Yeah! Actually, come to think of it, both actresses could have switched roles and the movie would have still worked. Very much like in “Persona.”
Yes, even if both roles are the opposite it would still work and that would make a whole other movie.
Of course, there’s also, as mentioned, Hitchcock. “Vertigo” is all over this movie.
The theme of this film is taken directly from “Vertigo.” Carlotta comes from nowhere, in fact it looks like she came from the water. When she’s dressed up in her white coat, all I could think of was Kim Novak in that movie. But, unlike Novak, Cotillard plays it straight and real. There’s no pretending who she is.
How was it working with her?
You know, Marion is a star, she really is. She can go from making a Christopher Nolan movie back to a Dardennes. It’s really incredible to watch.
Did you always want Carlotta addressing the viewer?
She explains how it started with Ismael. I didn’t want the story told by a man, I didn’t want any male privilege or male dominated standpoint. I wanted a woman to do it. She also narrates the epilogue, which wasn’t written until the very last day I had to submit the script to my producer.
I fell in love with “My Golden Days” and I feel like with that movie and this latest one you’re really pushing the boundaries in terms of structure.
I had such an immense pleasure doing “My Golden Days,” it was just overwhelmingly joyous for me. After that shoot I said, “Ok. I made a film on these absolute beginners, just starting their lives,” and we shot it with actors that weren’t really professional. I wanted to do something that had the opposite effect, with actors that will impress me with their world class experience. The line in “Ismael” that says it all is when Carlotta says “Life just happened to me.” You can’t hang on to what happened in the past and you have to live in the present which is the opposite of what the characters in “My Golden Days” are doing. It’s that second chance people have when they enter their ’40s.
Back to the intricate structure of these films, the editing must have been intense.
Very tough. The narrative structure was complex, but, at the same time, it was my job to make sure you’re not lost. Once Ismael goes crazy in the film so does the movie. Then that’s where it becomes complicated and you have, instead of all three characters that were in the same house, they’re now separated and that’s where it becomes incredibly difficult to edit it in a way that makes sense.
I actually have a theory that Ismael is your alter ego.
[pauses and smiles] Let’s just put it this way, Ismael is everything I would love to do that I’m too scared of doing. I’m shy, he’s arrogant. I wear suits, he’s a dirty dresser. I only drink water, he drinks alcohol. He swoons the ladies and I don’t. It is all disguise, he doesn’t really want to be those things, he’s hiding.
