WIf there was a crowd he could easily drown in it, he looks so unassuming. But there isn’t a crowd, just a few isolated people on the huge forecourt in front of the mk2 brand cinema complex next to the national library in the deep south-east of the French capital. Paris doesn’t look like Paris here, more like Karl-Marx-Stadt if you beamed it into the future. Jacques Audiard doesn’t look like Jacques Audiard either. The director of masterpieces such as “A Prophet” (2009), “The Taste of Rust and Bone” (2012) with Marion Cotillard or “Demons and Miracles”, with which he won the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 2015, wears a hoodie and a yellow wool hat . The internet is full of pictures of him in a tailored suit, vest and hat. In sneakers today. Also fits: We don’t want to go to the red carpet, but to Chinatown.
Audiard’s new film, in German with the not so crazy sensational title “Where the sun rises in Paris”, is originally called cool “Les Olympiades”. The name refers to the Projects of Paris, the brutalist high-rise buildings in the 13th arrondissement’s asiatique district that form the center of Europe’s largest Chinatown, home to over 200,000 Asian residents.
As we cross the Avenue de la France—Paris’s most recent landmark, Jean Nouvel’s crooked Tours duo, glittering in the sunlight—I ask Audiard if he’s as versatile in his choice of outfits as he is in the subjects of his films. Because the fact that he, a superstar in France, is not so famous in Germany is perhaps due to the fact that Audiard reinvents himself with every film. Not too long ago he even filmed a western starring Joaquin Phoenix and Riz Ahmed in the old sets of Sergio Leone in Andalusia.
The Sisters Brothers (2018) was once again something new in Audiard’s work, after the prison drama A Prophet or the immigrant story Demons and Miracles. In the latter, three people flee Sri Lanka with forged passports. They form a kind of emergency family to fool the French authorities. As they do so, their bonds grow imperceptibly stronger until a violent eruption occurs.
It occurs to me, while Audiard is asking for cigarettes as urgently as it is in vain, that the films have in common: their toughness, but also their intelligence and sensitivity. Audiard could be brought to this rare formula, which perhaps also describes the work of Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann or Paul Schrader. For decades he has combined uncompromising genre cinema with pictures and editing that signal art house, and profound character studies that always leave the characters with a bit of mystery, so that they remain fascinating to watch. In other words, he makes great films.
Audiard regularly picks up his actors on the street, sometimes literally: he took the main actor of “A Prophet” with him from a set in the car. Audiard liked that there was no melancholy and tragedy in his eyes, only hunger for life. That suited him just in time for a role in which melancholy and tragedy are all too obvious. The break makes it interesting, there is a dichotomy between tenderness and ruthlessness; this creates tension.
Brutalism in black and white: “Where the sun rises in Paris”
Source: Neue Visionen film distribution
In “Demons and Miracles” – in the original again with the better title, the hero’s first name: “Deephan” – Audiard also cast a newcomer, the Tamil Antonythasan Jesuthasan. He fought with the Tamil Tigers as a teenager and then made his way to Paris via Hong Kong with a fake passport, where he worked in burger joints and at Eurodisney before he started writing books. “Deephan” is “50 percent” biographical, Jesuthasan once said. He’s perfect in the role. In the meantime he has turned – despite the Golden Palm! – relaxed and writing books again. A typical Audiard career: The people he discovers all become something, if not necessarily an actor, but only because there is more to them than that.
Lucie Zhang, the leading actress in the new film that hits cinemas in Germany next week, also promises to be one of those cases. The barely 22-year-old grew up around here, looking for a tabac in one of the many hundreds of Chinese restaurants we pass by. Audiard spots a street sign at least 30 meters away: Rue Dunois. “I think that was a friend of Joan of Arc,” he says. We get closer: “Arms friend of Joan of Arc” is there. “Bravo,” I say appreciatively. “Knowing or just such good eyesight?” Audiard chuckles flattered; he doesn’t have such good eyes.
