The French director opens the 18th Seville Festival with 'Paris, 13th District', an effervescent look at the generational confusion of youth.
The event also welcomed Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi, who receives the Honorary Award of the Seville Festival today, and presents her latest film, The Story of My Wife.
Seville, 5 November - On its first day, the 18th Seville Festival welcomed two major filmmakers, whose reputations are based on careers recognised at festivals, by critics and by the public. On the one hand, the French Jacques Audiard, who opens the festival with his latest film, Paris, 13th District. On the other, the Hungarian Ildikó Enyedi, who is not only presenting her recent The Story of My Wife, but is also receiving the Honorary Award of the Seville Festival for her filmography. Both have appeared at press conferences in which they have spoken about their films and their presence at the Seville Festival.
With Paris, 13th District, Jacques Audiard has been inspired by three graphic novels by the American author Adrian Tomine to weave a small mosaic of lives in the French capital with much in common: the four main characters in the film belong to that generation between their twenties and thirties, marked by instability, both in terms of work and affection, showing these new ways of approaching sexual and sentimental relationships in a natural and non-controlled way. The director explained that "for a long time I had wanted to make a film about amorous desire, to make a romantic comedy, if we can define it that way. Just before, I had filmed The Brothers Sisters, which was a western with male characters, great landscapes, lots of colour... this created in me the desire to do the opposite".
Returning to the love affairs of the main characters, the filmmaker confessed that filming sex scenes is not something he finds easy: "Such intimate moments make me a little uncomfortable. The performers worked with a choreographer, and I didn't attend those rehearsals. Then, once on the set, there was no need to give directions. Get over here, do it faster... I don't feel up to it," said Audiard with a laugh. He adds: "I think the real difficulty for an actor when shooting these scenes is when he feels they are out of place. If they are an organic part of the script, they are not so complicated.
Two of the film's performers, Makita Samba and Jehnni Beth, who were also present at the press conference, added: "We tried to make everything very organic, integrated. In rehearsals we danced a lot together, more or less naked," he said. Beth, for her part, pointed out: "Everything was done in a very light atmosphere that made things easier. But I was apart, alone with my nudity," she said of her character, a camgirl who makes virtual porn by connecting with her clients on the internet.
Makita Samba and Jehnni Beth recounted the process of working with the actors. "There were a lot of rehearsals and Jacques listened a lot to what we were proposing. It was a dynamic in which we were able to contribute a lot to the script and the characters," said Samba. For her part, Beth emphasised: "We worked as a group, with several rooms and several workshops that Jacques went through. At the end of the three-month process and before shooting, we rehearsed the film from start to finish, a bit like we were making Dogville.
Ildikó Enyedi: "It is absurd to talk about tolerance while shouting".
At a press conference, Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi thanked the Seville European Film Festival for the lifetime achievement award she receives tonight at the Lope de Vega Theatre, and also spoke about The Story of My Wife, her new film, an adaptation of a novel by Milán Füst published in 1942, which tells the story of the romance between a Dutch sea captain and a mysterious and elegant Parisian woman. The filmmaker has explained why she decided to film the book: "When you are a teenager you try to drink from all kinds of sources, you look for secret companions in music, in literature, in art. And one of those figures, who I thought understood life in the same way as I did, was the writer Milán Füst. I have always thought that books are for reading, not for making films about them, but in this case it seemed to me that adapting Füst's novel, which has a very rich and interesting creative corpus, could help others to share that way of understanding life with which I had identified so much".
The Story of My Wife is close to a classic romance, based on the bet a sailor makes: he promises to marry the first woman who crosses his door. From that moment on, he will struggle to adapt to a long-distance relationship and to control jealousy and suspicions of infidelity. Somehow, this romantic classicism takes an unforeseen direction for its protagonist. "This is a very intimate story about the journey of a man forced to reinvent himself. I think it speaks to all of us in the current moment we live in. It is a painful process, not an easy one. I think we should all face something like this, otherwise we will end up burning the planet".
In the film, the possibility of infidelity on the part of the character played by Léa Seydoux is raised, which has given Enyedi food for thought. "In some parts of the world, girls are still killed for the simple fact of wanting to go to school. It is a reality that is as terrible as it is now. There is a certain perplexity on the part of men who feel insecure about approaching the changing rules of this new era, the result of many years of feminist struggle. But this beautiful movement is taking place in a very aggressive context, where there is no constructive debate, there is only viscerality that is thrown at the other side in an emotional way, without any logic whatsoever. It is absurd to talk about tolerance, about open-mindedness, and to do it in a shouting match. I would like the film to be a footnote, with this male character trying to understand this change in the rules and tools that he received when he was growing up. I think we are all imperfect and imperfect".
Enyedi's unusual career began with Mole (1987), a first feature film that stems from her most experimental period. Shortly afterwards, she won the Camera d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival with My 20th Century (1989). She continued to travel to festivals and win awards with Magic Hunter (1994), Tamás and Juli (1997) and Simon Magus (1999). But she then entered a long period without directing feature films, in which several projects she had worked on fell through, and from which she would emerge 18 years later with In Body and Soul (2017), Golden Bear and FIPRESCI Award at the Berlinale.
The filmmaker recalled that period without making films: "It's funny because I went through a similar process to the protagonist of The Story of My Wife. After shooting Simon Magus I had three projects, all of which I received very good feedback, so I worked tirelessly, getting more and more nervous, tense and impatient. The more I rushed to get them done, the less I got results. That whole process of looking for funding without anyone telling you that the project is no good.... Suddenly twelve years of your life have gone by, working non-stop, weekends. And suddenly I relaxed, I stopped feeling desperate and things started to happen. In a way I subscribe to the final monologue of the film, which I have taken almost literally from the novel: you have to flow with life, you have to accept its nature, be part of that process, don't force yourself, associate or ally yourself with what life brings you, and you end up receiving your reward. That's what I experienced, and I ended up going back to filmmaking”.
