Regis Wargnier is at the “straight line”

The subtle feelings of Une femme francaise (A French Woman), the passions of the Oscar-winning Indochine (Indochina), grieving over the lost destinies in Est/Ouest (East/West) are films by the famous French master Regis Wargnier. He presented his new work La ligne droite (The Straight Line) within the Weekend in Cannes Program. Wargnier is not a newcomer in Ukraine, because 10 years ago he shot the first Ukrainian-French co-production with a whole range of movie stars – from Catherine Deneuve to Bohdan Stupka. At the time, while staying in our country, the director began to learn Ukrainian and Russian languages bit by bit, and he is really proud of this now.

Mr. Wargnier, you have a brilliant academic philological education, but instead of literature, journalism, or science, you came to cinema. You have mastered this profession without studying in a cinema school, but learned all stages of film making process in practice. Why did you choose such a hard path?

“It was probably out of my laziness that I took up philology, because it came easily to me. Cinematography was not taught at schools at that time. I was mastering cinema simultaneously, it was not formal education though, but as a child I went to cinema twice a week, maybe that was a real studying process for me.”

After mastering nearly all levels of movie making process, you soon began to shoot your own films, making quite a bright debut. (Wargnier’s first film, La femme de ma vie (The Woman of my Life), was successfully screened in European cinemas, and the second one, Indochine, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.) How did you find your topic in cinema?

“I took up production and directing when I was not so young, as I had been for a long while producer’s assistant and assistant director. Only when I understood that I had a really strong plot, I took up the screenplay. No doubt my intention was to complete it and make a film. I came up with a firm decision when I was absolutely sure about what precisely I was going to do.”

You were the first one to shoot a Ukraine-France production, East/ West, with a few more countries taking part in co-production. What were your impressions from working in Ukraine almost 10 years ago? And what are your impressions from the country now and from the current si-tuation in Ukrainian cinematography (if you know anything about it)?

“You’ve just mentioned the profession of a journalist. I am not involved in this profession by any means; however, I follow closely the news and what is going on all over the world. Unfortunately, I cannot say anything about the situation in Ukrainian cinematography. Kyiv has greatly changed in 12 years, and I think that a certain role was played in this by the Orange Revolution and its aftermath, the events we were closely following. I think that current situation has been determined by the state of shock experienced by your country in the early 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed. Indisputably, a redivision of forces and some unions is still taking place in Ukraine. Again, it is clear that Ukraine is located between Russia and the West and is trying to build its economic and political independence under these circumstances. I want to add that during the first presidential elections I applied for the position of an international observer at the elections. Unfortunately, I submitted my application too late and nothing came out of it.”

Please tell about your latest work, The Straight Line, which you currently presenting to our audience. The film is dated 2011. It is a known fact that it was not simple for you to approach this topic. The heroes of your films always find themselves in extreme historical or life situations. But under difficult circumstances they still prove capable of human actions, not mere surviving. How did you find the heroes of the film?

“I have always taken interest in sport, not all kinds of sport, but some of them. Athletics above all.”

Do you go in for sport?

“I jog. Not to win awards, but to remain young longer. I used to go skiing. Athletics has always been among the things that attracted me, because in this kind of sport I see supreme simplicity and purity of shape. Moreover, it seems to me that humankind started to take up athletics before understanding that it is a kind of sport. For people have had the need for running, throw spears, and I think athletics in some way embodies this particular physical condition. I have wanted to shoot a movie about sport long ago, but I had not been able to find an angle or axis to rely on. As soon as I had an opportunity, I shot a documentary: portraits of famous champions. While shooting the movie, I visited training sessions, where for the first time I saw visually handicapped people training. French do not like the word ‘blind,’ they think it is quite humiliating, so they use the term ‘visually handicapped,’ or ‘people with poor eyesight.’ I was very surprised to see that a runner, especially in sprint, is tied to his guide, this is a very peculiar cooperation of two people. I was so deeply impressed by this image that I used it as groundwork for my movie.”

Visually it is a very strong image, but taking spiritual side, what was more important for you, their human cooperation or actually sport?

“In fact it was both physical and humane things. Spiritual things come from combination of physical and humane things, therefore speaking about relationships, I was mostly interested in the trust a visually handicapped person feels to his guide – to a person whom he might not know at all at the beginning. And on the other hand, this trust is sincerity, complete feedback of the guide, because when competitions are over and the champions are announced, nobody mentions the guide’s name. Body, the physical aspect, is also present in these relationships, because this is the rhythm and breath, the need to do everything simultaneously. This is quite an original form of a union, people’s unity.”

