No more than 15 minutes pass without someone, somewhere in the world, not listening to the Bolero Of Maurice Ravel. A hypnotic and universal work, which kidnaps and enchants, irreparably.
“It’s magnetic and erotic,” he tells us Anne Fontainedirector Luxembourg that we admire a lot and which leads to the competition section of the Milan Film Festfestival in its first edition, his film Bolerothe story of how Ravel’s masterful score was born. “It’s a music that enters you and doesn’t leave you,” Fontaine reflects. His Bolero It is a film that comes from afar, from its visceral bond with music and charm for Maurice Ravel as an ironic and paradoxical man, played by Raphaël Personnaz.
The plot moves halfway between biopic and the story of artistic creation as a tiring and brilliant obsession. Fontaine also wrote the script together with Claire Barré.
Difficult director to be included in cataloging, for years active in France, Anne Fontaine has a varied and in some ways bold filmography. It passed away from the comedy to the thriller to the love stories sui generis. His irresistible Gemma Boveryso alive and full of light Agnus dei even if set in a convent and between brutality, sensual and daring Two Motherswith the two Hollywood dive Naomi Watts and Robin Wright.
After the transition to the Milanese festival, underway from 3 to 8 June under the artistic direction of Claudio Santamaria, Bolero It will come out soon in the cinema distributed by Movies Inspired.
When we meet Anne Fontaine, we find an elegant and generous lady in front, ready to open up.
The Bolero It is known universally, also used in the soundtracks of film, but it is quite new on a cinematographic level to tell its origin. How did the will to make this movie born?
«I grew up in music: My father was an organist at the Lisbon Cathedral. I lived how essential the music was for him: he was always surrounded, he was never present. As a child I was forced to play classic tools, from the cello to the lute, and therefore I had a refusal for classical music. I listened to the Beatles, the Pink Floyd, the SuperTramps.
And then a few years ago, while I was walking on a beach in Formentera, Ravel “appeared”. I knew his music, but I knew very little of the character. I was with a friend of mine who spoke to me about Ravel and I heard how much, on an existential level, it was interesting to explore it more closely. It was this conversation that made me sprout the idea of the film ».
I read that you shot in the real home of Ravel, the Belvédère, in Montfor-L’Amauly. But to a stringent condition: no more than seven people on the spot. How was it?
«Five people! Five of the troupe plus the actor, of course. In the other scenes, however, we were in sixty. But it was incredible to turn in his real home. I managed to convince the mayor of Montfor-e’amaury that it was essential to turn there, who would then attract tourists. All Ravel objects, his bed, his piano, his library, everything is intact as it was then.
It was extremely thrilling Being there, with Ravel, so many years later. He himself had entirely designed the furniture to work there, he was very talented. He did everything as in a dollhouse.
We were very lucky. We stayed there for at least two weeks. We could not put lights inside so we put them outside. It was nice to turn five. It was as if I were at my first movie ».
At the end of the film we read that every 15 minutes there is someone in the world who is playing or listening to the Bolero. According to her, what the Bolero To be able to capture everyone, the music enthusiast like non -connoisseurs?
«There are many reasons. It is magnetic. It is erotic. It is a music that enters you and does not leave you. Leads to a sort of orgasm. It is obsessive, repetitive, extremely modern. He has inspired many bands. For example, i Rolling Stones: in an interview they said they were rhythmically inspired by Bolero. And then also i Deep Purple or Philip Glass.
It is absurd because it is a music that Ravel has composed in pain, yet it has a brilliant air. In the film we see all the difficulty of creation. The Bolero It was a work on commission and Ravel was about to despair that he managed to express it, he fell into depression. It was an incredible adventure ».
Ravel had a controversial relationship with his creations, which often seemed foreign to him, not his. He didn’t like the Bolero… Marguerite Long, the character played by Emmanuelle Devos, says to him: “Maybe one day you will learn to love your music”. How does you have a relationship with her films?
«A little while ago I was sent to me a whole page of a very popular newspaper that talks about my film, My best nightmare!with Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Poelvoorde. He has been successful and will now go on TV. And I wondered: would I see him? No.
I have an ambiguous relationship with my films. My best nightmare! it is one of my most commercial works, together with Coco Avant Chanel – Love before the myth. At the beginning I thought it was a much less subtle film than the others, but they talk about it continuously. They tell me it’s fantastic. I don’t find it fantastic but like it.
Many years after making it, I reviewed Nathalie …a film with Fanny Ardant, Gérard Depardieu and Emmanuelle Béart. And I was amazed, I had completely forgotten it. Because to make a new film inside you have to feel like nothing before it had ever existed, otherwise you go on tilt.
Each film is difficult to conquer because a script is dead, they are phrases that have no life. How do you give them life when cinema is an industrial art where you have to wait for money, are there many constraints and have freedom within these is really complicated? When I started, I said to myself: “I will stop immediately”. It seemed to me all too difficult to manage. But then I found more or less valid solutions.
The creation is mysterious. In music there are no words … what struck me so much from Ravel is that a unique man. He had this ironic and self -ironic intelligence. I am very sensitive to this aspect: I find people who are too serious ».
In the film Ravel says: “I firmly believe that joy is more fertile than suffering”. It is a statement that goes a little against the idea of the cursed artist and the common idea that pain generates true masterpieces. What do you think?
«It’s a paradox, given that Ravel was actually suffering. It is something he would like to make his own. It is a beautiful phrase, in any case, because you can turn it over.
I think that Art is a joyful suffering. It’s a mix. It is still joyful to be able to create something, but it is often suffering because you are not happy, what you are making is not good enough, you have no inspiration.
That’s what you live in doing of the cinema: you are on set and suddenly the scene does not work. You wrote it, in the morning you saw her, then you see her again with the actors and it’s not good, it doesn’t work. What are you doing? You are faced with your limits. This is what mainly causes suffering, because you are alone even if there are many people who look and comment on what you are doing ».
In the film, in addition to Bolerowe also listen to other Ravel works (Pavane, It was worth it, The concert in Sol, But mère the oye). Is it a way to make your most well -known works known to the profans?
«Yes, I chose the music that I thought most appropriate for the film and the works I liked the most, but I did not include everything. For example there is no Concert for the left handwhich is very beautiful, but I couldn’t put everything. However, there are magnificent works ».
In the film Marguerite says to Ravel: “Your head is in music, as always”. Is his head also always in cinema?
«I transform everything into dramaturgy. Now, for example, I see three characters there (and shows us three passers -by, in front of the hotel where we interviewed it, editor’s note). They are people, but for me they are characters.
In real life I am not good at nothing. For example, I don’t like filling a refrigerator. I have no talents.
I cling to the cinema because I hear that while I make a movie I can’t die. When you make a movie, you feel you can’t die. Indeed, when a director dies for me it is a shock.
While I do cinema I feel inside a story, protected by concentration. And when they tell me I made 20 movies, I don’t think I was me. It seems impossible to me ».
His next project?
«A movie with Isabelle Huppert. It is set in the 70s and tells the story of a woman who lives with her Dalmatian. He is a woman who has many rituals, has many shoes and is a commissioned killer. His client is Benoît Poelvoorde. In the end we will ask who will kill who.
He is a thriller, but a cruel and ironic thriller. Now I am facing two titles: the title of the book, from which it is adapted, is The Serpent Majuscule (The capital snake), very strange. I was thinking about L’amour des bêtes. We will probably turn between November and January ».
