interview de Jean Claude Lauzon concernant Léolo-640
Firstly, I should point out that Léolo was written before Un zoo… I had started to write a novel when I was younger – that I gave up on – on which 70% of Léolo is based. After Un zoo…, I didn’t want to go back to writing straight away. For me, writing is very difficult. With the success of Un zoo… at Cannes, American producers had contacted me. I therefore went to Los Angeles where I was offered a number of screenplays. They were big-budget productions, with a lot of money. I was particularly attracted by the idea of working with foreigners but the screenplays were so bad. So, calmly, I started taking notes and gathering together photos for Léolo. At that point, the film was called Portrait d’un souvenir de famille. Un zoo…, Léolo aren’t projects that I decided to do. I never decided arbitrarily to make these films. I’m not crazy about the cinema: it’s a job that I find very hard. I’d much prefer to be a painter, a lyricist or a singer. But, at times, it comes in waves, like an obsession that I cannot rid myself of. I get to the point where I really have to throw myself into it and I think that my mental health would be at risk if I didn’t. Between Un zoo… and Léolo, I spent a lot of time alone, flying my plane and thinking in the woods. I need to be on my motorbike or in my plane, to move. Movement fascinates me. And, like that, calmly, Léolo took shape. I ended up telling myself that it was time to write it. And I began. I ended up in my chalet in the words, 400 miles from here, with Pierre-Henri Deleau – the head of the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight – and I told him a little about the story of Léolo. At that time, I didn’t particularly want to make the film about poverty in East Montreal. I was afraid of working with people who do nothing but curse and also that the film would lack poetry and be too dry. You know, I think the poverty of East Montreal has been shown enough in the cinema already. There was a heaviness about the subject that didn’t interest me. I hadn’t yet found the way of showing all that differently, without explaining the story through a normal dramatic structure but by keeping a certain form of lyricism all the same.
Without using violence ?
There’s the business with the delinquent at the end that may be a little hard to take for some people and that possibly reflects the harshness of the text a little more than the rest.
The harshness of life is one thing but violence is another. You don’t use much violence in the film.
I don’t know. It’s funny that you should say that because one of the projects that I was offered in the USA was one of those very violent cop movies. I have a fairly violent reputation and yet violence isn’t something that fascinates me. For me, if the main theme of a film isn’t love, in return for tenderness, it’s not worth making. However, there are well-made violent films that I like a lot. But I find it so hard to make films that this particular film had to allow me to develop and lead me elsewhere.
While there was violence and tenderness in Un zoo la nuit, in Léolo, we find only tenderness. I’d like to know where this tenderness comes from in Jean-Claude Lauzon ?
I don’t know. It has always been my way of seeing things, despite a very tough upbringing.
But what made you decide to make this film ?
It swept over me like a tidal wave: I had to make Léolo. I put all the dialogue end to end, with the two texts that were my motivation, and the result was Léolo. But I don’t know where it’s from; I don’t know why this particular project had to be the one after Un zoo… and above all how I managed to turn down the American offers (which were very attractive) and wait to make this film. I don’t know: all I know is that it wasn’t a conscious decision. I have never had two ideas for different films at once: things calmly fall into place and then become genuinely obsessive. In the end, Léolo became an obsessive film. That’s simply how it is.
Weren’t you trying to get even with the world in a way ?
No. In fact, compared to Un zoo…, Léolo is above all a tribute to my mother.
Is Léolo a film with a message, like a political commitment ?
Oh, no! But it’s funny because people are starting to see an incredible political message in it. Perhaps because Pierre Bourgault smiles as he takes the texts underground. But people are noticing things that I never even thought of while we were shooting. For instance, in the film, a French-speaking guy gets beaten up by an English-speaking guy and then spend years pumping iron to go and show off in front of the English speakers but, when he gets a second beating, he falls apart completely. But I didn’t think of it in that way.
So art interests you more than politics.
