The Press at the 81st Venice Film Festival | One turns, the other not

On Monday, Australian Peter Weir, a retired filmmaker and winner of a Golden Lion for his career, and Frenchman Claude Lelouch, winner of the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker award and already dreaming of his next film, spoke about their respective careers at the Venice Film Festival.

Last week, just hours before receiving a Golden Lion for her career, American actress Sigourney Weaver said she had better understood cinema after starring in The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), by Peter Weir, alongside Mel Gibson.

“It’s lovely that she thinks that and has fond memories of the shoot, but I don’t think she realizes what she did in Alien“The filming of this movie was difficult, but fortunately, Sigourney and Mel loved each other. I have great memories of it myself,” said Peter Weir, 80, 13 films in 40 years of career, at a press conference.

Not running since the release of The Way Back in 2010, the one to whom we owe in particular Gallipoli (1981), Witness (1985) and The Truman Show (1998) is enjoying his retirement in Sydney and has no plans to return behind the camera. Nor to serve as a mentor or producer to young filmmakers.

“Cinema is a long road to follow alone… I would be too dominant,” he said. “I read a lot, I have always read a lot. For this trip, I calculated that I would need three books, so I brought three. I read a lot of history books. I like to learn about the details of life. I also watch movies. I enjoy life and I think about the state of the world.”

Peter Weir didn’t initially set out to direct. He and friends wrote Monty Python-style sketches and starred in them.

Along with George Miller, Bruce Beresford and Gillian Armstrong, Peter Weir embodied the Australian New Wave of the 1970s. It was in 1975 that he had his first major success with what undoubtedly remains one of his finest films, Picnic at Hanging Rockbased on the novel by Joan Lindsay, in which young girls and their teacher disappear without a trace.

“I was captivated by this novel because there were no answers and I found it a beautiful adaptation challenge. I was also fascinated by the soldiers of the First World War who were blown up and whose bodies were never found. So I created a mystical, enchanted and mysterious world.”

Although he was never asked for a sequel to this film, many people have asked him for one Master and Commander (2003) and, of course, for Dead Poets Society (1989), where he managed to get Robin Williams to transcend everything he had accomplished before.

“ Master and Commander couldn’t have a sequel because it wasn’t successful enough. Although I’ve thought about what would have become of the characters in my films, I don’t like the idea of ​​sequels. I’d love to see a sequel to Dead Poets Societybut I wouldn’t be the one to shoot it.”

This is not a swan song

Sequels don’t scare Claude Lelouch, 86 years old, 51 films in over 65 years of career. As proof, Eventuallypresented out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, stars Kad Merad as Lino Massari, who, as a child, decided to become a lawyer to get his crooked father out of prison.

Does this name ring a bell? It’s the one Lino Ventura had in Adventure is adventure (1972), where he played a… crook. And who plays Merad’s mother? None other than Françoise Fabian, who fell in love with Ventura, as a jewel thief, in The good deal (1973). Eventually is also full of extracts from both films.

Having decided to drop everything, Lino crosses France spreading happiness among people who are kind enough to give him a lift or put him up. Obviously, several songs carry this film in which Claude Lelouch (A man and a woman, Both, Itinerary of a spoiled child) celebrates life in complete freedom.

“I have the unfortunate tendency to be optimistic because I escaped the worst and so afterwards, everything seems very sweet. Life is like cycling: we dream of climbing hills and we get bored on the flat.”

“The idea for the film comes from this freedom that I have wanted to defend all my life,” he added. “We are prisoners of everything we have and sometimes we want to reinvent ourselves. We also live in an era where we suffer from burnout. So I made the portrait of a man who wants to find his freedom again. It’s a film that is very much like me, like my other films, because I have never made commissioned films.”

Despite its title, Eventually does not announce retirement at all for the man who started out in cinema as a reporter in the 1950s: “I hope you’ll be my age one day. In life, you have to know how to say hello, but it’s also very important to know how to say goodbye. I’m in the sprint of my life, I know I’m making my last films, but I continue to be constantly amazed. I’m enjoying life. For me, death is the most beautiful invention in life. I’ve lost a lot of friends, Trintignant, Anouk Aimée; I believe that ideas come from elsewhere, that they come to us from those who have passed away. And there, I’ve never had so many ideas. My next film could be called In the end, it never ends. »