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From the "People" Archives: Francois Ozon on "Swimming Pool": Fantasy, Reality, Creation by Erica Abeel
Francois Ozon has been called current French cinema's enfant terrible. But he shrugs off the expression: it's rarely used in French, he says, and he harbors no conscious desire to shock. Yet provoke and unsettle he does. Often compared to Hitchcock and Chabrol, in just a few years, Ozon has carved out his own niche with an eclectic cluster of films marked by transgression, bizarre humor, and a masterly control of pacing and tone. Whatever else, Ozon takes you to dark regions where you've never been. After graduating from FEMIS, the prestigious French national film school, from 1986 to 1990 Ozon turned out 30 Super 8 shorts. His debut featurette "See the Sea" (1997) sparked instant controversy on the fest circuit. A creepy tale of a young mother alone on a seaside vacation who opens her home to a surly backpacker, the film is a gem of psychosexual horror (and was inspired by a real-life crazy he knew in film school). It displayed from the start Ozon's ability to convey a sinister subtext without overt cues. After "See the Sea," Ozon, now 36, never looked back, at one point making two films a year. "Sitcom" (1998) is a dark comedy about a middle class family that crackles with perversity. "Criminal Lovers" (1999), an exercise in sexual brutality based on a true crime, follows a homicidal teen couple who hole up in a forest cabin and become prisoners of a lecherous woodsman. It's been called a gay S&M fantasy based on "Hansel and Gretel," Ozon's favorite fairy tale. Adapted from a play by Fassbinder, "Water Drops on Burning Rocks" (2000) charts the sexual power games of a naïve young man and his older tyrannical male lover -- a film that reflects, Ozon has said, his own romantic upheavals. In the same year, "Under the Sand," a haunting and ambiguous exploration of mourning, brought Ozon wide critical acclaim -- and rejuvenated the career of Charlotte Rampling. Inspired by a 1960s crime play, Ozon turned another 180 degrees to create "8 Women," a campy murder mystery cum musical, which gave him international cachet. In his new, much anticipated "Swimming Pool," (shown in competition this spring in Cannes), Sarah Morton, a Ruth Rendell-type crime writer played by Charlotte Rampling, travels to the Provencal country house of John, her publisher, to recharge her creative batteries. There she locks horns with John's sexually avid daughter Julie, played by Ozon muse Ludivine Sagnier. The film mingles Ozon's preferred themes of sex and murder, challenging the viewer to distinguish between the "real" and the imagined world of Sarah's ongoing novel. Ozon's earlier work tended toward autobiography. Now, with "Swimming Pool," he has come full circle and again turns the camera on himself. indieWIRE spoke with him at Park Avenue's posh Regency Hotel (a Focus Features choice; he's more of a downtown guy.) Casually elegant in a pinstripe jacket and white shirt open at the neck and cuffs, Ozon actually seems to enjoy the onslaught of journalists, laughs often, and has the disarming good looks of a slightly dangerous choirboy. "Swimming Pool" opens Wednesday. indieWIRE: Isn't it tiresome to be asked the same questions by journalists? Francois Ozon: Well, "8 Women" was really boring, because everyone asked about the actresses. Ask me about myself; I prefer it. Especially since 'Swimming Pool' is a self-portrait. iW: It's a film about a mystery writer who gets entangled with her publisher's daughter. So how is it a self-portrait? Ozon: I'm actually talking about myself, my own creative method. I wanted to show how I work -- since journalists always ask me, "Where does your inspiration come from, that you can make a film every year?" I wanted to show that I have no trouble coming up with ideas -- my head is full of stories. The issue for me is desire. Choosing the right story that's going to have staying power. It can't just be a two-week affair; the desire must last six months, since making a film lasts at least six months or a year. iW: So it's a risk. Ozon: Always. You have to be absolutely sure of what you want to do. Then not only make the film, but still want to do promotion and the rest afterwards. You keep company with a film a long time. But I can sense which stories have only a fleeting interest for me. Others hang around obsessively in my head. I'm very close to my unconscious when I work. iW: Your cinematic self-portraits are filled with mayhem. Where do the perverse, homicidal impulses come from? Ozon: My parents taught me something when I was young: when you create something artistic, you can throw in all the horrors of life, everything you would never actually do, all sorts of violence -- it's an art work, so it's okay. As a child I was allowed to read Sade because it was imaginary. Fritz Lang once said, "If I hadn't become a director, I'd be a murderer. Better to have murders in movies than life." iW: So these violent impulses are a part of you? Ozon: Just like everyone else. We're all potentially murderers. You have murderous impulses too. iW: I'm not particularly in touch with them. Ozon: Whoa, that's dangerous! [We laugh]. The role of the artist is to be close to those impulses and express them for everyone else. Why do you think there's so much violence in movies? And why are all those violent American movies so successful? Because everyone has those tendencies. And seeing them on screen is cathartic. iW: Can you imagine making a film about a happy straight couple? Ozon: That's exactly what I'm doing now! It's a love story about straights called "5 X 2.'" It's about five important moments in the life of a couple. Like Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage." iW: That couple wasn't so happy. Ozon: Mine isn't either. There are happy and unhappy moments. I'm not yet sure how it will all turn out, because I haven't finished the film yet. But overall, it's a fairly dark vision of couples. I'm a realist and I think couples always end up badly, don't you? iW: Are you part of a couple? Ozon: [Laughing] Oh, that's in the works. I've had a lot of couple experience and I know that things usually turn out badly, but that's okay. It's all part of life. What I care about is lucidity, because that makes happiness possible. iW: Besides releasing your antisocial impulses, what drives you to make a film? Ozon: The pleasure of imagining a story and embarking on an adventure. The idea that something that starts really small, with a discussion with an actress in a café, at the end of six months