Arnaud Desplechin may be regarded as one of France’s quintessential auteurs, but American cinema has long been a guiding force in his imagination.
His affecting melodrama “Two Pianos,” which had its U.S. premiere last week at the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Film at Lincoln Center, carries bits of these American influences.
“My cinephilia mainly comes from America,” Desplechin told Variety while in New York for the movie premiere. “I belong to the generation of New Hollywood — the generation that discovered the films of Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma. I was passionately in love with American cinema.”
“Two Pianos,” which premiered at Toronto and San Sebastián, stars François Civil, Nadia Tereszkiewicz and Charlotte Rampling in a story of impossible love. Civil plays Mathias Vogler, a once-gifted pianist returning to France after years of self-imposed exile in Japan. Reunited with his mentor Elena (Rampling) for a series of concerts, Mathias soon crosses paths with a former lover, Claude (Tereszkiewicz), who chose his best friend over him.
The celebrated filmmaker, known for delivering emotional and introspective dramas packed with French stars, presented “Two Pianos” at Toronto and San Sebastian. But he remains a Cannes veteran, having brought most of his films to the festival’s competition — dating back to his feature debut “La Sentinelle” and including “Merry Christmas” with Catherine Deneuve, “Frère et Soeur,” starring Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud, as well as “Jimmy P” with Benicio Del Toro and Mathieu Amalric.
“Two Pianos” itself once carried an English working title — “An Affair,” a nod to Leo McCarey’s romantic classic “An Affair to Remember,” Desplechin says, before adding that he “told François Civil to rewatch ‘The Age of Innocence,’ especially Daniel Day-Lewis,” to prepare for the role of Mathias. “Everyone remembers Daniel Day-Lewis’ hands in that film — this man who is desperately in love but unable to act on it.”
The screenplay was written first in English with Kamen Velkovsky, who previously teamed with Desplechin on “Jimmy P.,’ along with emerging screenwriter Ondine Lauriot dit Prévost, a recent graduate of La Fémis school.
“I wanted to work with someone younger than me, and also with a woman,” Desplechin says. “Not because women write female characters better — don’t believe that. But when the writing is mixed, when two different perspectives meet, the characters become richer.”
The writing sessions often turned into something of a creative duel. “We would sit with our computers and write the same scene separately. Then we compared. Ondine would say, ‘The Mathias scene is for me,’ and I would say, ‘No, the Claude scene is for me.’”
The director says he didn’t realize how emotionally charged the melodrama was until later in the process.
“When I arrived in the editing room, I suddenly realized how lonely all the characters were. Each of them is alone in their own life. They come together almost to rub their solitude against one another,” he says.
Desplechin didn’t want to make a classical melodrama. The film has two chapters — the first one is about Mathias and Elena, then it becomes the story of Mathias and Claude. That duality, which Desplechin attributes to Velkovsky’s input in the script, gave the film an unusual tone. “In the first part there’s something mysterious, almost fantastic. There are ghosts lingering in the story. The film then turns into a melodrama but the the mystery continues to linger; it’s not just about feeling,” he says.
Civil, who is best known in France for his roles in “Beating Hearts” and “The Three Musketeers,” unlocked his character in “Two Pianos” by reframing Mathias’ submissiveness as a conscious emotional choice. “I told him the character was passive, and François answered: ‘Every moment Mathias chooses to suffer for someone else, that’s his action.’ I thought that was beautiful,” Desplechin reminisced.
He’s equally enthusiastic about Tereszkiewicz, whose international profile is poised to explode as she gears up to star in season four of Mike White’s HBO’s hit anthology series “The White Lotus” which will soon start filming in St. Tropez. In “Two Pianos,” she plays a woman torn between two men who emancipates herself through grief.
“Nadia has an extraordinary photogenic quality. She has light in her. She has this rage to perform and a generosity with directors. There are actors who could end up crushed by ‘The White Lotus’ experience, but it will carry her because she has what it takes to last,” he says.
Desplechin is now preparing his next film, “The Thing That Hurts,” an English-language bittersweet comedy set in Paris and written once again with Velkovsky.
“This one is truly a comedy, a bittersweet comedy. It’s about expats in Paris. Something a little like ‘Midnight in Paris.’”
The project will follow several intertwined stories — seven characters connected through a psychoanalyst. The international cast will include a French actor, two Brits and four Americans.
“There are seven stories. “Like ‘Seven Samurai’ or ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ And in the middle there is the queen — the psychoanalyst,” Desplechin says with a laugh.
The filmmaker says he contributed to the script by sharing the many funny psychoanalysis stories he knows, while Velkovsky brought his love of American comedy.
“Kamen loves Billy Wilder, Woody Allen, that whole tradition of American comedy, so when we worked together on the script, he asked me to tell stories – stories about psychoanalysis, stories about people I’ve met — and he turned them into narrative.”
The movie, which is being produced by Charles Gillibert’s CG Cinema, Alaz Film, 3six9 Studio and Wrong Men, will soon start filming.
For Desplechin, the move toward English-language filmmaking isn’t about leaving France behind but expanding the dialogue with the cinema that shaped him while tapping into a wider pool of talent.
“I know American and British actors very well. It’s another culture that interests me a lot, and I thought to myself: It would be nice to invite Anglo-Saxon actors to make a French comedy with me in Paris,” he says. “I’m very happy to make films in France, it suits me very well, but I love American actors so much, I love American comedies. If I can make a film in Paris that has a little bit of ‘Notting Hill,’ then I’m happy.”
Desplechin also believes American audiences remain uniquely curious about discovering cinema from elsewhere — something he has observed repeatedly while attending the Rendez-Vous event and the New York Film Festival at the Lincoln Center.
“American audiences say, ‘What do you have to tell me? Surprise me,’” Desplechin says. “There is a curiosity for cinema there that I find extraordinary.”
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