Mia Hansen-Løve: ​‘Mak­ing films is a way for me to har­vest my own memories’

In archi­tec­tur­al terms, Mia Hansen-Løve builds movies on lop-sided ground and the struc­tures she pro­duces are nev­er per­fect geo­met­ric shapes which slot com­fort­ably into the sky­line. As a stu­dent she stud­ied Ger­man and spe­cialised in phi­los­o­phy, though the world caught its first glimpse of her at age 17 through a small role in Olivi­er Assayas’ 1998 film, Late August, Ear­ly Sep­tem­ber. Less than 10 years lat­er she had arrived with her direc­to­r­i­al debut, the raw fam­i­ly saga All is For­giv­en which intro­duced a yen for depict­ing life’s ran­dom real­i­ties over com­part­men­tal­is­ing dra­ma in order to fit neat­ly onto the screen.

Two years lat­er she set Cannes aflame with her dev­as­tat­ing The Father of My Chil­dren, a sto­ry which was inspired by the real life film pro­duc­er Hum­bert Bal­san who, in 2005, took his own life. It’s a spe­cial film as its ​“cli­max” sits at the dead cen­tre of the run­time, allow­ing Hansen-Løve to exam­ine the fall­out in as much detail as she does the set­up. Hansen-Løve’s 2011 film Good­bye, First Love cement­ed her sta­tus as a mas­ter of intu­itive and unsen­ti­men­tal film­mak­ing, pre­sent­ing a girl com­ing to terms that a whirl­wind for­ma­tive romance is over. Her lat­est, Eden, bor­rows the life of her broth­er, a house DJ in France who spun his way into penury due to his rabid com­mit­ment to his art. Félix de Givry plays Sven’s disheveled onscreen avatar, Paul.

LWLies: How close are the events in Eden to the real­i­ty of your brother’s life?

Hansen-Løve: Very close. My broth­er has said 100 per cent. It’s prob­a­bly not the case for me, as when you write a film it instant­ly becomes fic­tion. There is a selec­tion process. There are things you say, things you don’t. It’s a per­cep­tion of events. It’s about recon­struc­tion. So it’s extreme­ly close to my per­cep­tion of what my brother’s life is about, what it is, how it feels. It was excit­ing to write. But it was also fun­ny dis­cov­er­ing that Sven had for­got­ten so much. Maybe because of the drugs. There was some mem­o­ries that I was recall­ing bet­ter from his own life. Girl­friends he’d com­plete­ly for­got­ten about.

When the events of the film were hap­pen­ing, did you feel there was some­thing cin­e­mat­ic about them? Or was it only with hind­sight you saw it?

No, I nev­er had any idea. I was too young. When I start­ed to go to my brother’s par­ties I was 13. He was work­ing as a DJ in a bar in Bastille and peo­ple were just push­ing the tables to the side to dance. It wasn’t meant to be a club. At the same time there were great house clubs pop­ping up, like The Queen, where we used to go. I didn’t know I want­ed to be a film­mak­er at that point. I nev­er felt I was observ­ing things. First, I start­ed writ­ing alone, but then I realised I need­ed Sven as I just had tons of ques­tions I had to ask him about his mem­o­ries. It was quite an effort to get him to remem­ber events, but he did recall the feel­ings and the emo­tions. Peo­ple and places were all very fog­gy. I too have a very bad mem­o­ry, and I some­times think that’s why I make films. As a way to recon­struct the ruins of the past.

And Sven’s mem­o­ries, too?

I wrote the struc­ture to the film on my own, and the more it went on, the more I felt how stim­u­lat­ing and inter­est­ing it would be for me to include scenes that he would write. He spent so much time in clubs with this same group of friends. No one could cap­ture these scenes as well as he could. I was always with this group, but I was a much more soli­tary per­son. It’s a way of liv­ing where you’re nev­er alone.

Was Sven okay with you want­i­ng to make a movie about his life?

