It took a sad film about an elderly Parisian couple played by old-timers Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva , pictured above coping with illness to calm critics who nearly trampled each other to get into the auditorium. The movie sobered everyone up pretty quickly.
But here, the simplicity of the story — a man caring for his partly paralyzed wife — brings out a sincerity that feels new for the director. As a man faced with excruciating decisions, year-old Trintignant gives a shattering performance.
The film, an epic about a man who decides to change sexes and the woman who loves him read my review here , screened in sidebar category Un Certain Regard and divided critics.
Here are highlights from our conversation. Will you stay with me? When I got home, I wrote 30 pages. Why did you cast a French actor, and not a Canadian, in the title role? I met [French star] Louis Garrel and we really had fun together, so I wrote this part for him - with his energy in mind, his voice, his humor. And then he bailed out at the very last minute.
And Melvil Poupaud , thank God, accepted and was free. Two days later he was in Montreal. Some critics have slammed your use of music. I sometimes write scenes for the mere use of a song. Music is not dissociable for me from moviemaking. Music was the soul of cinema for so long before sound in film. So music can create collaboration between the movie and the audience. What directors did you grow up admiring or do you admire now? Very few when I was growing up, because I was not a cinephile.
