Making Friends the Hard Way: An Interview with Patrice Leconte

Happily for American film audiences, the more recent work of French filmmaker Patrice Leconte has appeared with regularity in U.S. movie theaters. While deceptively simple in the stories they tell, Leconte's films always take on a greater resonance—whether in raising questions about the nature of friendship, romantic love, and personal ambition or in creating images that, like the questions, continually circulate long after one leaves the theater. Chance meetings between strangers often prompt layers of self-examination mingled with longing in such well-known films as The Hairdresser's Husband (1990), Girl on the Bridge (1999), The Widow of Saint-Pierre (2000), Man on the Train (2002), and Intimate Strangers (2004), as well as in his less-known films, The Scent of Yvonne (1994) or Felix and Lola (2001). Longing becomes powerful and palpable through the visual style and musical score of Monsieur Hire (1989), as the title character stands in his darkened window gazing at a woman in her apartment across the way—a film that has prompted debate concerning its feminist or antifeminist implications. Whether examining potential romance as he does in Intimate Strangers or the desire for friendship as he does in both Man on the Train and his most recent film, My Best Friend (2006), Leconte's work is always infused with small but unexpected details that add complexity.

This is nowhere more apparent than in My Best Friend, a film admittedly contrived in its setup. An antique dealer played by Daniel Auteuil is surrounded by the trappings of a "normal" life—colleagues, associates, a lover, and a daughter. Yet at his birthday dinner early in the film, those gathering to celebrate let François know rather bluntly that he possesses neither friends nor the slightest idea of what friendship means—a shocking pronouncement under the circumstances. Although he's initially flustered, François quickly recovers, proclaiming that he indeed does have friends. When his business partner Catherine (Julie Gayet) lays a bet that he can't produce a best friend in one month's time, François accepts the challenge, initially confident as he pores over lists of his "contacts." We, of course, recognize his degree of self-deception when we learn that, despite years of their working together, François seems surprised by the fact that Catherine has a lesbian partner, just as he seems too preoccupied to return the affection of his lover or to notice the need for attention expressed by his college-aged daughter, Louise (Julie Durand).

As he searches for a friend, François stumbles upon the taxi driver Bruno (Dany Boon), a trivia buff for whom mastery of facts has come to fill the empty spaces of a life rendered even more starkly empty when his wife and best friend had run off together. Although initially too self-involved to respond with anything but annoyance as Bruno spouts off facts about the neighborhood they're driving through, François, after several chance meetings, begins to think Bruno may have something to teach him about the art of being "sociable." Unfortunately, it is the "art" and performance of friendship that matters most to François, who's working against the clock in searching for a friend. When he tricks Bruno into "displaying" an act of friendship in front of the group who posed the challenge—an elaborate hoax played on Bruno—François learns the full implications of his betrayal, while also gradually learning what true friendship involves. In a deus ex machina, the film has Bruno appear on the French TV version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, where he inevitably must decide whether to break down and call François—though he's refused to speak to him for months—the last '"life-line" he's got left on a tricky art-history question.

Contrived? Yes. A scenario that initially elicited criticism on the part of this editor, who otherwise is drawn to Leconte's work? Most certainly. But an odd thing happened (not unlike my delayed response to Eyes Wide Shut, though a very different film, to be sure). As the days passed—the images stuck, the sheer contrivance of the plot gnawed in ways that forced deeper thinking and appreciation of the characters (and actors) forced to negotiate an overt challenge to the notion of friendship that so many of us perhaps take for granted. The opening image of François at a funeral, talking on his cell phone up until the very moment the deceased is carried into a church says it all—in contemporary urban life the sheer ease of the communication "act" may all too deftly mask an absence in its substance, so that something as seemingly commonplace and accessible as "friendship" may only be so many empty words on the other end of the line.

Cineaste met with Patrice Leconte this past spring during the premiere of My Best Friend at the Tribeca Film Festival and again in the early summer when the film opened theatrically. —Cynthia Lucia

Daniel Auteuil as Francois unwittingly clears out the bar in My Best Friend

Cineaste: Why is friendship, in its many forms, a subject you return to in so many of your movies?

Leconte: I've done movies that have talked about love, about friendship, but I had never done a film on the core subject of friendship. Friendship and love stories have a lot in common—friendship and love are the foundation of our lives. A life with no love or friendship is really terrible and would be close to hell. What strikes me is that today more and more people live without true friendship in a kind of emotional solitude.