Yeah, it was very sim­ple. We’ve always been very close. He knows that I make films inspired by the peo­ple I know. So it wasn’t a big sur­prise. When I start­ed to tell him about it, I wasn’t even sure I was going to do it. Ear­ly on, it all seemed too dif­fi­cult. And it was. To finance, it was a night­mare. I wasn’t so sure… I felt there was some­thing great to do that was his­toric, about our gen­er­a­tion. I had the feel­ing that I could make a film about our gen­er­a­tion that was total­ly rel­e­vant if we focused on this sto­ry. Espe­cial­ly because it wasn’t a suc­cess sto­ry. It made me feel the film could be more uni­ver­sal. I realised no-one has done a movie about house music in France. No one is tak­ing it seri­ous­ly. No one is film­ing in night­clubs in a real­is­tic way. Film­mak­ers all have their club scene, but nobody makes a whole film in one. At that point he was broke and depressed and he was try­ing to start a new life writ­ing short sto­ries. And he actu­al­ly got pub­lished. It was tough. He was reject­ing his own sto­ry as a DJ. He saw it as a way to have a new per­spec­tive on his sto­ry and find a new ener­gy and desire that he had lost.

Did you speak to any oth­er char­ac­ters involved in the story?

A lot of the boys are still Sven’s friends. They were involved in the project. Espe­cial­ly the one played by Vin­cent Macaigne who has long hair who plays a hypochon­dri­ac. The real guy is one of my brother’s best friends. He’s a radio pre­sen­ter, and it’s weird because he inter­viewed us about the film. My films nav­i­gate from fic­tion to real­i­ty, and I feel that in my life. My films are influ­enced by real­i­ty, but my life is influ­enced by my films. Some­times I have the feel­ing I make films in order to cre­ate some kind of con­fu­sion in my life between fic­tion and real­i­ty. I need this con­fu­sion. It helps me feel accom­plished. It’s cru­cial for me. I have the feel­ing with this film that I went so far in cre­at­ing this con­fu­sion that I still feel like I’m liv­ing in this world. All the things that I’ve tak­en from my life and my brother’s life to build Eden, now it’s giv­en back to me in real life. I feel like I am stuck in film just as Paul feels like he’s stuck in house music.

There’s a sequence where Paul describes the music he loves as a mix­ture of eupho­ria and melan­choly, which seems to also speak about your style of cinema.

I think I became aware of this jux­ta­po­si­tion in the process of mak­ing this film. When I start­ed writ­ing, think­ing about it, the melan­choly came first. It all start­ed from the sit­u­a­tion of my broth­er, which was real­ly bad. But still, when I start­ed work­ing on the first draft and con­struct­ing the sto­ry, it was about a suc­cess­ful per­son. It’s not that it was all about hap­pi­ness and joy. But I wasn’t think­ing about the melan­choly as some­thing I want­ed to show. It was just there, as it’s there in pret­ty much every­thing I do. Lat­er, espe­cial­ly after I or Sven wrote it, the scene in the radio sta­tion where they talk about the music and Paul says about the MK song that he loves it because it a mix­ture of eupho­ria and melan­choly. I only then realised I was talk­ing about my own style. It’s inter­est­ing because it made me under­stand the con­nec­tion between my films and the music. You might think that there’s not much of a con­nec­tion between the films I’ve seen before and garage music – they’re two dif­fer­ent worlds. And ulti­mate­ly I think that one of the rea­sons I con­nect­ed with this music is not only per­son­al his­to­ry and the fact my broth­er was involved in it, which of course is cru­cial, but it’s also the fact that you have this mix­ture. And that’s the one think I con­nect with. You find it in the music of Daft Punk.

Is this a pes­simistic movie?

No. I think it’s melan­cholic, but pes­simistic? I don’t know. With this char­ac­ter, I don’t see him as bad or good. But he had to do this long detour to find him­self. It’s because he’s been through that and touched the bot­tom of it and expe­ri­enced that world as inten­sive­ly as he has that ulti­mate­ly he will be able to write a book about him­self. I don’t see it as a down­er. It’s time lost maybe? But Proust’s ​‘À la Recher­ché du Temps Per­du’ makes for a great book, so… Los­ing time is pre­cious. I see a lot of poet­ry in it. When I say poet­ry, I don’t mean writ­ing. I mean life. There is noth­ing more beau­ti­ful than this loss. I care for that. I notice that for some peo­ple, prob­a­bly peo­ple of our par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion, for them all of this is very vain as they don’t see how deep or how strong the rela­tion­ship with the music is. It’s noth­ing. It’s the void. Because he has no chil­dren and no girl­friend and ends up broke and alone, I’ve noticed that from a friend of mine who is slight­ly old­er, he says it’s all in vain. But you could say he’s frag­ile, he doesn’t know what he wants, he’s not a hero in the more clas­si­cal mean­ing of heroes. Still, for me, he had to live like that. And I don’t see why his life would be any less inter­est­ing or essen­tial than any oth­er life. It will give him the keys to literature.

