Do you find that hard to balance sometimes, not taking too much from real life for fear of hurting others?
You try not to be too revealing of other people in ways that would make them uncomfortable. My co-writer and I sit for several months before we start writing. We’re talking about movies, we’re talking about story ideas and we’re talking about characters, but we’re also talking about our cousins, aunts, grandparents, friends, and partners. All of that becomes part of the film. There is a very direct relationship between storytelling and sharing one’s life.
I know my world is limited. But I felt I could write Paulina Garcia’s character in “Little Men;” who plays a shop owner, which is not my world. Sometimes I push it. When I was young, I directed a play that someone hired me for, and I did not do a good job. I felt I didn’t have enough emotional connection to the work to creatively draw upon; there was a line between that connection and my feelings. I recognized, then, that I was not a good artist for hire. I really feel like I can answer anyone’s question about any of the characters in my movie(s), or at least I can be involved in the discussion, with depth. I know I’m not making things up. That means I end up writing people whom I can imagine knowing.
Do you run long rehearsals with your actors? Your staging feels so natural but specifically laid out…
This film was very choreographed. But I don’t rehearse before I start shooting. I don’t want the actors to hear the other actors say lines beforehand, then they start to make decisions. They’re observing things and getting to a point where they can repeat themselves. One of the best things about film is capturing a moment which cannot be repeated. I try and create that kind of atmosphere. That being said, they’re not improvising, except emotionally. The lines are 97% scripted. In this case, there was very specific choreography, in terms of how they were going to move, when to leave the frame, when to pause. It was quite technical, and that was challenging for me, and for the actors, but it worked.
I can tell you that it’s based on Éric Rohmer. I’ve never noticed his blocking, but it is choreographed to the “T.”
I’m a big Hong Sang-soo fan; he’s very inspired by Rohmer. Were you thinking about that connection at all?
I wasn’t thinking about Hong Sang-soo, though I actually got to see “Claire’s Camera” with Isabelle Huppert, at Cannes, before we’d worked together. I love that movie; thought it was lovely. I think there’s an interesting challenge that comes with making a movie that is about nothing and everything, that’s where I’m always trying to scrape.
Do you think about your work as part of film history; about where you fit in next to other artists?
Oh, all the time. I’m in this, deeply. When I was younger it was a sort of anguished conversation with my heroes. There’s a great term, “the anxiety of influence,” basically this Oedipal reading of art and generations, where every artist is in conflict with who came before; now they are trying to “kill them” and that battle is where creativity comes from. I participate in that with a series of heroes who have shifted over the years.
First, it was John Cassavetes, then it was Ken Loach and Maurice Pialat. I discovered Ozu and Satyajit Ray. I found Fassbinder and Akerman. Those are the filmmakers who’ve had the biggest influence on me; those are a good group of people. For “Frankie,” we looked at “Rules of the Game.” I got inspired by that film’s willingness to go to the point of farce, the characters can almost support a caricature; we were playing with that with “Frankie.”
They’re playing parts in a repertoire; Brendan Gleeson is the sad-sack, Greg Kinnear is the fool, Marisa Tomei is the heroine, more than Isabelle, and the teenage girl is the ingenue.
I love Kinnear’s character’s humble bragging about being the DP on “Star Wars.”
On the second unit. He’s not the first unit. You might humblebrag if you’re the second unit DP.
You often reference pop culture juggernauts. In “Love is Strange,” Alfred Molina’s character doesn’t know what “Game of Thrones,” is, contrasting corporate a products against more intimate artistry…
I’ve never made that connection. You’re the first person to make that comparison. That’s funny. Maybe that’s my humble brag?
That you don’t have to play that game?
Yeah, and I don’t know much about it. It’s like a foreign language to me. I clearly feel, on some level, okay about that.
If you were given a blank check by a studio, is there a certain type of film you’d rush to make?
At 53, I’m extremely surprised and grateful to still be making the same kind of cinema that I was making when I was 25, that is really, really personal, and that seems like enough.
Your films are honest portraits of flawed, complicated people, suspicion and subterfuge often underlying what’s going on with the characters on the surface…
You’re a good reader. I use suspense and suspicion in that sense because I am very familiar with living in the illicit, as a gay man – that’s something I learned was a part of my life, and also others’. When I first started making movies, I read a lot of Patricia Highsmith, who wrote “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” She immediately draws you in. I think it’s important for filmmakers to understand narrative suspense and try to utilize it.
Isabelle’s character mirrors my own personality, to some extent, because she’s become very gentle, but has rough edges. That’s kind of what I see, and I find that in other people. The most beautiful character in the film, genuinely, is Brendan Gleeson, who is almost all love, like Alfred Molina in “Love is Strange.” Sometimes there’s a core that is really, really good and I’m moved by those people.
