Taxi Driver, and maybe the only movie in my whole life that made me walk out because I couldn't handle it. (I almost walked out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I stayed to the end.) It took me a few years before I could watch the rest of Straw Dogs [after the rape sequence]; it didn't even happen to me with Sal'. The whole feeling in that rape scene is really twisted I don't understand why a movie like Straw Dogs could be banned [from video release] for so many years in England. It's just as if the British government had more contempt towards their citizens than the French government. People are mature in any country why should the British think their citizens are more stupid than French citizens. Stupid. Especially [in relation to] Straw Dogs it's not appealing, my movie's not appealing there are some movies that can make revenge seem appealing, where the revenge is taken on the right guy, and they're much better than the police. That's not the case in these movies. So I don't understand the censor's role, except in perpetuating the rituals of power.
Audience question: regarding revenge
GN: The man who's trying to rationalise the whole thing of revenge, that could be almost a Dustin Hoffman figure. The kind of hero that you always have in these revenge movies "Someone raped my wife", or "Someone killed my wife, I'm gonna kill the guy" then the other kind "No, no; you've got to think with your brains, not with your guts" and at the end he comes on like Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs to commit a murder. But the thing here is that also he kills someone who's going to rape his best friend. So in a way he's just protecting his best friend. Maybe he doesn't kill the guy who raped their mutual girlfriend, but at the same time he's just saving the life of his best friend. And then he goes too far, because people who are not used to violence, when they get into it, sometimes they just lose their mind much more than people who are used to it. It's not really a speech on violence. I got into too many fights myself. I'm not proud of it. It just happens.
The Kubrick Factor
Audience question: regarding the influence of Stanley Kubrick and A Clockwork Orange
GN: I heard someone say I'd made references to Kubrick and John Boorman. I said, "Why Boorman; because of the rape?" "No; that's the music at the end of Zardoz." But I really hadn't remembered it from when I'd seen it at about the age of twelve. There's also a story about pregancy at the end of Zardoz, so I had to go out and buy the DVD, and I sort of said, "Oh yeah..." Maybe it was an unconscious thing that I used that music, but I really liked it, there's something about it. Compared to all the other music in the movie, where there's a sense it's just coming from a radio, this piece is like a comment on the movie. I had this scene at the end and I went through so much music for a soundtrack, not all classical, but then I heard this symphony by Beethoven and just started crying. And everbody in the editing room said this was great. You can't explain why it works; unless, of course, it's that the music is better than the movie. Everybody liked it; I had trouble instead with the strobe lighting at the end. I had to fight to keep that.
HM: But you do have a Kubrick reference with the 2001...
GN: There are references to many, many directors and many movies. There is Kubrick; there is mainly Kalatazov [Mikhail Kalatazovishvili], a Russian director who did this movie called I Am Cuba [1964]. I don't know if it was released here, but you can get it on DVD. It's a movie made mainly with master shots. But of course there are many references in the movie. When people say it's a homage to Boorman of course I was touched by the rape scene in Deliverance. And if there's a homage to Sam Peckinpah it's because I read an interview with him saying that he always wanted to do a life-affirming movie after all these movies about animal human behaviour. I think he never really came to do a life-affirming movie; so I really wanted to cross Straw Dogs and someting more life-affirming. I don't know entirely if the scene about having a baby counts as that; but at the end you have people dreaming of a better future, or just a future. There's an animal reality they can stop with these virtual projections into the future. I can't say it's really life-affirming, but it is about perpetuating the species.
Audience question: regarding Cannes selection and reception
GN: We always wanted to have the movie at Cannes. It's the kind of movie that, if it does well at Cannes, everybody sees. If you're in competition it could be better or worse. At a certain point, though, we proposed it to the main competition, who said they'd really like a Vincent and Monica movie, but this movie's too heavy to handle. So the producers asked if I wanted to make any changes; but I said we'd just take it to the Directors' Fortnight, to the Critics' Week let's not change a frame of the movie. The movie's much more than just the Cannes festival. But eventually, after, I think, seeing my other movies, they said they'd accept it for the main competition. It was mainly the new artistic director of the festival who really wanted the film, and he said they'd come to an arrangement to put the film in competition, but at midnight, which had never happened before. We had these conditions. Gilles Jacob and the rest of the festival commitee didn't want us to show the film to the daily journalists. They said if we really wanted to release the film on the same day as its Cannes screening, we could show it to the monthly magazines or the weekly magazines, but not to the daily journalists, because they had to discover it in Cannes. So a lot of people were really pissed off with our publicists, with the distributors and even with the movie, because they were not invited to the two press screenings, where we were obliged to admit only the magazines. So we ended up with 100% of the French press hating the movie, even if some of the same papers had, within a fortnight, changed their minds. There's too much energy in Cannes "It's good" / "It's bad"; people were screaming in the audience. But that's quite good. That's part of the pleasure where else can you go to scream? You have 4,000 people in the theatre and you start to scream, and everybody starts screaming; it's part of the game. And I knew my movie was the kind of film that would get everybody shouting; it's cool. I told my friends, please start whistling or screaming it's funny, like going to the World Cup.