Could he have the same expe­ri­ence with literature?

I don’t think so. Maybe he will make mis­takes and get lost again, but he will pro­duce some­thing. Some­thing that stays. The thing about the music is that in the end, he has noth­ing to show for it.

As some­one who writes and directs, when do you know there’s some­thing you can make a film about?

I think it has to do with the cer­ti­tude or the con­vic­tion that there is a film to be made. It’s a mat­ter of rela­tion­ships – the rela­tion­ship that I have with the char­ac­ters. More pre­cise­ly, the emo­tion I have when I think of the pres­ence of these char­ac­ters. I don’t have to know these char­ac­ters, but I have to be con­nect­ed to them. Actu­al­ly, the char­ac­ter could be a woman, a man, a child, an old lady. It’s the char­ac­ter that makes me excit­ed about mak­ing movies. And I haven’t real­ly talked about this, but I real­ly think there’s some­thing erot­ic involved in that process. Or sen­su­al. It’s not just the­o­ret­i­cal. It’s instinc­tive. I have to have an attrac­tion to a presence.

When you have thought of these char­ac­ters, do you write down descrip­tions or is that some­thing you keep in your head?

I nev­er do that. My great­est fear is that a pro­duc­er asks me to write a treat­ment. It’s nev­er hap­pened so far. I do have the feel­ing that I con­trol what the char­ac­ter is like. I’m not a writer to the point where I could write nov­els instead of films. I know the musi­cal­i­ty of these peo­ple, and it would be tough for me to ratio­nalise them.

When you talk about these char­ac­ters to the actors you’ve hired, how much detail do you go into?

I’m not so spe­cif­ic. I’ve nev­er real­ly worked with actors who think you should know the entire his­to­ry of a char­ac­ter before you play them, and I don’t real­ly like that. The truth of the char­ac­ter would come entire­ly from what hap­pens in front of the cam­era – how they talk, how they move, how they devel­op a rhythm. Some­thing that’s hard to define. I’m a direc­tor who requires a lot of takes. I’ve nev­er real­ly had to help build the psy­chol­o­gy of a char­ac­ter, but I do help to devel­op it. I’m about to shoot a film with Isabelle Hup­pert this sum­mer and she under­stands per­fect­ly what the char­ac­ter is about. I don’t have to explain any­thing to her. You know when you buy a play and there are pages that explain how you should drama­tise it, well we don’t need that. Also, it’s true that for me, half of what the char­ac­ter is about comes from the actor.

How do you describe your style?

I don’t think I could, espe­cial­ly speak­ing in Eng­lish. It’s cru­cial for me, but typ­i­cal­ly my style is not obvi­ous. I mean, the way I make movies, I gen­er­al­ly don’t want the style to be iden­ti­fi­able. I like it to be trans­par­ent, but I know that it can’t be because trans­paren­cy in film doesn’t exist. I nev­er want peo­ple watch­ing my films to think, ​‘Oh, this is a great shot.’ I nev­er felt like I have any­thing to prove to the audi­ence. I place all the impor­tance to the things in the frame, not the frame itself. I want to be invis­i­ble. Basi­cal­ly, I’m open to a lot of dif­fer­ent things. I’m not the kind of direc­tor who would make a film using six shots or with a hand­held cam­era. I like the idea that my style is homoge­nous. It’s not some­thing that’s easy to define.

What do you think of your ear­ly films?

I don’t watch them again, but I some­times see the begin­ning and the end when I’m attend­ing screen­ings. It’s very hard for me to have a crit­i­cal eye on them, not because I think every­thing I do is great, but because they’re so impor­tant to me. They’re part of me. Not lik­ing them would be not lik­ing myself. And that would be insane. I don’t even think of them as films. They’re like my hand. Of course I think that there are shots that I would have done dif­fer­ent­ly, and it’s good for a film­mak­er to con­stant­ly want to evolve and change things. The rea­son I make films is that it’s a way for me to har­vest my own mem­o­ries. With all my films, with all their weak­ness, they are true tes­ti­monies of who I was and what my con­cerns were.