Marc Cassivi: Your film celebrates French quality through culinary art. Is this a love letter to France for you?
Tran Anh Hùng: It’s a love letter to France, yes. I drew all my first impressions from within myself when I discovered France. There is a beauty in the French spirit that is summed up for me with the word “measure”. It’s never exuberant. Whether in architecture, in painting, in all the arts, there is a certain measure.
MC: It’s not flamboyance, but elegance…
TAH: Quite. I really wanted to make a film that had this substance, with restraint, even feelings. It is in this sense that I say that it is a tribute to France and not to gastronomy. It’s really the spirit, that’s what counts.
M.C. : Et passer par la gastronomie, c’était un bon véhicule pour rendre cet hommage ?
T.A.H. : Oui, tout à fait. Il n’y avait pas une volonté farouche de faire un film sur la cuisine française, mais de faire un film sur la cuisine en tant qu’art. Je pense que tous les réalisateurs ont envie dans leur vie de faire un film sur l’art. Certains choisissent la peinture ou la musique. Moi, j’ai préféré l’art culinaire parce que c’est vrai. Ce n’est pas comme quelqu’un qui fait semblant de peindre un Van Gogh. Et je me suis pompeusement lancé un défi : j’ai voulu faire un film sur la nourriture qui donnerait du fil à retordre au prochain réalisateur qui veut faire un film sur la nourriture !
M.C. : Comment avez-vous découvert le roman historique [de Marcel Rouff, publié en 1924] who inspired the film?
TAH: I came across this rather old-fashioned book by chance, especially in the treatment of human relationships. But there are some wonderful pages about food. I found it amazing how people talked about it and kept these pages to tell another story. The one which, ultimately, precedes the book.
PHOTO ANDER GILLENEA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Director Trân Anh Hùng
MC: It is therefore very freely inspired by the novel…
TAH: Yes, because I wanted to give a particular tone to this love story. I wanted it to be a conjugal love, that is to say a love which is not passionate, but rather a search for harmony to be able to last a long time together. And that, obviously, is a real challenge because it’s much more exciting and easier to show passion and confrontation than to try to create a form of harmony that isn’t boring! [Rires]
MC: Obviously, you feature Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche, who we haven’t seen together on screen for 25 years, at Diane Kurys [pour Les enfants du siècle]. We feel that there is chemistry between them, perhaps also because we know that they have already formed a couple…
TAH: For me, it was obvious that it would be these two actors. Juliette was there from the start of the project, because we had promised each other a long time ago to make a film together. She stayed on the project despite all the difficulties of COVID which occurred and which stopped everything. I told him about Benoît from the start. She didn’t think it was a good idea. She thought he would never accept because of what happened between them. We waited a long time, and then finally I went to ask Benoît and he accepted straight away! On the set, it was wonderful because they are, on the one hand, extraordinary actors, and on the other hand, great professionals.
MC: The French press was less enthusiastic about your film than the international press at the Cannes Film Festival. That doesn’t really surprise me. Abroad, we have a certain idea of France and we like this vision to be embraced. Maybe the French found it too cliché?
TAH: It’s a very special thing. It’s linked to my relationship with the French press. She has always been horrible to me, on all my films. I’m not surprised. From my first film, I should have said that the New Wave is everything for me. I never said it. For me, Truffaut does illustration. I enjoy watching the Doinel cycle, I know the films by heart, the story is nice, but from the point of view of pure cinematography, it is very poor. While Godard is rich in cinema.
PHOTO CAROLE BETHUEL, PROVIDED BY MÉTROPOLE FILMS
Scene from The passion of Dodin Bouffant
MC: For the French press, this love letter to France comes too late?
TAH: No not at all. For the French press, it’s as if I said one thing and did something else. Maybe that’s it. For critics, it is not a love letter to France.
MC: From this point of view, is having been chosen to represent France at the Oscars a balm?
TAH: Yes, it caused controversy [Anatomie d’une chute de Justine Triet était le candidat pressenti], but for me, it is a great pleasure to represent France at the Oscars. It is an honor. The Oscars are an interesting goal for the film and it’s really exciting for me.
MC: It was for France that you were there with The smell of green papaya ?
TAH: No, I was in the five finalists for Vietnam, even though I had already lived in France for a long time. What is important for me, when I make a film, is to provide the viewer with something of quality in terms of cinematographic language. French critics are too consumed by the theme and the story. I don’t think they know what cinematic language is. They don’t ask the question. The entire discussion is on the theme that is most current. That doesn’t interest me. In 100 years, if we still watch films, it will be the cinematographic language that will take precedence, and not the little story that happened at a certain time.
MC: It’s not the story we tell that matters, but the way we tell it…
TAH: Exactly. And through that, create emotion and meaning that only cinema can give. Most films, whether French or otherwise, are simply illustrations of stories and themes. There is no cinema. It’s very poor.
The passion of Dodin Bouffantin theaters November 10
Who is Tran Anh Hùng?
Born in Da Nang, Vietnam, Trân Anh Hùng arrived in France as a refugee at the age of 12.
Winner of the Caméra d’or for best first feature film at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993 for The smell of green papayahe won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival two years later for Cyclo.
Vertical summer (2000) closes his Vietnamese trilogy. It adapts The ballad of the impossiblenovel by Haruki Murakami, in 2009 and directed Eternitborn in 2016.