Cineaste: You've said that you were drawn to the subject and to Olivier Dazat's story because you'd find it difficult, if you were asked, to name your best friend.

Leconte: What is a friend? And more so what is a best friend? It's someone you can rely on and who can rely on you. Friendship just happens—you don't see someone and say, "Oh, he can be my friend."

Cineaste: In the film, François imagines that he can just pick a friend—something that makes the story ironic, comic, and absurd all at the same time.

Leconte: Yes, he thinks you can buy everything, including friendship, and that speaks of how out of it he is. Friendship is more complicated as we grow older because we're more demanding. In high school you can say, 'You're my friend or you're no longer my friend,' and it isn't so important. Friendship is about being open to others, which is the opposite of being selfish. François is so ambitious, he's so obsessed by money that he just walks, tramples all over his friends—he's a completely self-involved person. Friendship is about being interested in others; whereas, François is interested in trying to get what he can for himself out of various situations.

Cineaste: The film opens with François on the cell phone—there's always so much communication but very little real connection.

Leconte: Nowadays it might be a good idea to lose the habit of the communication tools we have—the cell phones, the Blackberries—it's kind of daunting. The internet enables us to communicate with the entire world but sometimes not with the person we're living with.

Cineaste: Yet the outward "structure" of François's life implies a life filled with friends. A group of people are celebrating his birthday; he returns home with a lover who seems to care for him immensely; he has a daughter, albeit a rebellious one, who nevertheless seems to crave a connection with him. Yet we see that none of this is quite working for him.

Leconte: These factors give the impression that he has a normal life, yet these are the same factors that then reveal that, in spite of all these elements, he has forgotten the essential thing, which is to be open to others.

Cineaste: His pursuit of a friend, though prompted by the "bet," also seems to involve a confluence of other factors: his attending Patrick's funeral where very few people were present, his being moved at the auction by the vase that was scrolled with the tears of friendship. It seems that somewhere deep inside of him he understands what he's missing.

Leconte: This whole funeral business is a mirror to his own life. It addresses the questions we've all had—wondering, "When I die, who's going to come? And what if only three people come?"

Cineaste: Yet the film is very subtle on this point. We don't really see the moment of epiphany.

Leconte: Yes, it has a lot to do with the fact that Daniel Auteuil plays François and acts with so much restraint. I'm always afraid that if an actor overplays a role, then it becomes a caricature, a fiction, a fantasy, and you no longer identify with him; whereas if there's more restraint, there's more truth, more identification with the audience.

Cineaste: Yet Catherine's posing the challenge to François somehow works against audience identification, given that it may initially feel somewhat contrived.

Leconte: You're right. It's absurd for someone to say, "You have no friends." The scriptwriter and I were nervous about it. But what reassured me was that I knew I would be making the movie with Auteuil—he really helped me push that factor through. When Catherine and the others say, "You have no friends," and he asks, "What do you mean, I have no friends?," I find his acting remarkable because he's on the defensive and he wavers a little but then regains his composure. Afterwards, when they challenge him saying, "You're crazy, you shouldn't bet on this," and he says, "Yes, I'm going to bet on this," he says it with so much pride that you can tell he's struck and intensely moved. I was really moved when I was filming that moment. Telling a person that he has no friends is like slapping him in the face; no one will admit not having friends. It's like saying to someone, "You're stingy." And they say, "What do you mean? I bought your coffee yesterday." We always feel we need to justify ourselves.

Cineaste: It is an interesting and complex scene because the people sitting around the table are his friends, yet they say he has no friends. It's a complicated dynamic.

Leconte: But they're probably not really his friends because it's so difficult to be friends with someone like him. They're probably work relations and social relations.

Cineaste: Yet, Catherine seems to care for him sincerely, and in the end she says something like, "I did this because I want to be your friend, I want you to be close to me"—an interesting moment.

Leconte: I really like the character of Catherine and the actress Julie Gayet in the role. She sees through him.

Cineaste: The character of Bruno, played by Dany Boon, is also more complicated than he would appear. He is far more isolated than François, while on the surface he's far more gregarious. At one point he says, "Friendship is a myth."

