“Making movies is like being in a band.” - Part One of Tom Ryan and Philippa Hawker's interview with JULIETTE BINOCHE from 2005

Juliette Binoche, Liberty belle, (Pascal Kané, France, 1983) 

In Pascal Kané’s Liberty belle in 1983, the 19-year-old Juliette Binoche was but a face in the crowd. However, in the 40 years since then she’s become one of the world’s most-photographed women, including a five-year stint as the face of the Lancôme perfume, Poeme, as well as starring in around 80 features and a few TV series. 

 

She’s worked with many of the most important European filmmakers of recent times – among them Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, Leos Carax, Andre Techiné, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Michael Haneke, Chantal Akerman, Patrice Leconte, Cedric Klapisch, Olivier Assayas, Bruno Dumont and Claire Denis – as well as with Abbas Kiarostami, Amos Gitai, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Anthony Minghella, Abel Ferrara, Fred Schepisi, David Cronenberg and Hirokazu Kore-eda. From time to time, she’s also been involved in a variety of stage productions, including Luigi Pirandello’s Naked, Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, Sophocles’ Antigone, as well as a collaboration with Bangladeshi dancer/choreographer Akram Hossain Khan. And, as displayed in Marion Stalens’ television documentary, Juliette Binoche – Sketches for a Portrait (2009) and Schepisi’s Words and Pictures (2014), she’s also a talented painter.

 

In 2005, courtesy of a Unifrance junket arranged to promote French cinema to Australian audiences, colleague Philippa Hawker and I spoke with her at Le Meurice, a luxurious hotel in Paris, directly opposite the Tuileries and just down the rue from the Louvre. When she bounced into the room with a bright “bonjour”, she was very much in “La Binoche” mode. A brief introductory chat about Australia, Paris and smoking followed, including my perhaps unwise observation that the city smelt like an ashtray. 

 

Then came my request for her to pose for a photo to go with the feature story I would be writing about her, drawing on the interview. Politely but firmly, she declined: a photo wasn’t on the agenda, she wasn’t prepared for that, she didn’t know me, so why would she pose for my camera? Philippa tried to explain that I’d been taking pictures of everyone I was formally interviewing on the junket – like the one of Costa-Gavras which you can find if you CLICK here but to no avail. To which her response – something along the lines of her face being her business – seemed perfectly reasonable.

 

At which point, we turned to the interview, Philippa and I sharing the questions, with me posing the first. 

 

For me as a film critic, it’s always difficult to be sure about exactly what I’m referring to when I talk about a film performance. Something shot in bits and pieces. On different days. Out of sequence. It’s never just the performance. Are you ever surprised by what you see when you watch something you’ve done?

 

I’m still surprised by the medium itself. It’s like a dream actually, a projection of possible life. So it’s always a surprise and I can’t get used to it. It’s magical in a way. Maybe the closest reference somehow is to a dream, because it’s unreal and yet we believe in it.

 

But for you as…

 

As an actress? Um…

 

Maybe let me come at it another way. Can a good performance happen when there’s clumsy direction? Or clunky writing?

 

There’s always clumsy direction. Let me stop you on that immediately. How can you put in words something that is impalpable, invisible: because it is about an inside world. How can you put words on it? It’s always bizarre… When you listen to your directors with their indication – I wouldn’t say “direction”… It’s an invitation, more about catching the energy, maybe through the eyes, the intention, than the words themselves. So it’s more about taking something out of someone, the whole person, more than just words. 

 

PH: Director is a funny word, isn’t it? 

 

Yeah. It’s not about directing. 

 

It sounds like pointing a particular way, or telling you something.

 

How can you direct somebody? You know it’s like with a child. How can you direct a child? I mean, he has his own world, his own references, his own voice, breathing, light flashes, spirit. The moment a director is active is when he or she chooses the actor. 

Binoche's directors include Leos Carax (above)
and Abbas Kiarostami

 

And when they edit. Because it’s really about rhythm, it’s there that you can see the intelligence of the director. The editing is really the expression of the director. And, of course, the way a film is shot. But a lot of directors, they don’t know. They let the DP do that. They say “yes” or “no”. But it’s very rare to hear him say, “I want this angle.” It happens, but it’s not…

 

TR: But there are directors who say – in fact, one of them said it to me yesterday [Bertrand Blier] – “They do what I tell them.”

 

Oh, yeah? Really? It’s true that it’s a place of power, and a lot of directors believe in the power. And actors too. They believe in their powers. And that’s where it becomes dangerous. 

 

Making movies is like being in a band. It’s about the energies that are gathered. We have to be independent in order to be united. And I really believe that. There must be an indication of what the film may do when it works well. But a director for me gives the power.

Michael Haneke directing Juliette Binoche

 

PH: So it’s enabling.

