Jacques Audiard On Sex, Comedy, & Computers In ‘Paris, 13th District’ [Interview]

As a writer and director, Jacques Audiard is known for muscular crime dramas, including “The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” “A Prophet,” “Rust and Bone,” and 2015’s Palme d’Or winner “Dheepan.” His work has largely had an air of seriousness to it that doesn’t leave much room for comedy or frivolity of any sort. His films are dark looks into the souls of characters struggling to exist in a world that isn’t often built for the majority to thrive — magnificent achievements, no doubt, but also tough to crack a smile while watching. 

In 2018, Audiard made his English-language debut alongside his frequent co-writer Thomas Bidegain with the western “The Sisters Brothers,” taking a more comedic bent to his fascination with masculinity to explore a quartet of buffoons seeking gold in 1850s Oregon. It was a major departure for the director, with sterling turns from Joaquin Phoenix, Riz Ahmed, Jake Gyllenhaal, and especially John C. Reilly, and by the looks of it the film marked an exciting push into new directions for him. 

Following up his most comedic film to date, Audiard has taken an even lighter touch with “Paris, 13th District” (“Les Olympiades”), releasing now in theaters and on digital platforms. Adapted from three graphic novels by Adrian Tomine, Audiard parted ways with Bidegain for the first time since 2005’s “The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” adapting Tomine’s work into script form with Céline Sciamma and Léa Mysius, along with collaboration from Nicolas Livecchi. 

As was the case with “The Sisters Brothers,” the film centers on a quartet of interlocking characters, navigating that time in their late twenties and early thirties where they’re the most unsure of what they want from life. Makita Samba plays Camille, a professor who starts renting a room from Lucie Zhang’s Émilie, leading to them having a brief sexual fling before they call things off, creating an incredibly awkward living situation. Meanwhile, Nora (Noémie Merlant, hot on the heels of her acclaimed turn in Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”) returns to school after an extended time away, having a tough go at fitting in with other students, and eventually developing a bond with cam girl Amber Sweet (Jehnny Beth). 

There’s a lightness to the film that creates an effortless flow as the characters weave in and around one another, drawing to mind comparisons to Éric Rohmer in its portrayal of young attractive people who don’t know what, or who, they want. In our review from the film’s 2021 Cannes Film Festival premiere, Caroline Tsai described it as “Audiard’s attempt to inaugurate a Millenial New Wave,” saying, “though the film feels at times like a sociological manifesto on modern love penned by an older generation, its writing team manages to capture both the real pitfalls and bouts of joy inherent to twentysomethings’ relationships.” 

I spoke with Audiard, with the aid of interpreter Ellen Sowchek, about the film’s approach to sex in our current age, how technology informs modern relationships, and how his films have started to lean into the lighter sides of life in recent years. 

You’ve mentioned in a past interview the idea that a director’s previous film will dictate their following one. Do you feel that “The Sisters Brothers” had an influence on the direction you went with “Paris, 13th District?” 

I think it was [François] Truffaut who always used to say that each film we make is really to counter the previous film — that it would be the opposite of the previous film. I’m not sure that I agree with that exactly. What I think is that you have to realize when you make a film, you’re focusing on some things and dealing with certain issues, certain ideas, certain types of characters to the detriment of others. Some things are being treated, while some are not being treated at all in the film you’re currently making. 

At some point when you finish making the film, you close the drawer, and then perhaps at that moment another drawer opens up a little bit, and all of those other elements that you’ve been ignoring up to this point come forward. In my case, with “The Sisters Brothers,” it was a film with men, with violence, with no women, with vast spaces, and with horses. [Laughs] Okay? In “Paris, 13th District,” we have women, we have a love story, we have no violence, we have nice landscapes, and we have no horses. 

“Paris, 13th District” is adapted from three separate graphic novels and has a semi-anthology structure, which comes with the risk of one story perhaps being more interesting than others, yet there is an effortless flow here where it never feels like there’s a “main story” and then other side stories. Could you talk about that adaptation process? 

Yes, the film is adapted from three stories by Adrian Tomine, and I think that his books really gave me ideas for characters that I would’ve never had. Émilie, Nora, Amber Sweet, these are not characters that I would’ve thought of myself, but they were present in the novels and the challenge was to find some overarching structure, or idea, that would unify all of these separate stories. For me, it was creating the character of Camille, because here you have the story of Émilie interacting with Camille, then you have Nora with Camille, and then you go back to Èmilie with Camille. Camille is really the lynchpin character and the stories are all revolving around that. 

