OUTSIDE IN TOKYO JAPANESE
OLIVIER ASSAYAS INTERVIEW

Olivier Assayas: “Clean” “NOISE”

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This is more of a personal question, but you’ve obviously spent time with her and must have heard her sing in her private life as well. Were you always attracted to her singing?
Well, it’s not like she sings in the shower (he laughs). I’ve never really heard her sing. But I always knew that she, it’s something she has always dreamed of it, and even though she kind of had the notion to, she never felt very secure about it. And obviously, she would not be singing the stuff that Hong Kong movie stars sing. Most of Hong Kong movie stars are pop singers. And they do this kind of Canto-pop stuff. It’s not a culture. It’s not what she listens to. We were listening to, of course, when we lived together---I kind of knew her taste in music. More in the direction of British indie rock and so that’s why I kind of imagined going in that direction, in that mood. And I always knew if she ended up singing and made a record someday, it would be something in that mood. So I knew she would connect with the music I wanted to use in “Clean”. Again, just to make sense of the story, she needed something that she could adopt as her own.

Also with the music, I couldn’t help feeling the connection with your film “Noise” which you have directed and organized as an event with similar musicians. How did that connect? Which came first?
Well, how should I put it... “Noise” came right after “Clean”. It happened because of this music festival in Brittany, France, which gives carte blanche to an artist to program one evening of their festival. So they called me. I suppose the reason they called me was because they had seen “Clean”. And since “Clean” had a strong musical element, it inspired them to ask me to program that evening in their festival. So I suppose that’s the first obvious connection, and when, in terms of, inviting musicians, either I could have invited bands I’d been fantasizing about, like the stuff I’d been listening to, so I could see them, or I could have used musicians I had connections with already, and people I had been working with through the years, and just trying to figure out, or putting them all on the stage made some kind of sense. So obviously, I invited Sonic Youth first, and asked them to do whatever they wanted to do within that framework. Obviously Metric would be involved. They are a Montreal band from Canada, that was virtually invisible before the film, and all of a sudden they became popular in France, because people liked them in the small segment in my film. They got a French recording deal. Their albums were out. They became popular. So it was interesting for me to just go one step further with the collaboration with them. What was interesting in “Noise” was that it was an opportunity for me to film stuff myself. Since the beginning, I knew I wanted to shoot the whole evening and try to make some kind of film out of it. But part of it was, I wanted to operate one of the cameras myself, because I liked doing it, to do some abstract stuff with an odd small DV camera. But I’ve never done anything that actually takes shape in the form of a film or documentary, so to me, it was also a way to experiment in way. But for me, it was an opportunity to explore it one step further, and I suppose in a more intimate way, in the relation between images and music, and kind of involve myself even physically with my own camera. And it kind of grew from there, also because, when we started discussing the project, well mostly with Kim and Thurston, they asked me, “Why don’t you give us something as a background? Do you have something we could use as a background projection to use for our set? “And I said, “Well, I don’t have anything in mind, but I can devise something.” So I started editing my own experimental DV stuff, and I had a lot of fun doing that. I looked into the piles of tapes that had just been amassing, and I started to structure something. And I realized that it was taking me somewhere. So I started expanding on it. I used it as some kind of theme, as it kind of crept into the images of the concept. So to me, it’s an experimental work in a sense that---but in the sense of really experimenting, trying things I never tried before, using tools I never used before. Then again, just exploring areas that always attracted me, meaning how the connection of image and music I never had the opportunity, to take it as far as possible.

Going back to “Clean”, for Maggie’s role, I heard comments from some people that they had a hard time feeling compassionate towards Emily, her character. Was this intentional in any way?
Of course not. I kind of encouraged her to be as sober and restrained as possible because for me that is how emotions are expressed. I think it is a movie where emotion is (hidden) under the skin. It doesn’t have to be projected. The issue is that the character of Emily, the character that Maggie plays in the film is presented as an unpleasant character actually. She is mean, bitchy. She’s loud. She’s self-destructive. But the film is very much about how you accept that there is some possibility of redemption. There is a way she can save herself from the hell she has built, and she has been living in it. And I also think the way the audience connects to the character has to do with how much credit they are ready to give her, and how ready they are to accept that she can save herself. I think she has this interiorized way of living with her own suffering, living with her own fears, living with her own pain, and not giving a spectacle. And so you can relate to her if you care for her, and if you think there’s no space for salvation, well, then you won’t like her, because you will never feel that her redemption is genuine or whatever. But I think it’s not so much about the movie, but it has to do with human values and the faith one can have or not into the capacity of individuals for salvation.

As you lived with Maggie as a muse, as a filmmaker, how does the distance work for you in your creativity? I wonder if it has gotten better, or not, as your personal lives have grown apart?
It is very difficult to answer, because I’ve always drawn a very clear line between my life and my filmmaking. I’ve always been extremely protective of my privacy. And I’ve always considered that they were two distance worlds. One world is, the movies I make, how I make them and even the people I work with when I make my films. I’ve working the same collaborators since I started making films. We go back a long way, with my editor, with my art director, with my assistants, my production manager or whatever, or my cameraman of course. But I don’t see much of them, we spend months living together, because we are preparing a film, shooting a film, or in the editing room, and this and that, but I don’t seem them much outside that process. And I suppose it has to do with the fact that I always try to have a very parallel life, which is my own everyday life. And of course it’s been extremely complex when I’ve been living with, specifically someone like Maggie, who has obviously been very much a part of my filmmaking. She had a very important influence. But the strange thing is, again, the two films I’ve made with her, one, “Irma Vep” I made before we were together, and the other one “Clean”, I made when we were already divorcing. I don’t know. It must say something about myself, but I’m not sure what (he laughs). But she, in terms of being a muse, you know, Maggie, during the time we were together, was the most important influence in my life, and she brought me so much. A lot of what she brought stayed with me, so I hope it’s the same for her. But a movie like “Irma Vep” is pretty much all about this notion of how you are inspired by an actress. And I suppose that “Irma Vep” is both a comedy and it’s also poetry, it’s abstract and it deals with the idea. You know, it kind of tries to put into images how one can be inspired by an actress for a million reasons. And then somehow, “Clean” is the novelistic version of it. It’s the actual film I made being inspired by her. I would never---I mean, “Irma Vep” and “Clean” are two essential movies in terms of my work, in terms of my career, in terms of my inspiration, and those movies kind of belong to Maggie. They are my movies, but they are also her movies. They were totally inspired by her, so in terms of being a muse, it’s a, you know, I’m not so confident with the word because I’m never completely sure what it means, but I suppose Maggie is certainly as close as she can be for having been my muse for those two movies, and in my life in the meantime.

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