We find director Matthew Rankin and co-writer and co-executive producer Ila Firouzabadi in a café in the Plateau, a few days before their departure for Cannes where their film A universal language will compete in the Filmmakers’ Fortnight. All around, the kitsch decor could not be further from the style of the work in question: a veritable orgy of beiges, browns and happily second-rate grays. After the delirious The twentieth centuryInternational Critics’ Prize in Berlin, the adopted Montrealer returns with a wonderfully unique film set in his native Winnipeg (or almost).
“First and foremost, there was this story my grandmother told me: During the Depression, she had found a dollar bill trapped in ice on the sidewalk, and getting it out of there had been a challenge. quite an adventure. I like this story. And I don’t know why, but it always made me think of these Iranian films produced by the Kanoun studio, which are like educational fables. I’m thinking especially of the film The white ball, by Jafar Panahi. So at the beginning, it was a bit like that: telling this story of my grandmother using cinematic language, using Iranian meta-realism,” explains Matthew Rankin.
We have to admire the filmmaker’s unusual sources of inspiration. For memory, The twentieth centurya fantasy biography of Mackenzie King, was a bit like a Heritage Minute queer on acid.
Taking place in Persian (Farsi) and French, in a Winnipeg that could be Tehran, A universal language tells the story of the intersecting destinies – and woven tighter than it seems – of a taciturn civil servant who returns home in the hope of seeing his mother again, of a tourist guide who is more motivated than gifted, of a professional mourner , an angry teacher, as well as two little girls embarked on a quest aimed at… extracting a lost bank note from its frozen prison.
“Matthew already had a script that he presented to me and Pirouz [Nemati, coscénariste] », explains Ila Firouzabadi, a multidisciplinary artist of Iranian origin established in Montreal since 2012.
“Pirouz and I translated all the required passages into Farsi. Except that sometimes that meant making changes to preserve Matthew’s intent, because a word-for-word translation into Farsi wouldn’t have made sense. We then had to find equivalences… We also made changes in order to facilitate the work of the children, in terms of their lines: the two little main actresses were extraordinary and spoke perfect French, but certain words in Farsi were more difficult to pronounce for they. »
In this regard, Ila Firouzabadi was also the children’s play coach: multidisciplinary, it goes without saying.
Matthew Rankin, actor
Mind you, Matthew Rankin also wears several hats, including co-executive producer and… actor. Indeed, the filmmaker embodies this beige civil servant from head to toe, back in this Winnipeg that is both so different and so familiar.
“I myself worked for the federal government for a year,” he confides. After my first feature film The twentieth centuryI was extremely in debt, so during this period I made propaganda films for the government — the sequence [transposée au palier provincial] which echoes this in A universal language, is very similar to the experience I had. »
Matthew Rankin continued: “There have been several flashes at the origin of the scenario, and the meeting with Ila and Pirouz was decisive. It’s a very collaborative, open script, which was written right up until the final mixing of the film, in post-production. It’s funny, because I have few memories of writing as such… I mostly remember my drawings. »
In this regard, the film is very stylized, which will not surprise film buffs familiar with the cinema of Matthew Rankin, short and feature films included. Each shot is skillfully composed, while buildings and places, with their singular architecture, become recurring motifs.
“Most of the compositions were drawn well in advance,” opines Matthew Rankin. Everything was well established with my wonderful collaborators, Louisa Schabas as artistic director, and Isabelle Stachtchenko as photo director. We did a lot of scouting in order to translate into the image this deadpan tone that I wanted to maintain in the film. I was looking for buildings in a very “brutalist” style, with a government look: the Canadian welfare state of the 1960s and 1970s… I wanted the world of the film to be very constructed. »
Unusual and offbeat
Moreover, if we are to believe Ila Firouzabadi, the buildings and other highway ramps selected for A universal languageperfectly serve their function of simultaneously evoking two cities that are one.
“These buildings in Winnipeg look a lot like buildings in Tehran,” she notes. The two cities are surprisingly similar. Tehran is not very pretty — there are lots of beautiful things happening there, but in terms of appearance, it is very neutral in terms of colors, and very brutal in terms of architecture. There is that in Winnipeg. »
Some renowned performers, including Mani Soleymanlou and Danielle Fichaud, honor the unusual, deeply offbeat humor of Matthew Rankin. The majority of the actors, however, are little or not known, which helps to perfect the strange reality in which the film is immersed.
“There are characters who were constructed during the casting, reveals Matthew Rankin. For example, the two children were initially a brother and a sister. But in auditions, we were so amazed by the girls that they became two sisters. And then, there are roles that we wrote specifically for our friends. Most of the roles are played by friends, in fact, and each and every one has inspired us. »
As the Cannes premiere approaches, the director displays serenity and gratitude.
“It’s so beautiful, because we will be a delegation of forty people: the entire community that formed for this film; all these friendships… We are going to experience a rare joy,” concludes Matthew Rankin.
It’s deserved, since that’s exactly the feeling his film gives.
Produced by Sylvain Corbeil of Metafilms, A universal language will be on display over the coming months. François Lévesque is in Cannes at the invitation of the festival and thanks to the support of Telefilm Canada.