France has a program which supports the national cinematography and has been functioning for many years. Ukrainian national cinematography has been a serious problem over the past 20 years. There is much debate in this concern, people try to do something but it is hard to get this block moving. And representatives of the older generation continue, like before, to demand the money for their productions from the state, whereas the state pays more attention to young debutants. What is the situation in France? In your opinion, what are the prospects of our cinema development in the sphere of co-production?

“France has a secret of ‘vividness,’ which is currently present in French cinema. We have a fund of support, but this fund is filled not directly from the budget, but via the cinema ticket offices. I mean the price of every ticket include a certain percentage (10 to 12 percent), which goes to this fund, by this forming the possibility of subvention and funding. The percentage is collected both from French and foreign films. Several years ago we obtained this ‘nightmare for Americans.’ We have a notion of cultural exclusion. Namely this resource gives us an opportunity to help in post-production or in several items of production, but this is indeed the policy of the state. There is another source of funding – big TV channels, mainly paid. They have an obligation to invest certain sum in cinema. This may be a joint production, or the channel buys out the film to show it later.”

Does the policy of the state refer to everyone? Is there a system of grants, or its vector is oriented at young moviemakers?

“There are various directions. Indeed, everything is organized in the form of grants. There is the National Center of Cinematography, which works as a commission which meets and considers the projects. It has various directions: the aid for writing a screenplay or film release, or postproduction. The money also goes for modernization of movie theaters, specifically moving to digital technologies. It should be mentioned that at this moment of all European countries France is the most advanced one, having achieved a lot in what concerns moving to digital technologies.”

You have worked with wonderful actors and especially actresses. What is the principle of the castings? Do you know in advance, when you begin to work on the film, that Catherine or Isabel, for example, or someone else will be your heroine?

“It does not depend on a rule. I wrote Indochine for Catherine Deneuve since the very beginning, and East-West for Oleg Menshikov. There are some films, in which I write a screenplay first, and only then begin to dream and imagine some actors and actresses, not knowing beforehand, who they will be.”

East/West features actors from various countries, who belong to various nationalities and schools.

“In East/West some kind of interaction emerged very soon, I mean the actors immediately started to form a family, which may have had a language and culture barrier, but all those people were united by the fact that they came to know each other very easily and fast. There was a common desire which brought them to this profession, this choice, a general motivation. Actually, what is already present in their actor’s nature is really helpful in finding a soul contact, interaction, and mutual understanding. I remember an incident, which made the work on East/West really difficult. An outstanding Bulgarian theater actress was playing in the film, and I saw that she was very nervous: her lips and hands were trembling. Besides, she had to play in Russian, which was an absolutely different language, and I was confused, I did not know how to support and reassure her. But except for specific situations, mutual understanding came very easily.”

Today this difference in languages and schools plays a very important role, when co-production is the groundwork of movie production and serious cinema of the future, in the world on the whole and in Europe in particular. Did the language barrier and work through interpreter affect the work?

“I can’t say it was a problem, all the more so I knew all dialogues by heart, even Russian cues, because some actors changed the text when improvising. I said in such cases: ‘No-no, it won’t go.’ I can add to what you have just said about co-production that only artistic purpose can be a lawful and well-grounded reason for co-production. In particular, East/West was an ideal case for me, because the main heroine is a French woman. Her husband is Russian; then the married couple moves to Ukraine. The plot explains the need for joint production, because when everything is focused merely on financial questions, creative process receives something of banking flavor. It is good when the plot justifies the need for co-production, and it needs directors with a spirit of adventurism and desire to go beyond the French world, which is quite limited as well.”

You have a film about an escape from the country, which does not need you, Indochine. You also have a film about coming back to a country, which treats you like “meat” and worthless individual, moreover, it purposefully destroys you, East/ West. You also have a film where two people show their strongest human qualities under complicated, extreme conditions, The Straight Line. Please tell what projects await you now, and later – the audience.

“Currently I am working on screening a French book which was published 10 years ago. This is a real story. It tells about Cambodia, Red Khmers. A French ethnographer was taken captive by the Red Khmers (the plot tells how he got there, about the captivity itself, and his rescue). It consists of a kind of two parts. The second part tells about the last days of the French embassy before the Red Khmers entered Phnom Penh. The embassy is a shelter for 800 refugees, including journalists, politicians, and representatives of different countries. In human dimension, it is a significant event, when people escape to the Thai border. That is a whole range of various relationships and connections – human, political, and philosophical. Most important thing that interests me in this topic is relations between a victim, I mean the person being accused, who is a victim in a sense, and his butcher, who has to prove his guilt. But according to the same ‘victim-butcher’ scheme a common feature comes to sight: they both are part of the humankind, they both are characters.”