So here he is, undecided whether the longed-for Gauloises are to be found on the left or on the right – a man born in 1952, in other words: He will be 70 this year, even if he looks 20 years younger. He springs sportily in white sneakers and recognizes companions of Joan of Arc from afar. In his films, immigrant daughters are sometimes named after the characters from Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables”. He was born into the Paris film aristocracy. His father was Michel Audiard, not very famous in this country, but it is probably enough to say that he wrote 17 screenplays for Jean Gabin to give an idea of his importance across the Rhine. In portraits about him one can read that he had a similar importance for the French everyday language as the Disney translator Erika Fuchs had for the German one, which means one that cannot be overestimated.
A comic as template
His son hesitated at first to follow in these huge footsteps, but on the other hand, as one cannot help but certify in retrospect, he had a gigantic talent for directing, and that ultimately includes a good portion of (justified) megalomania. So he made up his mind after a few years at the theater. That still benefits him today. He was shooting the new film in the middle of the pandemic and had to hurry because of all the testing, regulations and illnesses in the team. So he assembled the cast on the stage of a theater three days before shooting began and had the entire script run through. Especially for the debutante Lucie Zhang, as one might quip, demons and miracles may have worked. She is stunning and sure to become a star. In one scene she dances elatedly through a Chinese restaurant. It looks like she’s flying.
Did I mention that the film was shot in black and white, except for one scene in color – apparently a homage to Woody Allen’s “Manhattan”? “Paris is often so boring,” says Audiard, according to Haussmann’sch, superficially and without lines. He doesn’t like that at all and therefore finds it difficult to shoot here, in the city where he has spent his whole life. He could have emphasized the modernist vanishing points of the 13th arrondissement with the harsh contrasts of black and white, which is why “Les Olympiades” became almost graphic. After all, the template is a comic by the New York author Adrian Tomine.
It’s about four young adults, the Chinese Émilie, who is late in puberty and lets the days pass by and doesn’t take enough care of her demented grandmother, the frustrated teacher Camille, played by Makita Samba, the traumatized law student Nora (Noémie Merlant) and the video -Call girl Amber (Jehnny Beth). They sobered up navigating between jobs, looking for an apartment and dating via apps and social media. The film is fast, clear, unadorned and beautiful.
Jacques Audiard in summer 2021 at the premiere of “Les Olympiades”
Source: AFP
What on earth does this youthful present have to do with life as a 70-year-old? “I’m interested in what I’m not,” says Audiard. It has always been like this. In “Deephan” the actors improvised in Tamil. Audiard didn’t understand a word, but let it pass. During the screenings of the finished film, he noticed that some viewers laughed at precisely these points. He will probably never know what exactly is being said. And the hard prison life of “A Prophet” or the street fight scene of “Rust and Bones” have little to do with the life of an established cineast.
“My next film,” says Audiard, “will tell the story of a Mexican drug lord who undergoes sex reassignment surgery. As a musical.” As a musical?! Like “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”? Exactly, says Audiard, by the way, this is “the best film that was ever made about the Algerian war”.
We found the tobacco. Audiard is about to start smoking. Did he already have Corona? Yes, recently, nothing noticed, that’s probably the most boring topic in the world.
We keep walking, into the arena between the skyscrapers. “We shot here!” calls Audiard and points upwards. “And there too, on the roof. These are great houses and are rightly listed buildings. This, for example, is outrageously expensive. And that over there, almost identical in construction, costs almost nothing, social housing.”
We sit down on a stone in the sun. After three minutes a film crew comes and starts shooting. “Funny coincidence,” says Audiard, raising his hand in greeting. A teenager approaches hesitantly. “Are you Jacques Audiard?” he asks. “Yes,” says Audiard. “Wow. Shall we take a picture together?” And for once, the director is in front of the camera.
As we say goodbye, we get philosophical in the mild spring sun, talking about countries and their time in film history. The Europeans owned the 1960s, the Americans the 1970s, Hong Kong the 1980s, and since the turn of the millennium the Asians have been in the lead. How do you manage to deliver top quality in a country where the film culture is slacking because somehow the air is out, because you can no longer feel the same tension in society as before? “That’s an interesting question,” says Audiard. He doesn’t have to say much more, he answers them every few years with his films. Then he gives a friendly wave and goes looking for his bike.