Arnaud Desplechin. “When I write using my weaknesses” – Daily News – Lisbon

Back crushing one of the most applauded current French filmmakers Three Recollections of My Youth. In Paris, Desplechin told DN it was romanesco adolescent film

In this film plays with identity issues. In parallel identities. Any one of us can, after all, have a double somewhere in this world …

That’s right, there’s this side. I wanted to explore the idea doppelganger . This is a film about someone who is not sure of who you are, you have doubts about yourself and about your identity. This, I believe, gives a weakness to this character. It has to do with the idea of ​​hatred that has with his mother and other traumas. This wound is that makes this state, this skepticism.

This character, Paul Dedalus is the same as Comment Je Me Suis DISPUTE (Ma Vie Sexuelle) . Assume that Three Gift A Youth is really a mixed sequel prequel to?

Yes, it’s a little of both. On the other hand, I wanted something different – I even ask the younger players not to see the first film. The idea was that they could bring new things, but I must say that insisted on seeing him. As a prequel almost can speak in no duty of fidelity to the original … The character change formation, for example. Anyway, there are these small changes.

Sequel / declared prequel or not, the truth is that none of his films have much to do with each other. I would say that there is a desire to kill what’s behind?

I confess, it is programmed. In the beginning part of a personal desire not to repeat myself, not wanting to do the same, but then, when I write, I want to enter my films a gender logic. Most directors I know want to describe life. I, on the contrary, through film genres, I want to get to the truth. Every time I write a movie I think of a gender-specific. Here I wanted to go by teenage movie, the romantic film. So, my films have different colors.

But it is also a tale of initiation?

Also! I think the same way my films as stories, tales an all or nothing magic into the documentary. There is, to come to reality … these fables reveal the truth about my characters. For the next walk to think very Vertigo – The Woman Who Lived Twice , Alfred Hitchcock, but have not found gender. There will be a thriller. It will be a sentimental version. When you find the genre, against my film. It is always in writing that the film is born.

Interestingly, speaking of the novel and it is clear that in this sense the film is quite ambitious.

I always prefer the novelistic the documentary. Is me always in mind that phrase from Truffaut: “. I am always against the documentary”

Today no one dares to say it

(laughs) . Today is nothing fashionable to make a film against the documentary. But the romanesco is also appetite of the characters. Paul Dedalus is the desire of the novel.

Paul Dedalus is a bit Arnaud Desplechin as a person?

Yes, I am an admirer of Truffaut. Between him and the character Antoine Doinel, always interpreted by Jean-Pierre Léaud, was this identification, but it was a little reflection between teacher and student, as I aspire much for equality. Hence my difficulty, now working with a younger actor, was precisely to find that equality record. The idea was I was a work buddy plan and tried to find conditions for dialogue for this reason, despite the age difference. Daedalus, say, is not the Doinel, do not have this teaching side. Therefore, it is quite self-portrait but also my Mathieu Amalric, who plays the character in its adult state. In fact, all my films have this dimension mask. During the filming I always ask the actors to give me anything really them and intimate. Represent well in my films is not enough, I need what is secret. I’m going after the frail, the bizarre. And when I ask you to give me anything immodest, I, as a filmmaker, I also have to give them the same.

Are you saying that there is an exchange?

Yes, an exchange. So I can say that when I write using my weaknesses. Later, I can also tell the actors to serve their weaknesses … and forces too!

Is it true the story that forced the Quentin Dolmaire, the protagonist, to see Stolen Kisses s [1968], François Truffaut?

it is not true! I tell you what happened: we did not know at the very beginning and Quentin was to discover. In fact, I had never been an actor in movies or done long shots. In this film we had to manage varied and complex situations. It had to represent that uniqueness of the youth games. Now, in my youth, there was an actor named Jean-Pierre Léaud, a single actor. I wanted to show you the Léaud to tell you that there were young people who had to do the same as him. So I showed him kisses stolen. I wanted an actor who would not be normative, who played an actor game that was not the norm, as simple as that. In addition, the charm of Léaud does not enter the code that the film industry created for the actors. Already, Kisses Stolen is wonderful.

Finding an actor should take a tremendous happiness to a director …

It is the greatest pleasure! We saw hundreds of young people, some of them with experience. With Quentin realized immediately it was him. I remember the assistant casting down some stairs at the place where we did the auditions and telling me to come quickly to see Quentin … And barely started working we saw that dialogue with him was possible. At the time, then I was sure that I wanted for the film, but did not know for what role. Now he is released! You can say what you want, but it will be an actor with a lot of work. Incidentally, after this already has four signed films. You no longer have to worry. It will happen to you the same thing that happened to the Adèle The Life of Adèle , a magnificent actress. It is also important to talk about another actress in this my film, Lou Roy-Lecollinet, which appeared in casting formidable and with a remarkable fury. At the time, yet he was only 17 and soon caught my attention.