Leconte: He's friends with everybody, which means that, in the end, he's friends with no one, and he lives in a horrible state of emotional solitude. He stands in contrast with François. He doesn't have a wonderful job; he doesn't have a mistress or children, but somehow what he has seems to suit him.

Cineaste: Dany Boon does wonderful work in creating this character.

Leconte: He's not very well known in the U.S., but Dany Boon does a lot of one-man shows in France where he's very well known as a comic actor. I've known him for a long time and have always hoped to be able to work with him because I feel he has such a human quality about him.

Cineaste: One of the scenes I find most compelling is the afternoon François and Bruno spend in genuine friendship together. They meet by accident in the park, go to a soccer game, and afterwards Bruno stays overnight in François's apartment. It's an interesting scene for so many reasons, but most intriguing to me is that when François's mistress, Julia, comes to the door, François allows her to believe that there's another woman in the apartment.

Leconte: It's really strange because when she rings the doorbell, he could easily say, "I'm with a friend." But it's almost as if he feels guilty about it, he's so not used to this kind of connection with someone that it grates on him. He can't say something as simple as, "I'm with a friend." It's almost like being an adulterer.

Cineaste: And when he introduces Bruno (in what really is an elaborate trick he's played on Bruno) to his other "friends," during the scene he's contrived to prove to them that he does, indeed, have a friend, his words are, "A masterpiece of a best friend."

Leconte: Yes. Up until this point, with his grotesque staging of friendship, François has not understood what friendship is. It's only after this point that he'll start to understand.

Cineaste: I've recently seen your 1993 film Tango, and it struck me that, in the context of both My Best Friend and Man on the Train, your films imply that the bonds between men are ultimately stronger and more fulfilling than relationships between men and women.

Leconte: It's not that they're stronger; they're not of the same nature. Friendship and love stories seem to be parallel, as I said earlier, but when you start to dig deeper, you realize that there are differences between the two. A love story, if all goes well, allows room only for the other; whereas you can have many, many relationships with friends without issues of jealousy. What's also interesting is that one declares love; whereas, you don't often declare friendship. You never come up to someone saying, "You're my friend." It's just something that's not said; whereas, you tell a woman, "I love you." Even if she was aware of it before, you verbalize it. Since friendship is not something that's declared as love is, it has to be lived, it has to be proven; it has to be testified to in some way. And the fact that declaration is required in this story in order to win a bet is the very proof that François has no clue about what friendship really is.

Cineaste: Some critics have said that a homoerotic current runs beneath the male relationships in many of your films, particularly in Man on the Train and My Best Friend.

Leconte: It kind of escapes me. I know it's something people have mentioned, but the sort of "coloring" of my characters' relationships is something I have no control over. I can't deny that there could be something homoerotic when Jean Rochefort looks at Johnny Hallyday in Man on the Train or in the gaze exchanged between François and Bruno in My Best Friend. When people are true friends there is admiration, there's this "something" with dimensions of eroticism.

When we were writing this film, I very quickly thought of Daniel Auteuil as François, but I didn't settle on Dany Boon as quickly. And for a while I thought that Bruno's role could be acted by a woman. I was really drawn to the idea that the friendship story would be one between a man and a woman. I even offered the script to an actress. For a week I was really excited by the idea, but then I dropped the idea because the script hadn't been conceived to take in a possible love story between the two. I wanted to do something on friendship between a man and a woman because that hasn't been dealt with in the cinema, but that's something for a future project.

Cineaste: The visual style of My Best Friend is often striking, particularly the shot in which Bruno has breakfast with François's daughter Louise, and they are placed in the warm light of the kitchen, while François stands in the other room photographed in a cold blue light, appearing emotionally, as well as physically, isolated.

Leconte: I always try to stage my films as best as possible. It may sound pretentious but the style of the film is very important to me. I'm touched that you noticed the style. I'm really struck by critics, though I don't read them so often, who rarely pay attention to this aspect of the film.

Cineaste: The blue lens filter you use in that shot is something that I notice in a number of your films and in this shot, especially, it does seem to take on a thematic dimension.

