Quentin Tarantino named
Amer as one of his 20 Favorite Films of the past year, and the French-Belgian production, co-directed by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, continues to reap critical accolades, including here at Blu-ray.com. Staff reviewer Jeffrey Kauffman had a chance to interview Cattet and Forzani on a wide range of subjects.
Tell me a little about both of your backgrounds. Where were you born,
raised?
Hélène comes from Paris and Bruno from the South of France (where most of
Amer was shot).
Where did you meet?
We met in Brussels (Belgium) during our studies.
Are you a couple, or just professional collaborators?
We became a couple and then started to make short films together.
What were your early film experiences? What initially led to your making your short films, included on the Blu-ray? Was your intention always to get into features?
We had two totally different backgrounds and interests in cinema. Our first short
Catharsis is the meeting point of these two worlds : Chris Marker (
La
Jetée) and Dario Argento. If we accepted to do this "hybridization" it's
because we are a couple and it was a way to share our passion together
even if we are very different. We don't think we could have been able to
do this with someone else. Then making shorts became our common hobby, a
way to make something exciting, once a year, with the little money we
saved from our day jobs during the year. Those shorts had a nice life in
festivals and one day we decided to work with a producer (for our last
short
Santos Palace) to see how it was to shoot in a standard
professional way. After that short we felt ready to make a feature.
What do you find so interesting about the Giallo genre? What are some
of your favorite Giallo films?
The
Giallo genre is a world for us where we can communicate and mix our
two worlds. It's a mix between experimental cinema and entertainment! If
you look beyond the detective aspect of
Giallo, you'll find a very rich
subtext and iconography about fantasies and sexuality, the kind of
topics we like to develop in our films. Then, the most impressive thing
in
Giallo movies is the directing: most of the
Giallo directors
developed a lot their
mise en scene to tell their story—although
they hadn't a lot of money to make the films! You can find there a lot
of creativity and a lot of excesses, a free spirit which results in
incredible sequences. It's that spirit that we love and that gave us
faith to make movies! Some of our favorite
Giallos are Dario Argento's
Deep Red, Lucio Fulci's
Woman in a Lizard Skin, Umberto Lenzi's
Seven Bloodstained Orchids and Sergio Martino's
Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh.
Was there any particular inspiration for Amer?
The French Riviera where Bruno used to live was a big inspiration: it
reminds him of some intimate and cinematographic memories (several
Giallos
have been shot there), and the incredible abandoned old house you can see
in the movie fascinated him during his childhood. Then, we were inspired
by
Pinku Eiga (a Japanese erotic movies of the 70's), Mario Bava's
The
Drop of Water, the
Giallo universe (things like landscape, colors, and costumes) and one sentence in Irène Némirovsky's book called
Le bal.
Did you intentionally set out to make a film where not everything is
laid out in clear little steps for the audience? In other words, the
film seems to have a lot of room for individual interpretation, was that
your intent?
Yes, totally! One of our biggest cinematographic shocks has been Satoshi
Kon's
Millenium Actress. It's a movie you can watch in so many different
ways! Each time you watch it, you can discover new levels of reading,
it's amazing! Kon pushed this concept more into abstraction with
Paranoia Agent, which is a masterpiece! So we wrote the script with this idea that you can discover new things each time you watch the movie.
A second big influence in the writing was Dario Argento's
Inferno: it's
one of the scariest movies for us. Bruno met Dario Argento years ago and
Argento explained to him about his writing process with the subconscious for this
film. It creates a dream (or nightmare)-like world where the audience
doesn't have all the keys and is unsettled—and that could create
fear.
How did you fund Amer?
It was funded with the help of Belgium's Ministry of Culture, a French
TV company called Canal + and some local funding from the region where we shot
the movie.
How long did it take to shoot and where did you shoot it?
We had 39 days of shooting on the French Riviera, the Italian Riviera
and some studio work in Belgium.
Amer is a film more dependent than perhaps is usual on editing. How
involved were you in the editing process?
Before the real shooting, we shot the film with just the two of us using
a little digital camera to see if our storyboard was effective. Then we
did a first editing of the film ourselves. The final editing was based on that.
Did you have any problems licensing the music you culled from previous
films?
It took us a lot of time to get them all, but the licensors at the record
companies we were in contact with were very nice and helpful and they
did their best to make it possible.
In your minds, does Amer have a plot or theme?
Sure, it's the discovery of desire, body and sexuality of a female
protagonist at three moments of her life.
Quentin Tarantino named Amer as one of his 20 favorite films of the
last year. Have you heard from Quentin personally? Is he
helping you to make connections in the American film industry?
Yes, Quentin Tarantino told us his thoughts about the film and it was
just magical for two little unknown Belgian directors to hear from him. We couldn't believe it was real. He gave us tons of energy to continue making films!
Do you have any ambitions to helm an American film?
We have received other propositions from the United States, but for the moment our priority is our new feature called
The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears. We have already worked on it for seven years and will probably start shooting in early 2012 with the same producers we worked with on
Amer. They are very respectful of our work, which is priceless for us!
Do you have any other projects in the pipeline?
We are part of the
ABC's of Death anthology film
(http://rs.drafthousefilms.com/the-abcs-of-death/about).
Thanks, Hélène and Bruno!