Claire Denis on how Etta James inspired Let the Sun­shine In

Claire Denis is a doyenne of mood, atmos­phere and the move­ments of the body. Her films often fea­ture mem­o­rable dance sequences. The famous finale of 1999’s Beau Tra­vail sees Denis Lavant absolute­ly lose him­self to Corona’s ​‘Rhythm of the Night’. Equal­ly joy­ful aban­don exists in 1994’s US Go Home, while a high­light of her lat­est, Let the Sun­shine In, sees Juli­ette Binoche, eyes closed in a night­club, sway­ing to ​‘At Last’ by Etta James, her face glow­ing with pri­vate exultation.

Denis likes to write her films with oth­ers. Jean-Pol Fargeau co-wrote eight of her 12 fic­tion fea­tures (make that nine once High Life with Robert Pat­tin­son arrives lat­er this year). This time she pur­sued a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Chris­tine Angot, a play­wright whose short script about a cou­ple break­ing up, Voilà l’enchaînement, Denis direct­ed in 2014. Once again, the tal­ents of her longest-term allies – cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Agnès Godard, whom she met on the set of Paris, Texas (on which she worked as assis­tant direc­tor), and actor Alex Descas – are in the mix.

The result is a rom­com which dou­bles as a human­ist pearl for the ages. It stars Juli­ette Binoche as Isabelle and is the role she was born to play. Her fresh­ly divorced, roman­ti­cal­ly open char­ac­ter has the full force of a per­former who has lived with her heart and knows how to express its most sub­tle inflections.

LWLies: Do you think we are liv­ing in a time that lets women tell sto­ries about hav­ing many partners?

Denis: No, no. Noth­ing changed for me except get­ting old­er. It was my rela­tion­ship with Chris­tine [Angot] – we enjoyed the sto­ry. It has noth­ing to do with any sort of syn­chronic­i­ty. This is the kind of thing I nev­er con­sid­er. The only time that is good for me is when we have a bud­get that makes the film doable. That’s it. That’s the right time.

How do you decide that you want to work with a writer? In this case, with Christine.

We worked before togeth­er for years. We like each oth­er, we are very dif­fer­ent. I like her stuff very much. I made a film already based on a piece of dia­logue she wrote about a cou­ple splitting.

When it’s some­one new, how do you know if you are will­ing to take them on as a collaborator?

When I met Chris­tine I nev­er thought I was going to be col­lab­o­rat­ing with her. As the time went by we realised that we enjoy the same things, we enjoy being togeth­er. I nev­er chose her as a col­lab­o­ra­tor, I chose her as a friend first. Then, when I did make that short film from her dia­logue, she was sur­prised. She said, ​‘Oh, it seems you can film my words so easy,’ and I said, ​‘Yes, let’s go on’. Col­lab­o­ra­tion, if it’s not based on some­thing true, doesn’t work so well.

It was ini­tial­ly said that this film was going to be an adap­ta­tion of Roland Barthes’ book, ​‘Frag­ments of a Lover’s Discourse’.

There was all sorts of mixed infor­ma­tion on the inter­net. The pro­duc­er of my movie had also bought the rights to adapt ​‘Frag­ments of a Lover’s Dis­course’. He had in mind to do it with maybe 10 dif­fer­ent direc­tors, each one a chap­ter. At some oth­er time he asked me if I would like to work with him. I was expect­ing to pre­pare anoth­er film so I had a lit­tle time free. So I told him, ​‘Maybe I can, if you gave me free­dom.’ I had just fin­ished the short film with Chris­tine about a cou­ple who are split­ting up and want­ed to go on with her. Then there was a mix up in the stu­dio and the peo­ple in charge of Roland Barthes’ estate asked my pro­duc­er if they could read the script because they sus­pect­ed that we stole things from Barthes.

After, they said, ​‘No, this is a piece of shit, of course the name of Roland Barthes can­not be on that.’ It was very fun­ny, because ever since every­one has asked me and Chris­tine, ​‘Is it an adap­ta­tion of Roland Barthes?’ I said, ​‘No no, please stop.’ But since my first film I always like to build plot out of a block of moments, not to have a real con­ti­nu­ity. I love ellipses so I was always work­ing this way, and those blocks could be inter­pret­ed as frag­ments of a life but all my films are a lit­tle bit frag­men­tary. So yeah, in a way there was this connotation.

Do you think that once sex is involved, rela­tion­ships between the sex­es nec­es­sar­i­ly involve manipulation?

Yes and no. If I take myself as an exam­ple it would be easy for me to tell you no. When I love, I love. I am not manip­u­lat­ing. But if I look at my own life or oth­er people’s lives from a cer­tain dis­tance, I can see that in the approach of some­one to be loved by some­one else there is prob­a­bly a cer­tain – not manip­u­la­tion – but a sort of temp­ta­tion to trans­form real­i­ty a lit­tle bit.

How about your pro­fes­sion? Doesn’t the work of a direc­tor involve manip­u­la­tion of the actors and audience?

I don’t agree with that. In films there is a sort of trust, it doesn’t last for a long time but that trust is very impor­tant. If I was think­ing only for one sec­ond that I could manip­u­late Juli­ette to be more this or that for the audi­ence… My only strength in direct­ing is trust, and to be com­plete­ly ready for her and noth­ing else. That’s what mat­ters for me.

