2023-05-11 17:00:00
Ltradition has it that a veil of mystery surrounds the films in competition at the Cannes Film Festival until their official screening… But, even before the 76e edition does not begin (it will be next May 16), Todd Haynes is burning to talk about May-December, his feature film, worn by Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman and which crosses the influences of his idol Douglas Sirk, Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard. “It’s a melodrama that I’m very proud of,” the filmmaker tells us. Audacious, provocative, especially on romantic relationships… A kind of horror melodrama! Like a combination of Safe (1994) and far from paradise (2002). »
These two essential titles of his filmography (both with Julianne Moore) return to the big screen on the occasion of the complete retrospective, subtitled “American Chimeras”, that the Center Georges-Pompidou has the good idea to devote to Todd Haynes until May 29. At 62, the filmmaker – established for several decades in Portland, Oregon – is living a consecration. “I have long been on the margins of my sexuality, the backgrounds arty in which I evolved, the fact that I settled in Portland, my references from another era… The era has changed, but I am still the same person! I thought and I still think that seeing films by Douglas Sirk is to dive into the source of what makes the art of cinema, ”he explains. More than any other genre, Haynes has made melodrama his own. far from paradise, the miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011) with Kate Winslet and the splendid Carol (2015) with Cate Blanchett combine a modern look and formal splendor worthy of Hollywood’s golden age. It is good to (re)discover these works which are already classics.
Point : Are you going to see some of your films again during this retrospective?
Todd Haynes : I intend to see again Safe because a lot of people revisited it during the Covid and told me about it… This is a story where people cut themselves off from each other, everyone lives in a bubble. Contagion, exposure, immunity…, these terms were at the heart of the film and the fundamental anxiety it conveyed, an anxiety linked to the idea that we cut ourselves off from others. But we fundamentally need to be together. It did not surprise me that there was a collective awakening at the time of the murder of George Floyd. People needed to come together, to fill the streets, to come together for a fundamental cause.
The Center Georges-Pompidou allows film buffs to discover your working documents…
I call them “image-books” and that’s also what I called the short film I made (commissioned by the museum) for the retrospective. In these books that I make to accompany each of my scenarios, I bring together all the visual influences of the film in progress. It’s a way to communicate non-verbally with the cinematographer and to synthesize my approach. For I’m Not There (2007), my film on Bob Dylan, there were literally three volumes. Visually, this film was particularly complex, because I had chosen to have Dylan played by several different actors and even by an actress, Cate Blanchett, in the role of the Dylan of 1966, his period unplugged and electric. Bob Dylan’s identity is so complex, fragmented, multiple… It was the only narrative solution that seemed to suit me. As it concerns May-December, I thought of Godard. His death occurred during pre-production of the film. I wanted to pay tribute to him, in particular by quoting Two or three things I know about her (1967). Pour Carolan adaptation of a very autobiographical book by Patricia Highsmith, we find in the “image-book” photos of Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly, my references for the characters played by Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett, but also shots by Saul Leiter, the photographer of 1950s New York…
In Carol, Cate Blanchett plays a married woman who falls in love with a young girl. The film became cult but still sparked debates on the theme “is a heterosexual actress the best choice to play a lesbian?” “. What do you think ?
This is madness ! It’s dizzying for me who, in my early days, actively contributed to a movement that has been called New Queer Cinema. Identity, sexuality have always been at the heart of my work. I started at a time when the backlash against gay activism was very strong, sometimes violent. We saw the homosexual body as linked to contagion, to disease, a potential vector of AIDS. I therefore felt a strong desire to act through creation, it was an urgent mission… This New Queer Cinema in which I participated had the main challenge of inviting the public not to succumb to fear. This meant, among other things, not trying to make everyone comfortable with our difference… on the contrary! We were ready to shake consciences, to make people uncomfortable.
And today ?
Today, the discourse around sexual identity risks becoming oppressive. We are constantly given rules to follow and not to follow… It’s too rigid a conception of things. Our age erects barriers instead of breaking them down. So many films seek to deliver an acceptable message with regard to moral rules. But that’s not how you make art. May-December will no doubt shock in the context of woke culture and the post-#MeToo era, as the story raises some uncomfortable questions about love life, including the age at which one is allowed to make decisions. I want my films to raise debate, questions, and even disturb.
Why do you remain so attached to the form of melodrama?
Douglas Sirk said in essence: the simpler the subject, the more the public can identify with a film. Melodrama immerses us in the domestic sphere, and this choice has something deeply political about it: the private domain concerns everyone, equally. Family and romantic relationships, disillusionment, compromises, discrepancies between men and women or inequality according to social class or skin color… All of this comes through in a melodrama. We see it with Sirk, but also with Ophüls, Minnelli, Hitchcock… These are films that give space to think about the world in which we live.
“Todd Haynes, American Chimeras”, until May 29 – Master class on May 12 at 6:30 p.m. – www.centrepompidou.fr and in bookstores, “Todd Haynes, American Chimeras” by Judith Revaut-D’Allonnes and Amélie Galli , Of the incidence editor, 384 pages, 26 euros.
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