 

Yeah, it’s an invitation to be yourself. Some directors, they think they control and they’re kind of… crispe is what we say in French… they’re kind of tense, because they want to grab. But you can’t grab. You have to just open your head and let it happen. An actor is good when he is free, when he can let it happen inside of him, when you reach the uncontrollable. You know how to drive, but there’s something of letting yourself go. And the director is the one who has the ears to follow and the eyes to allow.

 

TR: Do you find that directors talk to you about the image. You’re part of that, of course, but there’s also more, apart from you? Will they discuss the visual design of the film with you?

 

Some directors ask me about the part, because I know the part better than they do. But we can ask questions of one another, which is the best way to reach, to interpret all the possibilities. But there’s more discussion than you would imagine. 

 

The main question with Michael Haneke and Caché [2005] was whether my character had an affair with Pierre [Daniel Duval]. And that was a choice to make. We had to choose: has she had a relationship with him or not? But while we stated the question, nobody answered.

 

Daniel Auteuil, Binoche, Caché

PH: Did you have feelings about that?

 

Yeah. It could be either way.

 

But did some people want to know and some not? Was everyone happy to leave it…?

 

Between Michael and myself? Mmm. It stayed more like in a question. It was more interesting to play a woman who’d had an affair than to play a woman who doesn’t have an affair. So I chose in one scene…. [laughing]

 

I must say that I thought your character had had an affair.

 

Yeah. Because with a child, it brings something very uncomfortable. And when the sexuality of the boy emerges, you realise that he’s thinking, “Oh, my God. My mother is a woman.” And yet it’s a more interesting relationship because of that.

 

You actually sought out Haneke originally, didn’t you? You initiated the contact. What did you see in him that you wanted to be a part of?

 

I’d seen three of his movies.

 

Code Inconnu

Code Inconnu is wonderful.

 

For me, it was a vision, a clear voice. With a sense of the complexity of the world we live in. He’s more provocative. And I like The Seventh Continent. I found it so strong because of the way it deals with the materialistic world we live in, that imprisons us, and how there’s no issue. It’s just a suicidal way of looking at life and living our lives. So it’s very uneasy to see the film because it’s so horrible. But at the same time I feel films like it are necessary.

 

They’re bleak, but they give so much.

 

They’re mirrors. 

 

TR: You’ve made some really interesting choices as an actress. I mean, with Abel Ferrara, with going to South Africa, a wide range of different projects. What does this say about you?

 

[Laughs]… I dunno.

 

I mean, on the one hand, you’re a star, a celebrity, but on the other hand you’re taking a range of different projects that stars and celebrities tend not to take.

 

It’s more the journey, the adventure, that amuses me, that takes me in this job… if I can call it a job. It’s more a challenge. And for me it means dealing with different people, different skills, subjects that really touch me and I wanna say something about. I mean, it’s my way to participate in the world. 

Code Inconnu

 

I don’t wanna do famous, expensive, stupid films. I’m not interested in that because I don’t see the purpose of that. I think it’s suicidal. [Laughs] Because there’s no issue! What’s the issue? Get money?! Then after that, what do you do? Become famous? 

And then after that, where do you go? It’s just the subject matter and working with people that interest me because I want to spend time with them, I want to share with them, and sometimes I have wonderful surprises and sometimes I’m disappointed. 

 

PH: When you’re taking risks like that, you can be wonderfully rewarded. But you can also, as you say, have devastating disappointments as well.

 

Um. I mean, I feel very privileged to do what I’m doing. So “devastated” is a bit over the top. But it’s… um. You’re always surprised by life anyway. There are always surprises, and with films it’s the same thing.

 

[A Unifrance guy comes in with coffee… in an enormous cup with an awful lot of foam. “Big cappuccino,” she says, slightly embarrassed. “Is it a real cappuccino?” I ask. “I thought it was breakfast cereal,” quips Philippa. “That you hadn’t had breakfast yet.”]

 

TR: Are there roles that you’ve turned down that you wish you hadn’t?

 

I don’t think that way. And I probably refuse to think that way because what’s the point? And also my choices belong to me and my mistakes belong to me and it’s part of my knowledge of myself. It’s a way to know yourself. I have no regrets. There are films I would like to be a little more this or that. But at the same time, it’s part of my journey. And to refuse bigger films is part of my journey too.

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Part Two will be published shortly.

Juliette Binoche's eighth film MAUVAIS SANG  (Leos Carax, France, 1986, also starring Denis Lavant, Michel Piccoli and Julie Delpy) will screen at Cinema Reborn 2023. The screening will be the World Premiere of the recently completed 4K Restoration. Screens once only on Friday 28 April at 8.30 pm. Further information and Bookings IF YOU CLICK HERE