Asia Argento is getting very good at playing a dangerous temptress. She’s done it twice in this festival alone—last weekend’s Go Go Tales and now this film by Catherine Breillat—and was memorably the hussy of the palace in last fall’s Marie Antoinette (incidentally, a NYFF selection last year). Argento is in fine form here, pouting and raging and seducing in the way the town “bad girl” might in 1950s social problem film. As Vellini, the Spanish mistress to French aristocrat Ryno de Marigny (Fu’ad Ait Aattou), Argento is the soul of the film, but she may also be its downfall.
Based on a 19th-century novel by Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly, the film tells of Ryno’s ten-year relationship with the tempestuous Spaniard Vellini, and his subsequent affair with her after his marriage to another aristocrat, Hermangarde (Roxane Mesquida). Much of the story is told through gossip among other nobles, and a lengthy flashback as Ryno tells his story to Hermangarde’s wily grandmother, the Marquise de Flers (Claude Sarraute). Ryno became known as a dastardly playboy during his relationship with Vellini, but as he tells his story he paints her as a heartless seductress, using him for his body and becoming more unpredictable and dangerous by the day.
Breillat has made a film that deals frankly with female sexuality—the sex in the film is almost completely one-sided, with Vellini as the aggressor—but may condemn her just the same for her sexual agency. Ryno often seems the victim of Vellini’s love and unquenchable lust, and virginal Hermangarde, while resented by Ryno for her frigidity, never becomes more than the Madonna of the Madonna/whore dichotomy. Ryno, all plump limps and languid stances, never suffers much for his sins, and doesn’t seem to be too conflicted at all when he cheats on his wife, repeatedly. Vellini, on the other hand, is the classic histrionic female, threatening to stab herself or throw herself into the sea for love.
The costumes are gorgeous, and the sex scenes titillating, but I might just have to admit defeat and say I didn’t get this one. Breillat said in the press conference that she feels the film has something to say about gender relations today, but what it is I’m not sure, other than it’s probably a mistake to get a crazy Spanish lady to leave her husband for you and stay with her for 10 years even though she’ll use you—gasp!—for sex. Sorry to sound glib; it’s been a long festival of great films, and this one was the first to throw me entirely.
Breillat and Mesquida joined the audience for a press conference following the film, and Breillat gave insight into how she designed the film’s gorgeous visuals, and how Marlene Dietrich is the most beautiful Spanish woman ever on film.
Could you talk about the choreography in the film?
Breillat: I knew the feeling of two bodies very close to each other. I know the way they behave, and I want to see the scene in relation to the camera.
Roxane, what was the physical work like for you?
Mesquida: It’s really hard to know how to explain how Catherine works with her actors. I think she’s very manipulative, because she works with her hands, and it’s really physical.
Where did you find Fu’ad Ait Aattou, who plays Ryno?
Breillat: Like Roxane—when I saw Roxane, I said this one, she’s for me. We can stop the casting. For Fu’ad, when I looked at him, I said to my assistant, oh this one, he’s Ryno, he’s my dream. You have to run after him because you never can find for me some boy like him. And then I had my accident [Breillat had a stroke in 2004], and it was very, very difficult to find him again. I said I never can be able to begin this movie if I do not find Fu’ad, because he is for me. It’s a sign of destiny.
What changes did you make from the novel?
Breillat: For example, [in the novel] Hermangarde meets Ryno in a big ball. I didn’t want to open the film on the scene of a big ball, and I didn’t have the budget to do it better than Visconti [in The Leopard]
Ms. Breillat, do you see a difference between female passion and male passion?
Breillat: During the period in which this film takes place, it was a period of dandyism. Men and women were almost androgynous, so there’s very little difference between the passion of a man and a woman.
Was the novel a scandal when it was published?
Breillat: Yes, that’s why I also told myself that if I had lived in the 19th century, the author would have been me. I also think I’m very dandyist. [Author Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly] had a lot of censorship problems, and really grave problems. He almost went to prison.
Why choose the Ralph Benatzky song “Yes Sir” for the party scene, especially sung by a woman with atrocious German?
