MANY
CHINESE DINNERS LATER…
FAMILY
BUSINESS WITH ERIC ROHMER
It was a
grey afternoon in Paris. From the Cité Universitaire (residence for students
from all over the world with a pavilion for each nationality), it was a change of underground lines to get to Alma Marceau, the chic area of Paris, where Eric
Rohmer had his office. But it had to be done. This was the young days, the gung-ho hours, the time when nothing could stop us. We had a movie to make, and
however difficult, we had to make it! We were a bunch of students enrolled in a
Master’s programme of the University of Wisconsin "year of exchange" in
Paris.
Paris for
a year! A dream for most students… The moveable Feast of Hemingway … the
diaries of Anaïs Nin. Paris: the urinals, the brothels. Not to mention of course
Hiroshima Mon Amour… Marguerite Duras … Alain Resnais…Jules and Jim…the divine
Jeanne (Moreau). In short, all the residue of long days and evenings hanging
around the Ciné Club screenings at the Hong Kong City Hall, and the fervent
following of articles by Law Kar (羅卡)
and Lok Le (陸離)
in the Hong Kong Chinese Students’ Weekly.
Eric Rohmer was a mere name to me. Form Hong Kong to
Montreal, we were more familiar with François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.
Although his films were constantly played at the largest repertoire cinema, the
Outremont, in Montreal, I spent my time in all-night Truffaut’s retrospective
instead. And I dreamed of working with Truffaut someday in Paris. Fate has a way of
making silly putty out of us. For as it were, during all the time I lived in
Paris, I had never managed to meet Truffaut before his death.
We first spent two months learning (and re-learning) French
in the American Master’s programme. We were played again and again the
soundtrack from Godard’s "Breathless" in order to learn the street French and to get
rid of our proper university stiffness of this language. A way to get us armed
for life in Paris…
Then came the real course. Semiology, theory, analysis, and
mostly, semiology, semiology, semiology. “Where’s the production?” we wanted to know. How can we make
a proper film budget, for example? Once every fortnight, Eric Rohmer gave a course at the Paris University near the Luxembourg Gardens. We
decided to attend.
Sitting at the very back of the class, with our half unlearned
and not yet re-learned French, we listened to the tall, thin, grey-haired man
talking into the air, about Perceval, and medieval music, and … budget.
Confident that we had all the odds on our side, we decided
to pull out of the Master's programme and take the plunge. We asked to be reimbursed for
the fees and pooled it together to make a film, fashioned after Marguerite
Duras’ India Song. And to do this, we needed to draw up a proper budget.
Which comes back to this grey winter’s day in Paris, going to
Eric Rohmer’s office, putting on a brave face and saying, in bad French, that I
was his student and that I didn’t want to bother Mr. Rohmer, but could I have a
photocopy of the budget he was talking about in class so that we could study
it? Amira, the chief account of Les Films du Losange, told me nicely to leave
my phone number and that she would give Mr. Rohmer the message. The usual brushoff, I thought. I left disheartened. Getting back to my room at the Canadian
House in the Cité Universitaire, a girl on the same floor was on the communal
phone in the hallway. Seeing my arrival, she said “Ne quittez pas, elle arrive,”
and handed the phone to me.
“Bonjour, ici Eric Rohmer,” said the slightly hoarse voice
on the other side.
The trip seemed much faster as I turned around and made my way
back to Les Films du Losange. Rohmer occupied a small office at the end of the
three-room outfit. Margaret Menegoz, the producer for the production company
occupied the office just next door. That afternoon, I was sitting in a chair
opposite Eric Rohmer, not knowing what to say. My bad French saved me as he
assumed that my silence was due to the lack of mastery of the French
language. To fill up the space in-between, he proposed to make tea, assuming
that all visitors with my shape of eyes was a tea expert.
Soon I became a real tea expert, having drunk tea in his
office every afternoon for the next few months. As I assumed for the first time
the persona of the quiet mysterious young woman from the East (rather than the
tongue-tied impatient film student from Canada that I actually was), I managed
to catch a few phrases. And the few words I understood made me feel that my
year in Paris was not a total waste: production… camera… lights… actors… and
even budget.
But my new-found calm was soon shattered by the boisterous
arrival of a bright and animated young man… loudly producing lines in the
language that l thought l was on my way to master. The young man shook may
hand, looked at me from time to time while a stream of musical words came
without interruption out of his mouth.
We were in the middle of pre-production of Perceval. The
young man was Fabrice Luchini, and he was speaking nothing but medieval French
during this period. Much good the studying of Godard’s street French did for me!
As the production of Perceval was coming to an end, I was
also extremely busy, because the few of us youngsters at the American programme
did drop out and we made my film" Shades of Silk". We were editing at an inexpensive outfit and Eric came to have a look at the film on the editing
table.
Although Duras’ type of filmmaking was very dissimilar to
Eric’s, he appreciated her films and constantly quoted them in his class as an
example of how cinema did not have to be expensive, and that imaginative use of
technique and sound could be used to make an inexpensive film. This was the key
to Eric’s philosophy of filmmaking: inexpensive production, a minimum crew, and
the doing away of superfluous details and gadgets which would more often than
not serve only to boost he director’s or the producer’s ego. He was the only persona of the New Wave spirit, which explains why he would spare
time to look at a 16mm film on an editing table by a student.