Leconte: I can't say you're wrong, but in this specific instance the frame is cut in two. For pictorial reasons, the differences in light and color are important. But maybe there's an instinctive thematic aspect to it also because, yes, over there in the kitchen are Bruno and Louise talking and laughing. It's a moment of intimacy so there's warmth to it. And François is eavesdropping—the odd man alone, the loner in the blue light and darkness. And your analysis is true in relationship to this scene, but I honestly can't say that I think about it when I'm doing it.

I don't have the pretence of comparing myself to a painter—I would have loved to be a painter. I'm sure that if you look at Manet, you could say, "There's a spot of red here that's answering the spot there," whereas he probably just placed them there in a very instinctive way. It's also not a good thing to analyze one's own work in this very rational way. I love the idea of being able to work in an instinctive, intuitive manner, and, above all, I love the idea that things can just escape us. You can't control everything. In the end, if a film is successful or is seen as successful, it's really a miracle. And I don't mean that in the sense of false modesty, it's more that I think a success is miraculous.

Cineaste: Throughout your career, I notice that you've worked with the same editor and with many of the same screenwriters and cinematographers.

Leconte: Two people who have been involved in many of my films and who are incredibly precious to me are Joëlle Hache, the editor, and Ivan Maussion, the set/production designer. The first film I made with Ivan was in 1980, and we haven't left each other since. He is incredible and our manner of working together is so good that, without him, I think I might not want to make any films. And Joëlle Hache brings so much emotional sensitivity to her work, that if I had to do a film with another editor, I think I'd rather not make it.

Bruno (Dany Boon) and Francois reconcile at the conclusion

Cineaste: Can you think of an example of Joëlle's doing something that really surprised you, that made you really happy and pleased?

Leconte: In My Best Friend, the last scene of the film takes place one year later. Bruno pays the restaurant bill where François is celebrating his birthday with the same group as the year before. Maybe I shot this scene too fast or I wasn't attentive enough, but the emotion between the two actors wasn't rising up enough. Joëlle is the one who went searching for moments of silence or exchanged glances, adding on to something that wasn't rich enough to begin with. When she showed me what she had done with the scene, it brought tears to my eyes because she had taken material that didn't suffice and managed to transform it into something so powerful.

Cineaste: So many of your films are circular in form—we're given an image at or near the beginning, only to return to it in the end and learn the full force and context of its meaning. While it might be seen by some critics as "formulaic," it also operates rather reflexively, like a dream—linking cinema to a kind of dream state. As in a dream, an image is given to us and then often is abruptly taken away. You tend to cut abruptly to a very different space and tone—in terms of composition, location, light, color, movement, music, and sound. One might almost say there's a Brechtian distancing that makes us aware of our role as dreamers/viewers and never quite lets us forget that.

Leconte: It's a brilliant analysis of my work, but I must admit that a lot of the things I do, I do in a rather unconscious manner. I think far less about the meaning of my films than you do. [Laughs] I always strive to have my films start in an original, captivating, and unexpected way. It's true that there is somewhat of a formula in beginning a film with a series of images that are a bit puzzling but strong enough so that viewers keep them in mind so that I can come back to them at some point in the film. It's a formula, but it's a way of structuring the story that works for me.

There's always a certain dream aspect in all of my films, but that's nothing more than imagination. Even when dealing with the realm of dreams, the stories in my films still unfold in a more or less linear fashion. More often than not, my films begin with the meeting of two people; we follow this meeting, and the film then kind of knits itself like a sweater.

In this sense, My Best Friend was actually the most problematic of my films in terms of directing and overall style. All the films I made before, in one way or another, disconnect from reality, which allows me a certain freedom to stylize things in my own fashion. Because My Best Friend is a very naturalistic, quotidian film that takes place in the present time, I was constantly asking myself how I was going to film it. I don't like to use the word "concept," but I do like to have a directing concept for each film. In a film like Girl on the Bridge, the story gave me incredible liberties in filming. With My Best Friend, I was completely distressed, wondering how I was going to manage filming a story that takes place in the present time, with real people, real streets, real surroundings. I tried to do the best I could, but I was afraid of being commonplace.

Cineaste: In many ways your use of the wide-screen format and your partitioning the frame avoids that problem. You create very different registers within a single frame. In your earlier films you seem to achieve that effect more through the editing process.