Breillat: Because in the novel, they say that Vellini is like no one, dresses like no one. So there was a license in the film that allowed for the American notion of the femme fatale. I inspired myself for Vellini by Marlene Dietrich in The Devil Was A Woman, and i kept saying during the whole casting process, that the most beautiful Spanish woman in film was German and she was blonde. In fact, the song “Yes Sir” is a song that resembles very much the songs of Marlene Dietrich . In a certain sense, it’s an homage. It’s also to show that you can make a historical movie while being very conscious of the precision of history and still incorporating fantasy.
In the sex scenes, why did the male never vocalize his orgasm, while she was screaming her head off?
Breillat: Because I don’t think there’s anything more beautiful than a woman have an orgasm. There’s something very mysterious about it. I wanted a languid gentleman. And it’s she who’s making love to him, and not the opposite way around. She uses him like a statue of flesh, an emotional statue.
How does the film reflect on gender relations today?
Breillat: I think that all great works are timeless. We recognize ourselves in ancient works. The only things that aren’t are things that are meant for journalism or contemporary reports.
In recent French cinema there seem to be a lot of films set in the years leading up to the French revolution. Is that a constant in French cinema, or is this something new?
Breillat: I don’t know. In the end, I’m only interested in my movies. I wanted to make this movie for 10 years, and people were always saying to me, you know how to make small budget films, so why do you want to make a big-budget film? I told myself, there’s so many directors in France that aren’t as capable as I am and are making big-budget films, so I wanted to make a big-budget film.
I was struck especially by the colors in this film. Had you looked at specific paintings to get a palette for this? How did you work with your cinematographer and designers?
Breillat: I’m an artisan, so I get very involved with colors and materials. In this film, all the lace is from the 19th or 18th century, and they’re all handmade. All the jewelry was restoration jewelry, which I bought. Everything in the close-ups is always real. I am the despair of my costume designer and my set designer, because I buy an enormous amount of materials. Asia’s costume in velvet silk that’s embroidered in gold, in fact I bought it in turkey 30 years ago. It’s a museum piece. It would be un-findable today. For painters, I inspired myself with Delacroix, also Rembrandt a little bit for the colors. And for the movement, I inspire myself from bodies like in paintings. I think Caravaggio’s bodies that are tilted back inspire me a lot. When I begin a movie I always think about what are going to be the dominant colors. This was a coral movie, but I love greens and reds.
Roxane, what was it like being in those costumes? Mesquida: It was really stressful at the beginning, because when you are in your costume and you have to speak a different language because it’s all [old, non-colloquial French], Everything I did, Catherine was like ‘It’s too fast,’ everything was too fast. It was so different.
Breillat: But after all I made you run a lot the first day. In the end these are clothes that you dress with, just like clothes that you war today, except it was then.
Mesquida: We felt more comfortable, but we almost passed out.
Breillat: I like that a lot, not to make my actors suffer, but that they give something to the film.
Catherine, what was it like to direct the scenes that were in old French, not in colloquial French?
Breillat: Because I have very complicated phrasing in my regular language […] For instance in Fat Girl there were very long and complicated sentences. It always amused me to have the actors say extremely complicated sentences, and have them come across very naturally. But it’s true, this time Roxane told me that it was much, much harder than usual, and this is the third time she’s worked with me.
Was the Marquise de Flers, Hermangarde’s grandmother, seduced by Ryno as he told his story?
Breillat: First I have to say that I also chose for this part a person who is not an actress. I chose her for her sparkling intelligence, and because she’s a very, very good person. Everybody thinks that Ryno is a play-around and a very bad partner for her granddaughter, and she actually thinks that adventurers such as him are the most interesting men. And the more she listens to his confession, the more she is seduced and convinced that he’s the right partner, because he’s not boring. He’s seductive, he’s sincere, he’s an adventurer. And as she says, OK, he’s lost his entire fortune, but Hermangarde is rich enough for the both of them.
Roxane, you’ve worked several time with Catherine. What are the differences between her and other directors?
Mesquida: The difference is, it’s a little bland with the other directors. I really love to work with her, because every time I feel that I go farther and farther in my job. It’s not about only the characters that I play, it’s about my work with her, and it’s really intense. I really love her, she’s amazing.
Breillat: I touch my actors a lot. It’s like clay to work with them. I love the touch of a body. We laugh a lot too. When I made Roxane climb the steps in the lighthouse ten times up to the top, and each time she gets to the top and is laughing a little when she gets to the top, I say ok, back down. And I was split in half laughing.
Mesquida: For you, maybe. So I cried for real in the movie, you know.