No. It’s not art either. What interests me is purging or freeing myself of certain things from time to time. I’ve realized that this is my relationship to creativity. I also realized that I follow a cycle: between Piwi, Un zoo la nuit and Léolo, there’s a gap of four years each time. During this four-year cycle, I may believe that flying a plain, scuba diving or riding a motorbike can keep me in place but, at the end of this period, my life has no meaning if I don’t exploit my creativity. But I have no career plan. Everyone talks to me of an international career; I’m not interested in that at all. I don’t make films when I can manage without them. If, one day, I can manage to do without them completely, I’ll stop making them.
Given your spiritual evolution and current preoccupations could you start writing and continue to make films? As other people consult a psychoanalyst, do you do the same thing with the cinema ?
This film contains all that. At a very early age, I don’t know why, I started telling stories about my friends. I would go to parties and, when I didn’t like it, I would lock myself in the bathroom, fill the tub with hot water and write. I would write a lot about my friends – like any teenager – except that this is an obsession that has never left me. I would take notes. I had a gift for observing people’s interaction.
Some children react automatically while others observe and question everything. What were you like? Do you still work and think in the same way ?
No. At the time when my friends loved hockey, I wasn’t interested in it at all. I’ve never taken part in a team sport. Experience is what matters for me. I don’t follow a system. In Léolo, each sequence imposed itself naturally. I don’t think in a logical way. When I watched Un zoo la nuit, I told myself that there was a glimmer of talent but that I had bypassed a great idea. I was happy that I had made it that way but all that I retained of it was the image where he washes his father and lies down next to him. I told myself that I should have worked on that image and made a feature film around it. Perhaps that’s where Léolo came from with all its impressionistic fluidity and images that come back without any real organization. I have the impression that during the first twenty-five minutes, people are wondering where they’re going, how things are slotting together and, in the end, give in and let the film enter them. In the end, when they leave, they don’t applaud or talk. That’s not because they don’t like the film. No, they’re in a different world, hypnotized perhaps…
They are genuinely moved.
We’ve also noticed that at the start, with the tomato incident, people think that it’s a comedy and start laughing. But straight after that something more serious happens and they feel embarrassed about laughing. The film continually veers between comedy and drama like that.
But this alternation wasn’t precisely constructed when you wrote the
screenplay ?
No. But I think it’s a very precise reflection of my personality, of what I am, of what I can be, of the nature of my feelings. I don’t consciously think about this kind of thing. Sometimes, I wonder if I’m not simply the bearer of something that doesn’t belong to me, like a sort of catalyst that receives information and slots it into place. But that doesn’t mean Jean-Claude Lauzon could explain why and how the film was constructed… There’s so little logical thought behind Léolo. It’s really like a painting. That’s how it is. I try to give what I have to give with as much sincerity as possible.
Can one say that this is the portrait of a society ?
I suppose that you have met many similar people in East Montreal.
I know them all. But the important thing for me was to show that these people aren’t unhappy. Despite all the terrible things that happened in the neighbourhood, we weren’t unhappy.
There’s also a very Italian side to the film. Were there a lot of Italians in your neighbourhood ?
Yes, there were a lot. My friends were Italians. I love Italians. They’re the only people I feel totally at home with. The Italians are poets and leaders. We shot the film in Italy and at Cinecittà: the Worm Tamer’s underground apartment is Fellini’s statue storeroom at Cinecittà. The whole set is built up of props that we gathered together from all over Cinecittà. The Worm tamer sits on a chair from Visconti’s The Damned and his bookshelves come from the library in The Name of the Rose.
I read somewhere that you were once asked which director had influenced you. You answered Pasolini and Fassbinder but you didn’t say Fellini. However, in Léolo, Fellini’s influence is clear. You film Rita very much as Fellini would.
Yes. Fellini has a very personal style. A basement is a fairly realistic setting but it’s much more beautiful and outlandish in the film with a girl dressed as a princess, in a basement… On seeing the film, a lot of people have started referring to Amacord. It’s a film that made its mark on me but I haven’t tried to copy it.