Audience question: regarding regular use of the actor Philippe Nahon
GN: Mainly, he had been working for free in my previous movies, and he would have felt betrayed if I had not taken him in. I really did want to put him into the movie, but because the whole movie was just twelve scenes, and I knew what they were, at first I couldn't find a place for him. Except maybe being the cop, who's asking Albert Dupontel which party they've come from. But I said I'd rather have a cop to play a cop so the guy who plays the cop is a cop, the transvestites are transvestites, the two big guys were the security guys from the production. So I'd promised Philippe a great part, and he was ringing almost every day, asking what his part was. As we were shooting I was saying, "Don't worry; you'll have your scene." The first week he wasn't involved; the second he wasn't involved, and he's calling, "When am I shooting?" I mean, he's like a stepfather to me, I've been working so much with him, so I cannot betray his trust, and I say, "You'll have a great scene, I promise." So I decided I wanted him in the opening scene of the movie, which would come at the end of the shoot. He comes, and he asks if he's playing with Vincent, who he likes a lot, or with Albert. Or whether he has a scene with Monica? In fact, the guy he's with at the beginning of the movie is a very close friend of mine, who was perhaps the most excellent director of my generation, who did too much speed; and actually he's in a mental hospital because he did too many amphetamines, and has some other problems. But he can come out of the hospital to do this one scene. So when Philippe asks again who the actor is, I just tell him it's a friend from a mental hospital... At first he's he's like, errrrr?, and then, even though he doesn't usually drink, he went to a bar and started drinking. I convinced him not to get drunk, and he asked again what the scene was. I said maybe he could just be on a bed talking about how time destroys all things because that was originally going to be the title of the movie and he'll try to give you a blow-job... "Oh, no, I don't want him to..." Finally, though, he was very amused, and he realised that the other guy, Stéphane, was really intelligent; he really liked the person and began to feel free, so we kept on shooting all night. It was the last take that made it into the movie. The guy was changing his dialogue in every single take, so I knew what Philippe Nahon would say, but not what the other guy would say. And in this last take, Philippe says, "I've been in prison for having sex with my daughter", and the other guy just says, "The western syndrome." A lot of people have asked me why he says this and I don't know. A lot of things in the movie are improvised. For instance, I never asked Albert Dupontel to ask Monica if the character played by Vincent makes her come; I'd just said, "Surprise me." There was just a weird energy on that take, that maybe was best for the movie. They did surprise me. That's why when I watch the movie it feels part of me and part of them.
HM: And your own bit part?
GN: The party scene is one continuous shot, but sometimes one master shot is made up of two shots that are digitally rearranged. In the nighclub scene it was easy to use many small takes, because it's so dark, and when the camera's moving through the dark you can match any take as long as the movement goes the same way and at the same speed. I was thinking some people might complain, as they did with Cruising, that I was being homophobic, so I decided to put myself into that scene. Once the whole movie had been shot, I decided to go back for just one shot of me getting an erection and masturbating while watching another guy. So we returned to the club, went up to the third level, just for this one additional shot, as I wanted to be in my own movie doing this cameo. Usually I operate the camera, but in this case I asked my camera assistant. And I'd start masturbating, but I could hear the guys screaming who were really fucking in the club. Also, there was the producer in front of me, and the assistant director, and everybody was going "mmmmmm"... I would have an erection for maybe a minute, and then we'd have to start again. There were several takes better than this one, but they wouldn't match the editing, so I had to use this one, which is not very good for my image. By then I was more concerned with what my father would think of the scene,
Audience question: regarding male/female reactions to the movie
GN: I just said that men were more offended by the movie, not that every one was, but proportionately more men than women. I'd expected it to be the other way around, but after many screenings I discovered that men have more weird, more aggressive reactions to that scene.
HM: I think maybe there's a distinction to be drawn between being upset and being offended. Do you mean upset in the sense of being saddened and affected, or do you mean angry with the film?
GN: You feel compassion... The movie is physical. I did everything I could to make it physical. You can have a physical reaction to the movie, too. Even on the soundtrack, we added these really low waves, infra-waves, so that during the first half of the movie you have a 27-herz frequency that's usually used in riots to make people run away. So for the first half of the movie you feel weird you could show just a cat drinking milk, and it'd be scary, and you wouldn't know why but it's because of this infra-wave beneath it.
Audience question: regarding what have VC and GN learned from each other
VC: What I learned from him? Good question; I don't know really. Maybe I can tell you what I learned from the whole experience. Thanks to this huge freedom we had, it's the only movie where I'd go on set every day and have stage fright as if I was on a theatre stage. Because I'd never know what was going to happen. That's the memory I have; and what I learned from that was... well, that I liked it. And that I would do it again.
GN: I learned about trusting people, having fun with people. I was going to the shoot like going to a party every day. I'd wake up, go "Let's go" because I didn't know what to expect, and that was exciting. You don't see on the screen the fun we had during shooting, or really feel the energy. With only a very short time to prepare, and a very short time to shoot, that helps you to do it in a more instinctive way, and not to think too much. Sometimes you have to put your brain in the closet to do good things, to help things happen.
HM: Thanks / Wrap-Up
