- 2 settimane fa
Intervista a Declan Donnellan e Nick Ormerod, registi di Bel Ami - Storia di un seduttore.
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00:09Well, our background is theatre, really.
00:11I mean, we've done the theatre for
00:13a long time, 30 years.
00:15We have our own theatre company, Cheek by Jowl,
00:17which tours around the world
00:19and plays at the Barbican Theatre in London.
00:22And from there
00:23this is, in fact,
00:26our first movie.
00:35I first read Bellamy, in translation,
00:37when I was 18, I was at school.
00:39And it's so shocking,
00:41and it's still shocking.
00:42It's about this cut-throat young man
00:45who's very beautiful
00:46and discovers he's got one commodity to sell.
00:49And he basically seduces powerful women
00:51up the tree of the French society,
00:54mostly connected with the newspaper industry.
00:56So he uses sex
00:59really.
01:01And they're a huge attraction for him
01:03to get to the top of the pile.
01:05And it's an
01:07unremitting world.
01:09And at the end, he gets the lot.
01:12And so there's no comeuppance for him at the end.
01:14So it's an incredibly subversive
01:17story.
01:18It's de Maupassant
01:19at his most savage and ironic.
01:22And it's very ironic about the media.
01:24And the other thing about the story is
01:27it's so, there's so many modern parallels.
01:30It's about the manipulation of the media.
01:33It's about a government illegally invading
01:38an Arab country for their natural resources
01:40and lying to the people.
01:42It's about how the media colludes
01:45or doesn't collude with that.
01:47It's about sex celebrity.
01:48And it's about how somebody can get to the top
01:51with really very, very little talent.
01:59We asked actresses that we really wanted to work with.
02:02They're people that we've admired for a long time.
02:05Kristen, Scott Thomas, we know of old.
02:11And Uma and Christina and Rob,
02:13we've admired for a long time.
02:15There's also Cole Meany, a wonderful Irish actor
02:17who plays Monsieur Husset.
02:18And Timothy Walker, who plays the wonderful Solicitor.
02:21And Philip Glenister, who plays.
02:23There's wonderful, wonderful actors in it.
02:25And that was, it was so thrilling to have
02:28a great big acting piece for them to get their teeth into.
02:38He had a great connection with the part.
02:40We met Rob some time ago now.
02:43And he was completely thrilled by the story.
02:47And he was, he is an extremely serious young man.
02:52And one of the things that really recommended Rob to us
02:56is he wanted to rehearse for a whole month before we began.
03:00So he gave us a whole month of rehearsal time
03:03before we began the shoot, which is almost unknown.
03:06And we're incredibly grateful to him that he did that.
03:09And it was just fantastic working with him.
03:12It was a great, it was really wonderful working with Rob
03:14and seeing him change and develop and how much he wanted to change and develop.
03:19It was great.
03:25They're absolutely great.
03:27It was just, I mean, they're all so different.
03:30I mean, it was just absolutely fantastic to see them all arriving one after another.
03:34And they're all incredibly professional and actually great fun.
03:39And they all got really sort of wicked senses of humour in their very, very different ways.
03:43So, you know, Rob Patterson, Uma Thurman, Kristen Scott, Thomas Cristinovici is a very different people.
03:48And we had a ball.
03:50We had an absolutely wonderful time because everybody was so different.
03:53And also because the material was so fantastic.
03:56I mean, it was like a really good script, really good meaty material, really good roles.
04:02Everybody felt that they were being stretched.
04:05Nick and our being stretched was our first movie.
04:07But Kristen, Christina, Uma and Robert, I think they'd all agree
04:11were doing things they hadn't done before.
04:12And that was what was so thrilling about the whole thing that we were...
04:15It was like Terry Incognita for a lot of us.
04:19So we went boldly forward into this cruel world of Belle Amie.
04:31Basically, the shooting day seemed to work like you had half an hour to create the scene in this space.
04:39And to give it life, you needed to respond what the actors were doing in this space,
04:44as opposed to coming in and saying, you will move here.
04:48And so none of that preparation was done.
04:51And I think, I hope, that that means that there is more life on the screen as it happened.
04:57The thing that remains in common between theatre and film for us is that they're both...
05:04People say film is all about bottled life.
05:05Actually, so is theatre.
05:07And our only priority is to put life on stage and to get life out of things.
05:12So, of course, what happens is that Rob meets Georges Durand,
05:15Uma Thurman meets Madeleine Forestier.
05:18The actor meets the character and something gets born instantly.
05:22So it's different.
05:24It's always different because it's different that day.
05:26And what we love doing in the theatre, we love doing in film,
05:30which is to go with it and see what happens.
05:34So it was being able to improvise around these...
05:38And also, they're in a new space and they're in a new costume
05:40and everything's new and everything's different.
05:42So you've got to be prepared to capture that life that they do.
05:45And that was fantastic.
05:48We were so excited by that process.
05:57What's wonderful is the craftspeople you work with in the film
06:01and the amount of detail that goes into the recreation of the newspaper,
06:05the graphics, the tiny little props which feature.
06:09And, you know, the work there is just phenomenal.
06:13And the people involved were just amazing.
06:16So that is... No, that's wonderful.
06:18And, of course, you do see right up close, which, you know, is fantastic.
06:23In the past, like, you know, we've seen, you know,
06:25directors talking about the process of making a movie
06:27and they talk about, oh, God, you know,
06:29we couldn't have done it without the marvellous help of the crew
06:31and so on and so forth.
