After 2008’s conceptualist comedy, “Be Kind Rewind,” which actually turned out to be a paean to community (it’s second half evincing, a bright, wonderful tone different from all his films), fabulist French filmmaker Michel Gondry pulled a move no one expected.
He delivered — pretty much in secret until it was announced — a quiet and intimate documentary about his septuagenarian school teacher aunt, Suzette Gondry at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival titled, “A Thorn In The Heart.” It couldn’t have been anymore of a left turn, especially for fanboys and the twee 20-somethings still crushed out on the lovelorn, yet whimsical mood of films like, “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind” and “The Science of Sleep.”
And indeed, “The Thorn In The Heart” is quite different. It starts out as a documentary about his aunt, her village, her school teaching years and her seen-it-all perspective on French history, but then the portrait takes a sharp turn midway through, when Gondry interviews her 50-something year old son Jean- Yves, who has seemingly been irrevocably mentally scarred by his mother (see our review for more details). The biggest transgression, and perhaps an unforgivable one in the mind of Jean-Yves who went on to have a mental breakdown, is when Suzette hides the death of her husband from her children for reasons you’ll see below. So what begins as Gondry’s innocent, tribute to a woman he admires, turns into something with much more resonance and depth: a wistful yet painful and raw look at dysfunctional family dynamics, wounds and scars. It’s also steeped with loving nostalgia and while difficult at first (it’s a little slow initially) there are some tremendous emotional rewards in the second half and some of them near heartrending. The Playlist sat down to talk to Gondry about the documentary during the South By Southwest Film Festival in mid-March and he spoke at length about the necessary difficulties with prying into family matters.
Let’s start with the simple question for those that haven’t seen the film. Why a documentary, of all people, about your aunt?
I think she’s… everyone is interesting, it’s the way you look at people. The fact of living is just amazing in itself. So I don’t even think I should justify why I’m making a documentary about her because I think if you investigate on someone there’s always something interesting to pull, but my Auntie has been a teacher in a very specific place and she shares a part of French history because she worked from 1952 to 1986 and she participated, she witnessed her village dying because everyone was going to the cities in the ’60s and ’70s and she witnessed the ending, the death of many schools and I wanted to pay tribute to that and share her experience and then her son came into the picture and a bigger drama unfolded and it was interesting, maybe necessary direction to dig into.
You don’t seem to be afraid to explore in this picture.
Well I remember Jean-Yves calling me six or seven years ago and he said, ‘Mom, didn’t tell me that Dad was dead, she hid it from me.” And it was like [shocked look], “Why did you not tell Jean-Yves?” and then the answer was because her daughter Sonya was passing the bar at the time. And so that to me that totally doesn’t justify it, but what’s fascinating is the way she thinks. To her the passing of her husband wasn’t as important — I mean it was dramatic as you can feel her pain — but hiding that to me seems inconceivable, but for her it’s not something she’s ashamed of. She did it for a reason and she explained it and some people understand it and some people don’t, but its interesting, because by explaining herself it reveals her upbringing and how she was educated to cope with situations; it was a different generation, different geography, different mentality, different everything, so it was pretty interesting. And I think our family, and esp her family, it shows a contrast between those two mentalities when you have to face the facts of life and talks about things like death and sickness and on the side of my dad’s family where we don’t like to talk about things like that, we’re scared, but much more relaxed.
I guess what I’m getting at is that the documentary is pretty brave in the way that you really prod at family wounds and you keep digging and you don’t really relent or let people off the hook. Some of it is really painful and uncomfortable.
Well, I had to dig, because otherwise the film would have no value. I wanted to be able to watch it and clear up — I had these things in my head! Like when her son [Jean_Yves] said Suzette told the tax office about him, and that seems so grotesque! But you never know some people do things like that and there are some horrible stories in families and heritage, and things like dealing with death where some people become really neglected objects. But this was other stuff, the ideas of hiding the truth… I had to go there because I had to clear up my doubt about Suzette and that’s what pushed me to go all the way.
When you dig around in family secrets and dramas, they’re sometimes very normal within that structure. But when they’re revealed to outsiders people tend to feel massive resent. We obviously don’t know what happens after the documentary, but I get the feeling that somehow these revelations made everyone feel at peace.
I think so, yes, but she still did have some resent. You don’t see it in the documentary, because she didn’t see the editing when we were shooting. But when she saw the title [lifted directly from a quote about her feelings on her son], she immediately realized what the story was about. And it’s something she didn’t like, and I had to coerce her a little bit, because I thought, otherwise people would not be attached to her if she was just a teacher talking about her pupils and she didn’t have much to say about the teaching itself and we had a hard time to find her old pupils except for her son who was one of her students too, but when we started to realize his own story was really poignant, so we had to go to the same place with her otherwise she would have been a caricature.
The quote about her son, he’s a “thorn in the heart.” It’s really powerful and heartbreaking. Was it painful for you to watch and to put these questions to your beloved family members?
Yes, it was embarrassing, but… it was like I was doing a documentary on you and I know you’re holding all this [emotional] stuff and if you don’t show your pain, people will think you’re just a mean person, so I’m going to make you cry because I’m going to tell you something really painful. That [approach] could seem really manipulative and mean, and it is a little bit. There’s a necessity to go all the way, but I always kept in mind that the individuals were more important than the film. But in regard to the individuals, the film has to be decent as well. So therefore you need to push and it can’t be easy all the time, otherwise there’s nothing left and it’s just worse.
It’s funny sometimes I said things to her that I worried might be devastating to her. Like for instance, when she talked to me while half asleep, thinking that I was her son and she was really rude. And I was really shocked by that, and by thought by [telling that story on camera], she would be really humiliated, because I was revealing something she didn’t want us to know, but not at all. She found it totally normal. And it’s shocking because Jean-Yves isn’t exactly a gift either, he’s sort of a ball and chain a little bit. I thought it might be embarrassing, but she was laughing about it. But when I asked her about the taxes story [Jean Yves claims she called the French IRS on him, she denies this], she got really mad because she had this feeling that people always think she’s too hard and mean. And yes, I know I was going for the tears here, but I thought it was necessary for people to appreciate her to see that.
I think the biggest reward is when I showed the film to her village and all the people that she has known much of her life and many of these people know these stories, but no one obviously talks about them aloud. And they really felt the courage and it really brought people together, because in this part of France people are not very welcoming to others. It’s a hard life and people are very defensive.
The Thorn In The Heart” hits theaters in limited release, starting this weekend, April 2nd in New York and on May 14th in Los Angeles. If you’re in New York tonight, Gondry will doing Q&A’s after the 7:30pm shows today and tomorrow at the Village East (181 -189 Second Avenue). New York magazine’s David Edelstein will moderate tonight’s Q&A, and our IndieWire pal Eugene Hernandez will moderate tomorrow’s.