Was it hard to convince people that the film could be made as you had written and imagined it ?
I’m so happy that I didn’t fall into the pitfalls of structure. It’s a great privilege to make Léolo the way I wanted because, on reading the screenplay, people could think that it would never make a film. I think that Léolo can be a great popular film despite the arrangement of the ideas that do not follow a familiar structure. I think that people will sense it.
You manage to create suspense so that we don’t necessarily know where we’re going
The cinema is fantastic. Léolo is a journey.
You know how to drive a point home.
When I was cutting the film, I wanted something to happen between the scenes – I wanted it to be sexually unsettling or whatever – so that people would be gripped and, just as they’re getting over it, be struck again. So far, the comments have been very positive. Léolo is crazier than Un zoo…
You’re also the first French Canadian director to open up to the world: very few people do so. We can see it through your fascination for Italian culture, Arabic and South American music. You linger over these things and you seek out their beauty too.
All the same, I’m talking about us. This is very important for me. When the camera pans down into the yard and the Italian guy sings, those are our alleys and yards. Yet, at the same time, there is a beauty that lies elsewhere. These are all things that I have known and that I have interpreted a little differently from reality: the alleyways, the spot where the brother goes fishing, and the people from social welfare who look like gypsies on a platform. And yet all that is us, the French Canadians.
Is the attack on school a conscious one ?
Yes, very conscious. At the St Louis School, when we were asked to write a one-page composition, I’d write five pages. Every time, I would be asked to read them out for the others and I would make everyone laugh because I would write things that had nothing to do with the subject. It really was a strange world. At the start of the year, some of the teachers would get beaten up by pupils’ brothers and so they would be replaced with a boxer who was more of a guard than a teacher. I would write and I had a vivid imagination but I had virtually no notions of grammar and no one encouraged me to improve that. If I had to get across just one message in Léolo, that would be to tell teachers to help and encourage their pupils. I don’t feel bitter about it and I managed to get by but it would have been nice if a teacher had given me the boost that André Pétrowski gave me when I was seventeen and he told me that I was a good writer and that I had to continue with my studies. I had problems with the police at the time. I was getting arrested once a week; no one helped me. I had French teachers who were reading what I had written but no one told me that I had any special talent for writing and that I needed to use it. It’s this form of ignorance that I’ve tried to show in the scene with Germain Houde. I was the son of a worker. No one ever called into doubt that I would grow up to be a worker myself. I remember that my career advisers sent me to the furniture school at Saint Henri and the car mechanics school. If I behaved and worked hard, the best job that they were offering me was typographer or fireman: the careers of the century! No one told me that if I wrote, I’d need to think of something else. Today, there’s a lot of talk about education but there’s one thing that no one ever says: teachers are boring.
There are no professional actors in the cast of Léolo, except for Julien Guiomar. It took guts to write a film and then ask Pierre Bourgault and Ginette Reno to appear in it.
I know but this wasn’t a deliberate wager. All the faces that you see in Léolo had to be there. They are the raw characters. Pierre really had the face of the character I wanted. I had already shot an advertisement for the French language with him: he’s wonderful to work with. The only one I was a little worried about at first because I barely knew him and found him a little grouchy was Julien Guiomar. But that feeling was totally unjustified since he was unbelievably cooperative.
Ginette Reno is amazing in the scene with the turkey.
The scene with the turkey was very funny. My producer – who had of course read the scene in which the boy says that his mother has won at turkey at the cinema – expected a frozen, plastic-wrapped turkey. When she saw the real turkey in the bathtub, she couldn’t believe her eyes! And Ginette is fantastic in that scene. She did everything I asked of her, everything, even if it was hard to persuade her at first. She threw herself into it completely. Even if she is incredibly fragile, she trusted me completely. For me, she is a star, a great star. The whole crew was in love with her. I suppose that was very tough for the young actor, Maxime, because he is there all the time. In the end, there were no harsh words exchanged between the actors and me. The bodybuilder, whom we chose from among seventy applicants, isn’t an actor and has never acted before in his life. And the father, who has already been seen on TV, is a printer in love with the opera who has only ever appeared in a few commercials.