Can you talk about the sound­track? An Etta James poster is on the wall of Juliette’s house and there is the incred­i­ble dance floor scene set to ​‘At Last’.

Etta James was the exem­plary woman for the film. When I first spoke to Juli­ette I told her, ​‘You have to con­sid­er Etta James, what kind of a woman she was.’ She want­ed more love – more and more. She would go on stage with a provoca­tive dress. She was ask­ing so much to be loved, to be able to love. Etta James is a real, real loose fig­ure. I always told Juli­ette, ​‘That’s your fig­ure for the film, Etta James’. A spe­cial woman. She start­ed singing when she was 12 in cabaret. She is a wild, wild woman scream­ing for love.

The dia­logue seems like a dance, there is not always the per­fect answer. Did you work on it with the actors?

There is a strange thing with Chris­tine, we are always loop­ing dia­logue. Each char­ac­ter repeats him­self as a sort of pro­tec­tion. For instance, Isabelle keeps ask­ing, ​‘Okay, but why?’ but then the loop goes back so she is con­demned to hear dia­logue with no gate to enter.

There is a com­ment from a gal­lerist friend to Isabelle that it’s eas­i­er to have a rela­tion­ship with some­one from the same social back­ground, which she repeats in the next scene to her work­ing class lover. Is this a line you think is used as an excuse in rela­tion­ships for when it goes wrong?

No. I think the gal­lerist is try­ing his best to dis­cour­age her from hav­ing an a air with this guy she met in a night­club in the coun­try­side and he used the mean­est way. You know? He said, ​‘This guy is not of our milieu’. Isabelle is a painter, not yet very famous, she does not belong to that milieu either. She suf­fers, in a way, with the group of peo­ple she is sur­round­ed by, and she is look­ing for some­thing free and true. She finds it in that night­club and then this so-called friend dis­cour­ages her. You would imag­ine, because she says no, no, no, no. She is rm, very firm, in front of the gal­lerist, but then when she is walk­ing home sud­den­ly a fear came up and she calls Syl­vain. She says, ​‘Syl­vain please tell me, tell me’ and she needs the only answer Syl­vain can­not give her.

The last scene with Gérard Depar­dieu is incred­i­ble. Did you write the char­ac­ter for him?

No, no, the script was writ­ten before. After talk­ing and talk­ing to the pro­duc­ers I described the way I want­ed the film to end and I sud­den­ly saw Gérard… He had the pow­er to say this incred­i­ble loop of words seri­ous­ly and deeply, to almost con­vince her. And he did, as if his body itself was a pro­tec­tion, like a wall, and it’s reas­sur­ing. The soft­ness of Gérard is in the extreme­ly del­i­cate way he pro­nounces cer­tain words. As with the title, what he says is hard to under­stand. He can­not speak a very elab­o­rate French, he speaks bad, not very edu­cat­ed French. The guy who did the sub­ti­tles said, ​‘Claire I am afraid they will think I made a mis­take on the sub­ti­tles.’ But only Gérard could do that. For me it was obvi­ous there was no one else.

He’s in a posi­tion of pow­er and he’s try­ing to manip­u­late her.

He is not try­ing to manip­u­late her, he is try­ing to make her believe that he could affect a future, which is fake. If you go to see a clair­voy­ant, of course his job is to try and make you believe that he can see a good future. An open future.

Now he’s a lover down, I thought he was try­ing to plant the seed that she is open to hav­ing him as a lover?

In a way, maybe, yeah. I told Gérard, ​‘Try also to con­vince her that there is an authen­tic guy, and that’s what she needs.’ But it’s like a guy sell­ing ice cream on the beach, for me, it’s more poignant than manip­u­la­tive.
His char­ac­ter wouldn’t have been the same with­out show­ing him with Vale­ria Bruni Tedeschi in the pre­vi­ous scene. When we were work­ing on the script I said, ​‘If Gérard says yes, I want to add this scene to show a bro­ken heart­ed guy in com­plete despair.’

Why’s that?

Because he is a real human. Some­one who has not expe­ri­enced being hurt by love, for me, is not a real human. They are just a machine, you know.

Is hav­ing love a airs with peo­ple help­ful for mak­ing art?

I think not to have love affairs, not to have love, pain, pain in your heart, means that you are not a very well fin­ished human being. And there­fore, maybe you are a very spe­cial artist with no art. If you are real­ly a human you have felt this pain once or twice, or maybe 50 times. It means you are alive.

There is an indus­try con­ver­sa­tion about how it’s hard­er for women to land jobs as they get older.

Me, I am amazed by the beau­ty of Juli­ette. I nev­er think about her age. Maybe it’s hard­er for a woman as they get old­er yet, so many actress­es – Cather­ine Deneuve, Isabelle Hup­pert, Juli­ette Binoche – they prove exact­ly the oppo­site. When I took Isabelle to Cameroon when I did White Mate­r­i­al, she was like a lit­tle girl. I thought I was direct­ing a young girl. It’s ter­ri­ble to imag­ine films with only young women. That would be a dis­as­ter for me, really.