06:32And to a certain degree, you know, go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
06:37But now that we've seen it, I mean, we are so moved.
06:40I mean, it's like a newspaper in shot.
06:42There'll be three different people saying,
06:44we've investigated the 1890 way that the figure was printed.
06:47Here's one sort of type, here's the other.
06:48And actually, we've mocked this up for you
06:50so that you can tell the difference between these different...
06:52and after a while it's actually incredibly moving
06:55because these people aren't paid a lot
06:57and the perfectionism and the incredible love, love of what they do
07:04is so moving, you know, it's quite humbling, really.
07:14It seemed to work very smoothly and we never actually had any dispute about how...
07:18I mean, sometimes one would have a clear idea of how a scene should be played
07:21and then the other...
07:22I never talked to the actors about their performance.
07:27That was entirely Declan's province.
07:30and so I consequently worked more with the cameraman and with...
07:35And sometimes I sort of set up scenes, didn't I?
07:37Yeah.
07:38Actually the beginning of a scene with actors.
07:40And I...
07:41You know, because you need to predict when a move will happen
07:45because it's in the script.
07:46You know somebody has to get from point A to point B.
07:49So then, you know, you simply place the prop in the right place
07:52so that they don't have to go too far.
07:54You know, very simple, very simple things.
07:57But, you know...
07:59What I thought was quite strange in the way, Nick,
08:01was that we have a...
08:03When we work in the theatre,
08:04it's not like we're both directing at the same time.
08:06It's the designer and he designs the space
08:08and within the space that Nick gives me,
08:10I will then move the actors.
08:12So that's, you know, does all the costumes and whatever.
08:14This time we worked together
08:15and suddenly, like within one day,
08:17a whole new relationship between us was born.
08:19We were working as co-directors
08:21and we found another way of working together
08:23that was quite instinctive
08:26and it was quite joyful for us, actually.
08:34That set was a wonderful discovery,
08:37in terms of late 19th century,
08:41huge wrought iron spectacle of a place.
08:44and the advantage of having the upper level,
08:47so we could suggest that the sex was happening upstairs
08:50and the shots of the girls upstairs was...
08:52That was a great discovery, that space.
08:55And that's the sort of thing which is...
08:57sort of inspires you.
08:59Because, of course, that's not in the script,
09:00so you take it somewhere else.
09:03And, for example, it was never in the script.
09:06when he arrives at the newspaper,
09:08and again the location suggested all sorts of possibilities
09:11of the life of a newspaper.
09:14And that was terrific, having him arrive
09:16amongst all these people who are working hard.
09:18Of course, you get the feeling that he doesn't want to work,
09:21which is perfectly true.
09:22Of course, he doesn't.
09:28I don't see myself as a teacher.
09:30I see myself as a coach.
09:33And, you know, they can do things I can't do,
09:35and I'm just sort of there to help them realise their full potential.
09:39And, you know, he absolutely changed.
09:42He wanted to change,
09:43and he wanted to do something that was very, very different.
09:45And, to begin with, rehearsals were challenging for him,
09:48and that's why he went to do it.
09:49But, you know, fair play to him.
09:50It's very moving to give, you know, up, so,
09:52because he's so in demand and so on,
09:54to actually clear his diary, come and work,
09:57and every day sort of seeing him change,
10:00was really extraordinary.
10:06It will come as quite a shock, to be honest,
10:09because his fans have seen him as this rather gentle, beautiful guy,
10:14who may be a vampire, but he's still a gentle, beautiful guy.
10:17And he's not a gentle, beautiful guy in this film.
10:20He's tough and difficult to cope with.
10:23And that will come as a bit of a shock.
10:27It's tough.
10:28It's tough.
10:29It's a ship that gets the lot.
10:31And it's tough, and it's great, and that's what's great about it.
10:35But I think, though, the important thing is
10:38that this is a great ensemble of actors working together.
10:41And, for me, what's thrilling about it is that it's about all four of them,
10:45all of these, and many others as well,
10:47but particularly about Rob, Uma, Kristen and Christina,
10:53and to see that incredible interplay between these people.
10:56And that, to us, is what's thrilling and, you know,
10:59the ensemble nature of it is wonderful.
11:01And Rob was very, personally, passionate about that.
11:04and he was...
11:05I mean, Rob was one that, like, he'd always insist on being there
11:08for other people's close-ups, always do that.
11:10He was absolutely wonderful on the set like that, you know.
11:14And, you know, tales we'd heard of, sort of, you know,
11:18famous Hollywood actors marching off the other person's close-up.
11:21Absolutely.
11:21There was none of that on the set.
11:23They all gave so much to each other,
11:25and they'd stand patiently by the camera
11:26while the other person was doing their stuff.
11:28And it was really wonderful
11:30and a great privilege to work with those people.
11:39Absolutely loved it.
11:40The whole process with the actors of the shoot,
11:44finding the locations, working the locations, improvising,
11:48having to think very fast.
11:51And we completely got, because it's funny enough,
11:53how we've done theatre is having to change things at the last moment,
11:56and having to make split-second improvised decisions,
12:00which is what filming's all about.
12:01And actually really good theatre, I think, is about that,
12:04because you have to improvise on the spot, really,
12:09and change things at the last moment.
12:11And we're quite, we're good under pressure like that.
12:15We enjoyed that.
12:15It was fun.
12:16We were very alive.
12:18Bring it on.
12:18Give us more.
12:19We'll see.
12:19Grazie a tutti
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