To that end, your use of 35mm is tactile and rich throughout. For Paul Guilhaume and yourself, shooting on 35mm must have presented various challenges, both logistical and creative, but the effect is undeniable. The images possess this ephemeral quality, linked to our shared cinematic past, that enhances the film’s exploration of time travel.
What I find very interesting about 35mm is that it has this aesthetic and tactile component, that the colors are deeper and more contrasty and stronger, and so on and so forth. That’s on the one side. What matters most to me is the poetic component of it. 35mm is so intrinsically loaded with poetry, and there’s mystery in 35. I think it’s because it is a material thing, and that’s what I’m interested in. What I want to do is have imagination surge out of something material.
What I just said is a little bit Bachelardian, by which I’m referring to the philosopher Gaston Bauchelard, who talks about how we can have imagination flower out of materiality. And I see a film that way. What I mean is that light puts an impression on film, and thanks to this chemical reaction that we can see, all of a sudden, we find that magical and beautiful sensation. And it’s something that is penetrating. 35mm work penetrates because it has an impression on us, the way that light has an impression on film.
This is something that, in digital, you don’t have. It’s a lot more straightforward and flat. And, of course, there are beautiful films that were shot digitally, and maybe I myself will shoot on digital one day if the movie that I’m shooting calls for it. For the time being, the films I’ve made have called for 35mm. And it’s true that, for “The Five Devils,” our shooting time was pushed by a year because of COVID-19, and so we lost a lot of money. We had to rethink the film in many ways, in terms of production, because we no longer had the money that we planned on. And the first thing that I was told was, “Well, you know, cut out the 35mm film because it’s expensive.” The main problem with 35mm is that it’s expensive.
I told myself, “Okay, let’s try to imagine the movie in digital,” and everything just collapsed. It may seem a little ridiculous, but I have the feeling that this movie just couldn’t stand if it was in digital because there would no longer be the mystery. There would no longer be magic. It was going to be a movie with this new genre component, a playful one with pop music, but it would have lost all of the depth that I was looking for. I would not have been able to appeal to the subconscious. I realized that this was going to be a constraint for my shooting.
But I had worked together with my cinematographer and co-screenwriter, Paul Guilhaume, on a short that was on film. And we realized that, because of my way of working on set, it was not going to be that much of a problem because I don’t shoot that much. I don’t shoot for a long time. For “The Five Devils,” I had agreed to an hour and a half of rushes each day. And I would just do an hour and just a few minutes. Sometimes it was a little more, sometimes a little less, but on average, it would be an hour a day. All of a sudden, because of this style I had, it worked out really well because it wasn’t a constraint after all, so we were able to shoot in 35mm.
You also mix focal lengths throughout “The Five Devils” and employ Steadicam in the sequences set in the past. To make this a question about working with your actors, what did shooting with these different approaches — and taking such care and attention to the images, in general — allow you to achieve in terms of your attention to your actors?
I really love working with actors. It’s one of the things I prefer in terms of my work on set. Of course, I’m somebody who loves all the aspects of making a movie. But, working with actors, it’s truly fantastic because it’s really working with live matter. Once again, I’m going back to material components. It’s a little weird to talk about actors that way, but it’s true that they’re living beings, and there’s something bodily and tactile about that. And I really love filming that. I love filming their skin, their breathing, and their emotions. For me, emotions are part of the material component of the film. And that’s why 35-millimeter film was so important to me. The work that we do with the actors is a very physical kind of work. We work on their bodies a lot. We work on the way their characters move, the way they walk, and whatever issues come up in terms of working on their body. That’s an important component.
We worked a lot, for example, on the relationship between Joanne and Vicky. And I would give them ideas of images that they could keep in mind. For example, for Joanne, I told Adèle that she needed to imagine that she was a giraffe in the Savannah and that Vicky would be to her like a little bird who just comes in and picks at her, left, right, and center. And she needs, as a giraffe, to stand tight and straight up and to at the same time pretend that the little girl isn’t even there. She needs to allow her to just climb on her, to attach herself to her, and allow her to keep picking all the time. She didn’t need to act like she didn’t love her, but she needed to keep a certain distance as if she just couldn’t be bothered by that.
We worked a lot, in terms of images. And we worked on the body. And once we identified what the body needed to be like, then we could go into the details. I can’t specify what happened with each character. We’d be here all day. But after we found the body attitude, then we would work on the voice. After we found the voice, we would add the text. Of course, I’m not dissociating from the form, but we did work separately, individually, on each of these areas, and then we’d combine them all together. You should not forget about the image because if you don’t have the right production design, the right set decor, and the right costumes, then nothing really works. And what if the actors are bad actors? It is a combination of so many details, and you can’t really neglect any of those.
I may sound like I’m a little bit of a control freak on set, but any little detail matters, and it’s extremely significant for me. I do believe that form is substance and that if there is an issue with the form, that means that there is an issue with substance, and so you need to rework it all together. And all of this is because it allows the truth of the emotions to come out. It’s not just because I wanted to have a beautiful image. It’s because I want to have all of this working together to touch something that’s close to human beings, to human emotion, that is as close as possible to the truth.
“The Five Devils” follows two high-profile collaborations with acclaimed filmmakers Jacques Audiard and Claire Denis. How did you experience the process of collaborating with Audiard and Denis, of understanding them as filmmakers and finding a shared meeting place between their sensibilities and your own?
Both experiences of working with Jacques and Claire were very different and highly rewarding. They have very different ways of working. When I collaborate with a filmmaker, I have to see with their eyes — which is already extremely enriching to be able to glimpse the vision of such talented directors — and still stay true to myself so the dialectic remains intact and for it to be a genuine dialogue. When it comes to my own vision, I feel like the more I understand others, the more I can sharpen mine, both learning from them and building mine in opposition too.
I noticed similarities between your film and Céline Sciamma’s “Petite Maman,” which also explores relationships between mothers and daughters through a magical conceit of time travel. Reflecting on what collaboration you had with Sciamma on “Paris, 13th District,” on which you’re both credited writers, what discussions did you have, if any, about these projects?
Funnily enough, I haven’t seen “Petite Maman.” I just saw the trailer, and I was troubled by the similarities, so I decided not to watch it. I had no idea she was going to make a film like this — which she directed very quickly if I remember correctly. Her producer, [Bénédicte Couvreur,] knew about my project; she sat on the first commission at the National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC France), granting public funding for the film, and I was asked about the first idea behind the project. I had mentioned a young girl who had lost her mother who could reunite with her in the past through her smell. But I had added I would rather have the mother alive and that Vicky would see a Joanne who was “dead” today but not completely. I remember that Sciamma’s producer liked the concept but not the final idea. I failed the commission. I never exchanged with Céline on this, we never discussed it, and we only briefly met. On “Paris 13th District,” Céline wrote a version with Jacques, which was abandoned, then I came along, and we both took it over with Audiard.
“The Five Devils” is now in U.S. theaters via MUBI, which will stream the film beginning May 12.