You had a really substantial rehearsal process with this film, being able to rehearse for several months, which is very uncommon — especially these days. What benefit did you find in having all that time to work with the actors before shooting? 

Every film you make is going to be different. They’re all different in their own way. There’s going to be different stories, there’s going to be different sets, different actors. So, you have to approach each one as a different project. One of the things that I found in this particular film was the case of the actors, because when I began I had four actors who were really at very different levels of professional experience, ranging from Noémie Merlant, who is a very experienced actress, to Lucie Zhang, who was a total neophyte — this was her first film and she was very new. What I really needed to do was to use the rehearsal process as a way of bringing all of these actors up to the same level, and that way they would feel more confident. 

I don’t really know how other directors do it, but I really like the rehearsal process. I think that it serves a lot of purpose. It inspires actors’ confidence, where the more they work on their characters, they begin to own them — or at least they rent them for a while. They have a sense of assurance, and once they reach that assurance they begin to make suggestions on their own that would go in accordance with the characters that they’re playing. That became part of the process, too, so you have this process where you rehearse, you bring people up to a level, then they become confident and they give their own input. What it ends up doing is it also makes the actual shooting process much shorter, which is something I also wanted to have here.

Is there any moment in the film you could specifically point to as something the actors came up with on their own? 

I was trying to remember one specifically, because we had this great one, but it was ultimately cut from the final version. One that’s in the film, though, is the scene between Nora and Amber where she tells the story about the dog. I think that was pretty much all them. 

I found the film’s approach to sex very refreshing in our current climate, where so much of cinema is running away from the portrayal of it. Could you talk about that organic approach to portraying sex in a way that feels authentic to day-to-day life?

If you have one or more stories about love, it’s a little bit incongruous to have a film on that subject, where all you do is talk about love and you never see people actually making love. On the other hand, what I wanted to do here in this film was I really wanted to place it in the context of a comedy. These are people that talk all the time. Even when they’re making love, they’re continuing to talk. [Laughs] They make commentaries on everything. When they’re eating, when they’re walking, whatever they’re doing, they’re always commenting. 

This film is very funny, and so is “The Sisters Brothers.” Your earlier films weren’t absent of comedy, but these two especially are comedic in a way your earlier work didn’t lean into as much. Is that a coincidence, or do you find yourself intentionally leaning more in that direction these days? 

I’m really glad that you noted that “Sisters Brothers” was a comedy! 

Oh, that movie is hilarious! 

It’s not obvious, so I’m really happy you said that! Thank you. You know, there are some films of mine that are written as comedies that actually come out being dramatic films. For example, “Sur mes lèvres” (“Read My Lips”), that was basically a comedic idea, it has all the elements of a comedy, but I had to twist them so it gave the film a very particular quality. I really love to do that. It is a little bit like that in “Sisters Brothers,” where I’m doing the same kind of manipulating and twisting. You look at where the dramatic and the serious is, and you have the sense that these characters in “Sisters Brothers” are not people in their forties — these men are basically twelve-year-olds. It was almost like they were kids who were playing cowboys.

I love that you brought up “Read My Lips,” because that’s one of my favorite films. 

It was a comedy! [Laughs] 

Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I definitely remember there being comedic moments in it, even if overall it’s got the tone of this Hitchcockian thriller.

I’m going to give you an example of a comic element there, because I write everything very carefully. There’s a scene where the main character is at the employment agency and she’s going through all of the characteristics that the person she’s looking for has to have — you have to do this and be able to do that, and then the last thing she says is that the man has to have nice hands. [Laughs] 

There’s one scene in “Paris, 13th District” I wanted to mention, where Nora and Amber Sweet are having a conversation over video call at night. Nora wants to go to bed, and Amber asks her to stay on the video call so they can fall asleep together. It was a really impactful scene for me, because I’ve been separated from my partner most of the last two years due to the pandemic, and we’ve had similar moments to this — 

I thought about you when I was writing it. 

[Laughs] I could tell. I was like, ‘How did you know?’ 

[Laughs] 

You shot the film during the pandemic, and I wanted to ask what was the importance for you of making a film like this about human connection during the time we’re living in? 

The film was actually written before the pandemic, so those ideas were already in place, but it was filmed during the pandemic. Because of this, it of course became a reflection of that on top of everything else. What I was really interested in examining was this whole system of things that are intermediaries in our lives — whether that’s the phone between people or the screen between people. It’s the basic paradox in this film, the fact that the couple that has the most intimate, the sweetest, the most loving relationship, is the couple that exists through this intermediary of the computer. 

“Paris, 13th District” releases in theaters, on digital platforms and VOD on April 15th.