After this first try, I received a Canada Council grant to
make a feature "Justocoeur". “This time, we will try direct sound,” I thought.
But how to get the French actors to mouth my English dialogue? Ann Martin, my
fellow student and co-writer, suggested, “Hmmm…” I said, “To translate the
whole script into French will take some time…” Dare I ask him? I’ll make some
nice Chinese meals in return, I thought, a very economical way of procuring
beautifully-written French dialogue for my film. And it worked! Eric, who was
usually very French in the taste for food, loved my Chinese cooking.
Perceval was a brilliant exercise in minimalist and
symbolist cinema, but it didn’t work at the box office. It was the first time Eric worked with a fairly large budget and television co-production, but it was
also a disappointing experience for him (in terms of distribution, not in
terms of creativity, for it remained one of his favourite films). For a while after that, he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to
make another film.
John Cressey, my Canadian DP and partner-in-crime
(the addictive crime of independent filmmaking) also made the acquaintance of
Nestor Almendros during a commercial shoot. Nestor had been Eric Rohmer’s
lighting cameraman for years. He had just won an Oscar for Days of Heaven and
shot the beautiful Marquise of O… before Perceval. Nestor also came to the
dance studio where we were shooting "Justocoeur", and spend an afternoon watching
us tugging and pulling the dolly filming the dancer (Corinne Lanselle) in 16mm. This was
indeed a privileged time, with established professional faithful to their
(cinematographic) roots and being as curious as ever to other creative
endeavours.
Soon after, Eric decided to get back to making another film.
And funnily enough, it was "The Aviator’s Wife" which he wanted to make very
quickly, very inexpensively, and in 16mm. A back-to-the-roots work. Whether
seeing us shoot Justocoeur had something to do with his choice, who knows?
He had trouble finding an actor to play the “aviator”. I
had just finished Justocoeur at the time, with an actor much loved by
Schlöndorff (in his "Young Torless") and Marguerite Duras ("India Song" and
others), Mathieu Carrière. He became the aviator and I had a lot of fun playing
a cameo scene (written in the script for a Japanese tourist and changed to a
“Quebecois-Chinese” for the occasion) with my assistant editor and fellow
student Neil Chan. As usual it was a family enterprise.
Since Eric knew that my finances were dire after making two
independent films, he asked if I would work on "The Aviator’s Wife" as his editor
Cecile Decugis’ assistant. There was no question of pride involved, I would
nave been perfectly happy to watch him and Cecile work, if they would allow me
in the same room. And to be paid for it, on top of that! Of course I would!
Cecile who edited Godard’s "Breathless" had a reputation of being very tough on
her young assistants. To Eric’s astonishment, she was very kind to me and we
became friends quickly.
Then Eric
confided that he had this little tune in mind, a little song about a young man
being very lonely in Paris, as theme music. But what to do? He didn’t think
that a professional musician would be too thrilled to adapt his little tune—it
wasn’t really a professional thing. I immediately offered whatever l knew from my
many years of force-fed piano lessons in Hong Kong. One afternoon on the piano
of his modest and quiet home, we worked on the arrangement of "Paris m’s séduit",
the theme song of "The Aviator’s Wife", which was then sung by Arielle Dombasle. Again
a family business.
Many years
later, I returned to Parisian life after a hiatus of eight years in the South
of France, completely cut off from the world of cinema. Eric came to the rescue
immediately again and hired me to work on the editing of "A Winter’s Tale".
During the years I had been away, he had worked with a very talented musician
called Jean-Louis Valéro, who was also a very good friend before I left Paris.
But now, with three children and the responsibility of providing for them, I
thought, “Jean-Louis will forgive me for this temporary betrayal” and I proposed
to Eric to write up a theme music for him. Of course, Eric was thrilled because he
had again the start of a little tune in mind. He wanted a sort of fugue. I
rushed to the nearest Music Conservatory to borrow a sheet music for a fugue,
any fugue!
The theme
for "A Winter’s Tale" was born. Thrilled, Eric proposed that we adopt a pseudonym
together, Sebastien Erms, using the initials of both our names. The theme was
then recorded, one afternoon, without any fanfare, in the home of a friend who
had a grand piano. And who says film music costs so much?
Later
between two of Eric’s films, while working at French Vogue magazine as the editor-in–chief's assistant, I proposed an article on the photo collection of films stars
of John Kobal, who had just passed away. We decided to commission an article on the
world’s leading lighting cameramen. And to write about John Kobal, I called
Nestor in New York, where he lived since becoming one of Hollywood’s best
cinematographers, to contribute. He promised to collaborate, but several weeks
later, another winter’s afternoon, I got a call at my office with a very hoarse
voice at the other end, from New York, it was Nestor. He explained that he was ill and
that he was terribly sorry not to be able to write the article.
A week
later, I heard on the radio that Nestor Almendros had passed away. As I hurried
to Eric’s office, he was writing an eulogy for a Parisian newspaper for his old
friend and collaborator. For some reason, a light had gone out; not having
known Nestor very well, I nevertheless felt like a part of the family had
disappeared.
Such was,
and still is, the creative family of Eric Rohmer, in which I felt very
privileged to belong. And still today, when I make a film, I think budget,
budget, budget. And what’s the use of an assistant? Just another mouth to feed…
I can do it myself with the rest of the crew: we’ll all be the assistants.
They’ll have to work harder but I will make a nice Chinese dinner for the crew
in return! …
And …And
…And…