Do you give the actors a little freedom ?
No, none at all. There is no improvisation at all in the film.
Everything is already clear, thought out and calculated. How do you manage to get the reactions that you want, such as Ginette Reno’s in the birth scene ?
Ginette is a performer. In fact, it was much easier with her because of her stage experience, than with the brother or the children who were more mechanical. But the cinema is a lie; you can ask an actor for mechanical reactions and he won’t even be aware of them. This can lead to the required emotions later through the juxtaposition of the images. People occasionally say that I’m a good director but I have the impression of doing very little. I think that when you love people, people give you a great deal in return. There’s a very special atmosphere on my sets that urges the actors, crew and everyone else to surpass themselves.
It must be a pretty exceptional atmosphere.
When I step onto the set, I know what I’m going to do. I do very little research during the shoot itself. We discuss the set-up for ten minutes or so but no more. I do a lot of sketches and photos. In theory, the tone and atmosphere are already decided on. Lise Lafontaine had never produced a feature film before. But she was amazingly supportive. It was a pleasure to make Léolo with a woman because there was never any power struggle.
The aesthetic quest is very important in your work. Where does this originate ?
I’m beginning to realize now that I have a faculty for visualizing things. Ever since I was young. Perhaps because I dream? Even during my waking hours, I think up images without any trouble. The aesthetic balance is very important. It’s even obsessive and compulsive. I can’t say that I read a great deal or that I go to see shows. I find my inspiration elsewhere. I live. That’s all. Getting into my plane, going off to the forest, spending as much time possible hunting or fishing. Last year, I went all the way to James Bay. This year, I want to fly my plane to Alaska. I’m much more in contact with life than with culture. I spend very little time in museums. On the other hand, music is very important in my life. For Léolo, I spent around two years seeking out the music for each scene. Half of the music in the film already featured in the screenplay. I need the music before writing.
Selected tunes ?
Perhaps it’s an overly simplistic description but I sense things. I don’t ask myself questions. I’m not a reasoned person; I’m very emotive. I sense things and I do what I sense.
Instinct ?
Absolutely. For me in any case. I act on instinct and wonder less and less about the images that obsess me. I don’t choose them. I’m sure this happens to everyone but for me it becomes totally obsessive and the amazing thing about the cinema is that once these images are filmed, they never come back to haunt me. It’s odd but I think that if everyone could make films, things would be a lot better on earth. Films free the brain and create new space for something else. I really felt exhausted after Un zoo…, to the extent that I felt that I could never make another film. And then I made Léolo and, once again, I’m exhausted.
Not to the point of never making another film ?
It’s the impression that you have when you finish a project like this. You’ve relieved yourself of the images of that moment in your life. Kurosawa said once that the imagination is like a string of flags: the more you pull at it, the more come out. Perhaps that’s it. But Léolo did me a power of good, that’s for sure. The film removed a great deal of my aggression. I’m not saying that the Canadian government should pay for therapy by financing films but there’s something to the idea. I think that Fellini, Woody Allen and Kubrick are, in a way, seriously ill. In any case, an artist manages to do things that most people can only do on their shrink’s couch.
What are your impressions now that Léolo is finished ?
Léolo is a film that is a lot like me, that I feel responsible for and that I’m proud of. It’s also good to have made it with women like Aimée Danis and Lise Lafontaine. The direction/screenplay/production relationship in Canada was totally different. Lise Lafontaine realized that to make me work, she had to avoid any confrontation. If someone clashes with me, I become a brick wall and I can even become self-destructive. Lise never tried to break me because she knew it would never work..
How would you define the world of Léolo ?
It is partly autobiographical and it has taken off from that to become something crazier. I never lived with my grandfather and I never tried to kill him! I never had an Italian girlfriend either. In Léolo, I have told a big lie using a lot of truth.