Would you describe your directing style as almost conversation-like?
Well, I have a problem with the concept of style. I much prefer to think that cinema is a language. I mean we are language as [Noam] Chomsky would say. Cinema is one of those languages. I could say that I am trying to have a conversation in that language. My way of thinking [about] cinema comes definitely from the formal. But, for all the formality that I invest myself into, I also see myself as a storyteller. That’s why my attempt is to intertwine the formal and the storytelling in a way that is seductive and surprising and fulfilling. I like the idea that you can make something universal starting from something very particular. It is a great spectacle, our behavior and who we are. But, we are not here to judge anybody as filmmakers. We are here to raise questions.
Also, I have the sensation that my work needs time. For all the means, I don’t think that I do immediate pictures, something that you see and fall for right away. It takes time. [The journey of “A Bigger Splash”], from Venice [Film Festival], to the festival circuit, to opening in the U.K., the Netherlands, Spain, I think it somehow prepares the movie to come to America, which I honestly think is home in a way.
Jodie Foster recently said that Jonathan Demme was her “favorite woman director,” due to his being able to remain on Clarice’s side throughout “Silence of the Lambs.” He places the camera equally in the perspectives of Starling and Dr. Lecter. In a similar vein, though more seductive, you too, commit to all the bodies in the frame. Can you elaborate on your pansexual gaze?
I think I am lucky. It is great to be unapologetic in your capacity to scrutinize people and things. And in doing so, to be completely open. If I do a movie called “A Bigger Splash” in which you have four characters, I can’t pretend that the camera’s interest has to lay on one gender or the other. It has to be on everybody. It is actually simple. Also, I think to impose one gaze is quite boring. And I am so much entertained when I am displaced. A movie that I quote all the time is “Mad Max: Fury Road.” I think it is a great masterpiece. George Miller’s capacity of really shifting his point of view in a way that is fabulous between all of these characters — the women, the men, the starving, the fed — it is fantastic.
I laughed out loud when I read your response to the chatter surrounding your upcoming remake of Argento’s horror masterpiece, “Suspiria,” and movie remakes in general. You said “no one complains when a new version of ‘La Traviatta’ is staged at the Met.”
No one even complains when there is a new version of the iPad! And it costs $300 more and does the same thing. They only change the color – golden pink, pink pink. Like c’mon.
Why is it that films are not really looked at as texts to interpret in the same way that they are in the theater?
Well, there is a great divide between Europe and America. And I’m sure there will be further divide between Europe and America, and films coming from the Middle East, but I would say, in Europe, we are under the spell of the politique des auteurs. You have to know that I am probably the greatest supporter of the nouvelle vague (New Wave). I still take my lessons out of the world of the auteurs, like Goddard, Jacques Rivette, Fassbinder, and of course, Bergman. They are like my lighthouse that guide me through the darkness of the ocean. But, one reason is the assumption that the uniqueness of a voice is what means the language of cinema, and what makes the language of cinema go forward. One reason is the idea that you have to be the author of the story and the story has to be original in order to make a movie that is original. Now in America, this idea of a remake, a reboot has been so drained out of life and blood and juices, that it is like processed food.
Cinematic bologna.
But, [Laughs] bologna tastes delicious when you eat it in Bologna.
And as soon as “A Bigger Splash” opens in the U.S., you begin shooting your next film?
Yes. We start shooting on May 9th. I am doing a movie from the novel by André Aciman called “Call Me By Your Name.” And then in September, “Suspiria.”
“A Bigger Splash” opens today. Check out some promos and several new photos below.