is something substantial. Something that's been in my head is transformed into something real, which millions of viewers get to see. I find that very exciting. I like every stage of filmmaking -- but writing the least. iW: Did you collaborate on the script with Emmanuele Bernheim, as in "Under the Sand?" Ozon: She didn't co-write it, but I need to speak with her a lot because my films often deal with women and I need the feminine POV to check out my accuracy. iW: Initially, you planned to make Julie, John's daughter, a young man. Why the change? Ozon: Early on I realized that if I did that, I'd fall into a cliché of French cinema: older woman/young man. I thought I'd already seen that film with Isabelle Huppert. iW: Tell me how you use music in your films -- for example, the Mahler 5th in "Water Drops" is so evocative. Ozon: Oh, it's meant to be very ironic! That's the music Visconti used in "Death in Venice," for Dirk Bogarde and Tadzio, another story of an aging man and a young boy. iW: And the insinuating score in "Swimming Pool?" Ozon: What's interesting for me is that at the start you can't exactly make out the melody, just a few notes. And as the film unfolds, the more the melody develops -- which parallels the inspiration of Sarah. In the beginning she doesn't exactly know where the story will take her. And little by little the plot of her book becomes clarified. The music parallels that process. I like to use music as an element of storytelling. iW: Several of your films use the same intriguing shot: the camera pans slowly from a character's feet to face. Ozon: I think it's a way of caressing. When you touch a body you begin [he laughs] with the feet and move up to the face. It's a way of caressing the body of the actors, of touching with the eyes. That's how the viewer feels Ludivine's and Charlotte's bodies. iW: Yet the shot can turn menacing. When you see the hairy legs of Frank [a local bartender] standing over Ludivine sun-bathing, then the gardener's... Ozon: Yes, but I think that danger and menace are also part of sexuality. When there's danger, sex is more exciting. It's part of the sexual game. Transgression and danger increase arousal. iW: Are your very different films linked by common themes? Is there an auteur signature? Ozon: Yes, I think so, but I don't analyze my films. That's your job as a journalist. But the films do share common obsessions. "Swimming Pool" reflects my personal obsessions about creating, and, since it's a film about inspiration, contains many references to my other work. That caressing shot is also in "Water Drops." The relationship between Ludivine and Charlotte refers back to "8 Women." "Swimming Pool" also resembles "Under the Sand," since both those women live in their heads. But Sarah's imagination is yoked to creativity. While the woman in "Under the Sand" creates a fantasy life to make her mourning more bearable. But she's headed for madness -- we don't know if she's gone mad at the end. iW: Why has Ludivine Sagnier, who's acted in three of your films, become a muse? Ozon: Because she's une actrice de composition -- she can disappear into her character. I like actresses who can transform themselves. And Ludivine is very young, I can mold her. She doesn't yet have an image. I can shape characters on her. She gives me confidence. We're very good friends, too, and it's fun to work with her.
iW: But with Rampling, you always think, That's Charlotte Rampling. Ozon: You can play on her image too, but differently. "Under the Sand" is a virtual documentary about part of her life. But in "Swimming Pool" she creates a character she doesn't resemble. And I wanted to have fun with the stereotype of a frigid British spinster. iW: And what do you have in common with such a person? Ozon: I have a bit of English old maid in me. [He laughs] iW: What's your English old maid side? Ozon: It's, uh...I can't tell you. [Laughter] Maybe my way of working and finding inspiration. My need to cut off from the world. I need calm to concentrate. And I can be quite rigid at the start of a project. I like to isolate myself in the country. I think that writing a mystery and a screenplay are quite similar. In both, plot and details are important, but not style. Mysteries are not great literature. And a screenplay is just a blueprint for a film. iW: The big tease in this film is how the imaginary and the real link up. Is there a discrete moment when the real veers into the imaginary? Ozon: I don't want to give you the key. I myself have an opinion about it, obviously -- but I wanted to keep the film open-ended and let every viewer imagine what he wishes. It's a movie that gives viewers the freedom to make their own film. I wanted to show that when you create, the lived, the imagined, and the written get all mixed together. When I make a film, it's as if I'd lived it. You share many emotions with the actors and characters. As I said before, when there's a murder in the film, I myself commit it, too. "Swimming Pool" keeps everything on the same plane: fantasy, reality, creation. iW: Question: when John phones Julie in the country, and Julie hands the phone to Sarah, he's not on the other end. So what piece of that was real? Ozon: What did you think? iW: I didn't know what to think. Ozon: Me neither. I wanted you to wonder: was it really John? Is Julie for real? Is she lying? Is John avoiding Sarah out of guilt? iW: So this film is a kind of puzzle. Ozon: Exactly. And it's full of false starts. It's like that when you create a story. You begin in one direction, then take another. The viewer thinks there's going to be a lesbian liaison between Charlotte and Ludivine -- but it turns maternal and tender. I thought it would be too obvious to get them into a sexual relationship. I lay down all sorts of clues, then choose one or another direction. iW: The final scene at John's office is a mind-twister. Did his daughter ever actually go to Provence? Ozon: What did you imagine? Okay, I'll give you my version. [He does, but I won't spoil the film by revealing it here.] iW: Why the title "Swimming Pool?" Ozon: The pool is like a virgin screen before the filmmaker writes on it. And it's Ludivine's habitat, the place where Sarah creates her. iW: Why do you turn out films so fast? Ozon: That's my rhythm. I like to keep moving forward – I don't need five years, like Kubrick. For me, if a film isn't completely successful, if it's not a masterpiece, it doesn't matter. Maybe I'll get it just right the next time out, or before long. I don’t look back. When a film is finished, it's finished. It's just like in love -- I need to keep moving. | |