Leconte: Since my fourth film in 1981, I've done all of my films in 'scope. It's because in terms of lay-out and directing, you can position things in such incredible ways. Because I frame my own films, inscribing the images within the rectangular 'scope frame is magical. When I shoot commercials in between making films, I find myself stuck with the TV format, which is very confining. In the very beginning I have such a hard time working with the squarish frame, but, in the end, it's about shooting dehydrated potatoes or shampoo bottles, so I guess it's OK.

Cineaste: You are one of the few filmmakers I'm aware of who actually works as the camera operator on almost every film you make.

Leconte: I don't know why, but no one does it. The only directors I know who systematically do the framing in their films are Luc Besson, Claude Lelouch, and Steven Soderbergh—and Soderbergh is more and more involved with the lighting also.

Cineaste: How does the dynamic work between you as camera operator and the very accomplished cinematographers you work with, like Eduardo Serra and Jean-Maire Drejou. Who takes orders from whom?

Leconte: The DPs you mentioned are people who take care of the lighting. And when we're doing the scouting before shooting, the DP, the set designer, and I begin a conversation, asking ourselves, "Where does the light come from?," and we choreograph the source of light with the movement and placement of the actors—so we focus on creating a kind of lighting order. I express how I envision things, but then it's up to them to add their ideas and take it to an even better level. The fact that I frame all of my films is not at all bothersome for the DP. It's a good collaboration, and we get along well. At the beginning of the shooting process, I explain how I plan to go about cutting the scenes so the DP knows in advance how it will work out. The secret is that, in the end, it's very easy to work with people if you know exactly what you want, and I try as much as possible to know what I want.

When I'm shooting a scene, I consider that I have four or six characters but that the camera is also one of those characters. Since I'm the one behind the camera, I then become the first and most attentive spectator of the film. Instead of being a sort of passive audience member watching the scene from afar stuck in a chair, I want to be "in it" and experiencing it. I want the camera to be a living element—because I'm the one directing it and I'm alive! I also have the freedom of being able to play with the framing and don't have to ask permission from anyone because I'm the director.

What's really moving and precious is that actors actually love that presence of the director. I may be mistaken, but I really do believe they give so much more of themselves; they abandon themselves, so to speak, when they know that the guy behind the camera is the director. It's all the more true because, increasingly on film shoots these days, there's the monitor that lets you see what's going on, and there's a long cable between the camera and the monitor; the director is sitting there at the monitor, quite far away from the set. And sometimes when you're shooting outside, they build a canvas tent around the monitor to shield it from the outside light. For actors it's not all that motivating to be acting for a guy who's behind a shield. To me, this also reveals something that often is true—that many directors don't like actors so they kind of build a structure to protect themselves.

Cineaste: So many filmmakers have had an actor who functions as a sort of alter-ego—the most obvious examples are Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Leáud as Antoine Doinel, or Fellini and the various characters Marcello Mastroianni played. Do you have an alter-ego in your films?

Leconte: I've never felt as close to an actor as I do towards Daniel Auteuil. He's not my 'double,' but we share such a common wavelength and one that feeds in both directions. That's why, when I offer him a role, he doesn't feel the need to discuss it. There's not complete osmosis, but there really is a sense of identification and understanding. We don't necessarily have to have an alter-ego in a film, but finding one can be amusing. For a long time I thought that my alter-ego in cinema was Jean Rochefort and that he was an older version of me; now I found in Daniel Auteuil a better me. [Laughs]

Cineaste: You've said that you plan to make only three more films before leaving the cinema—what will they be? When we spoke several years ago, you mentioned that you were planning a U.S. production of Monsieur Hire. Is that still in the works?

Leconte: It is, but it hasn't been easy because it's a project I want to stay in control of—so it won't happen with a major film company, but more likely will be a French, British, U.S. coproduction. And I hope to shoot in the spring of 2008. Paul Auster wrote the adaptation, and it's magnificent. Whereas the French version is a very dark film visually, the new version, titled Homeland, is a very light and sunny film. I remember the teachings of good old Hitchcock who shot the mysterious and dangerous meeting of Cary Grant with a stranger in North by Northwest in an open, bright space. I applied this rule with Paul Auster, and we wrote a film that takes place in the springtime, with sunshine and people in T-shirts.

Cineaste: And the other two films?

Leconte: I'm writing a film with Serge Frydman, with whom I wrote Girl on the Bridge, and while we're not redoing that film, we're creating just as bizarre and as charming a story. So that's two. I'm allowing myself a blank space for the third film in an attempt to realize my dearest wish—to make a musical film. I want to film people dancing and singing, but in my own style. Because so many great musical films have already been made, I have to do something different. It's not easy to come up with a story, with a good argument—musical films are success stories. I'd like to avoid falling into that.

Cineaste: Are you setting the number at three more films as a way of enforcing your decision, to make sure that it really does happen?

Leconte: I had to give myself a number, so I think I'll do three and then I will stop. I do know that I'm positive about wanting to stop making films for a while, if not for the rest of my life, because I love doing films, and I've always believed in every film I've done—even in the ones that haven't been all that successful. But that kind of enthusiasm doesn't last forever, and I really don't want to take the risk of one day doing a film without that same enthusiasm. Maybe I'm stopping too soon, but I don't want to take the risk.

I'm not going to start planting cabbage and going fishing, though. I want to do all sorts of things that I just don't have the time to do now—I want to write for others, I want to do work in the theater, and try to have a calmer, quieter life because right now I never stop. I'll continue working but in a more relaxed way, because when you make a film, you invest an incredible amount of energy. I really enjoy directing theater—it's wonderful, intense but much less taxing than directing a film. I want to continue creating, inventing, but since I don't know how to slow down, I have to stop. Not now, but maybe in two or three years.

Cineaste: Have you directed theater in the past?

Leconte: I first directed a play by Jean Anouilh ten years ago, and I loved that kind of work. Since then, I've directed two plays. The most recent has been onstage since last January and is a theatrical adaptation of my film, Intimate Strangers. As I was shooting My Best Friend, it crossed my mind that it might be possible to adapt Intimate Strangers for the stage. I talked to Jérôme Tonnerre, the scriptwriter, who found it an interesting idea, so he wrote a play that's close to the film, but has some differences, including the cast. It's more concentrated than the film because there's a single setting. What's been interesting is a dimension I hadn't foreseen in the story—the humorous aspect of the situation. The story is almost like a Vaudeville act—the woman wants to see a shrink but she opens the wrong door and ends up with the accountant. The theater audience was really moved by the story, but they also laughed a lot.

Cineaste: I imagine that the scenes when William, himself, visits the psychiatrist for advice with regard to Anna are quite humorous onstage.

Leconte: Yes, those moments are retained in the play and are moments to die of laughter when watching. It's so much fun—so liberating!

Cineaste: How do you assess yourself and your career? How do you want to be regarded as a filmmaker?

Leconte: I've never worked thinking of my films in posthumous terms, but now that I'm no longer as young as I was, I'm sort of looking back, and there are a few films that I'm really proud of because they succeeded in achieving what I had in mind. When I think of those films, I feel that I didn't work in this profession in vain. It's gratifying to think that the thing that moved me while I was making a film can be transmitted into other peoples' hearts and that it stays there. When it happens that people say with fervor or sincerity that they like this or that film, I feel I was right to do these films—that I didn't do them for nothing.

Some of the films I've done have been successful and I'm proud of that, of course, and other films didn't meet with so much success, but I really like them anyway, the same way you would like a child who may not achieve as much as other children. One of those films is Les Grandes ducs (1996) about great comedians on tour—a movie filled with incessant talk. Another is the documentary Dogora (2004), which is accessible to all audiences because it involves no spoken words. These two films weren't successful, but I'm happy and proud I made them. If I look around, I'm sure I'll find people who like them. [Laughs]

Cineaste: What about the films that have been successful?

Leconte: Many I've especially liked won't surprise you—Girl on the Bridge, Monsieur Hire, and The Hairdresser—I didn't mean Monsieur Hire and the Hairdresser but rather Monsieur Hire and The Hairdresser's Husband. [Laughs]

Cineaste: But that could be your third film: Monsieur Hire and the Hairdresser!

Leconte: That would be very funny—to reconstruct the salon as a spot for a rendezvous, with Mr. Hire coming in wearing his heavy coat, especially since he's bald! [Laughs]

Cineaste: And then he'd burst into song....

Leconte: It would be funny, but of course, vain and silly. I could do a last film like Fellini's 8 1/2, in which every actor with whom I've worked would have a small role!

Cineaste, Vol. 32 No.4 (Fall 2007).