2.Main Content
Modern morality - director and star talk through Battle in Heaven
Director and star tell the Battle In Heaven story
Mon, 7 Nov 2005
In Edinburgh this summer we had the pleasure of a conversation with writer/director Carlos Reygadas and his young star Anapola Mushkadiz. In an extract of their conversation, they talk in detail about what the actor/director relationship brings to a screen story.
The Script Factory Masterclass with Carlos Reygadas & Anapola Mushkadiz, in conversation with journalist Leslie Felperin
Edinburgh International Film Festival
August 2005
Leslie Felperin
Can you explain how much of the story you had when you set out to write the film?
Carlos Reygadas
I wanted to write a simple story to convey the internal conflict of this man, and what surrounded him. I wanted him to commit a crime in Mexico, similar to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment where Raskolnikov kills the two old women, and eventually all the guilt comes back to him and he suffers. This is something that Dostoevsky was very concerned about - guilt and what stops us from being evil. In Mexico, there are some who commit crime but don’t feel that guilty about it. It all depends on moral standards, that is the set of rules which a society gives itself. The Natural Law Principle says we are born with the principle of avoiding evil and doing good. But there are also a lot of philosophers who think otherwise. I wanted to put Marcos in this situation, but where he was completely unconscious of the crime he has committed, and only his nature would revolt against him. This is how it differs from the Dostoevsky story as it wouldn’t be guilt, but nature which would be rebelling. It is like the anecdote where a kidnapper in jail was complaining that he had to kill his victim because the family wouldn’t let him work, but he only had space for one person in his cellar so he had to kill him to kidnap someone else. His complaint was that his right to work was being violated. I know certain families who are involved in crime and they go out every morning, and the mother and grandmother say goodbye, even though they know they’re going to attack people, but it’s work, so they say “I hope you have a good day at work, don’t get into trouble”. I’m looking at the low moral standards in a society like this, and wondering if something has to happen to your body or soul when you spend time doing these things. I didn’t want to be moralistic and necessarily say that something bad has to happen - Marcos and his wife both do the same thing and share the same information, only Marcos’s nature revolts against him. But his wife manages to adapt to the situation. This is what I was concerned about. But all this narrative is peripheral, because what I’m really interested in is the internal conflict, and whether he could solve that.
LF
At what stage did you decide that you didn’t want to show the crime itself, and choose to focus on the aftermath and the moral conflict?
CR
From the beginning. It’s like the joke about the Mexican, the American and the Irishman who are all together somewhere: you don’t have to say why they’re in that place or what their names are. I similarly just wanted to say that here’s a guy who committed a crime and he had this trouble. Some people suggested that we ought to see the crime, but I thought it was completely useless, and in a film where you need to identify with the character all the time, it’s probably to unnecessary to prepare the audience in this way. But I’m not concerned with directing identification cinema. I don’t think it’s necessary to identify yourself with the characters so much.
LF
How much do you write down? What kind of process does the script go through? Do you have a shooting script when you’re filming? Can you explain a little bit about the evolution of the writing?
CR
I think first of the atmosphere: the colours, textures and the sounds of the film. Also the kind of people I want in the film. Then I try to find a narrative that could even be a pretext, that is, a vehicle to convey something else. I don’t take any notes once I have these things in my head – but for three or four days, I write non-stop. I don’t write like a typical screenplay using computers - they bother me. I write as if I’m describing what you see on the screen. I’ll literally write ‘you see a man who’s wearing dark glasses, and the background is grey, the light’s like this and the camera moves back, and the lens is this, then the music starts when the camera starts moving forward’. Exactly like that. I’ll manage to visualise the whole film and the dialogue, and I’ll put it to paper in about three or four days. Then it’s finished. Once that period has passed, only about three or four per cent changes.
LF
Do you do storyboarding?
CR
Yes. I do that very precisely because I need it. It’s the moment that I compose the framing, and when I edit the film somehow. You see the frame, and then you see what follows. When I shoot, I don’t do a shot, then a countershot and then put it together in the editing room. What I shoot is the actual film. I know the film will have two hundred shots. For me, it’s a process of visualising the film, then materialising it. Once it’s in my head, and I write it down, it’s just a matter of materialisation. Of course, you’ll get a lot of gifts from reality and I’m prepared to take them in. I think Hitchcock used this process. But I think it’s a personal decision to use this technique.
LF
Can you speak a little about casting?
CR
The most interesting thing about a film is the people you see and the place they’re in. Before I write the script, I think about places and at the same time I imagine the characters I want. Usually, there’s a lead in my head from the beginning. In this case it was Marcos, the driver. He’s a driver in real life, and I imagined his life to be a bit like in the film. I always wondered what his perception of life was, driving people around that are having more fun than him. I wrote everything from his point of view, then imagined the rest of the people – I started looking on the streets for these people. For example, Anapola was the only one selected in our casting process. The rest were real people. When I went to see Marcos at his house, the neighbours came to see what was going on, and I saw an interesting guy who played the policeman. These people just came from the city. I was scouting in the Zocalo, the central plaza in Mexico City, and I saw a blonde woman who I wanted to play the mother of the child who was kidnapped. I invited her to come to my office the following day, but she was a bit uncomfortable about coming on her own because she didn’t believe that I was a film director. But she came with the fat woman [Bertha] – and from the moment I saw her, I knew she was the one. I did some screen tests, but it was her energy that convinced me immediately. Something similar happened with Anapola. There were maybe two or three hundred girls that came for a casting as we advertised it in newspapers (although we did state no actresses). Anapola came and the moment I saw her I was 95% convinced that it would be her.
LF
Can you explain how you felt, Anapola?
Anapola Mushkadiz
That morning, my cousin called me to say that they were doing a casting for a movie, and she said I should go. I said, no, I don’t want to do a casting. Then three hours later they called me from the production house to tell me that Carlos was doing a casting, that he’d heard about me and wanted to meet me. So I went. Before doing the casting I had the opportunity to meet him which was much nicer. I really liked him.
LF
Were you convinced he was a film director from the start?
Anapola
I had my doubts! [Laughter]... but slowly, slowly.
LF
What was your experience of acting for the first time? You’re an artist mostly, so how did it feel to put yourself in the hands of another artist?
Anapola
Very good. After I met Carlos and saw his first movie, I was really convinced that whatever happened with this movie it was going to be something that maybe wouldn’t be my favourite movie, but I would be glad and honoured to be part of it. I felt a little uncomfortable with the sex scenes, but after seeing Japon, I realised that this was something I wanted to work on. He’s a great director and a good friend, so it was good to work with him.
LF
What are the challenges in getting non-professional actors to feel that relaxed, and to be naked in a literal and figurative sense? To really open up they must show their souls, and there must be a craft to that.
CR
Yes, there’s a craft. Although I’m not sure it’s such a challenge, maybe it’s easier than with professional actors as they have less pre-judgements. The core issue is trust. Some people suggest that we paid them millions, but it’s not millions that gets them. It’s trust and sharing your views and feelings about the way you look at life. And hopefully they’ll share those views, like Anapola. But I had to explain how I felt about things a bit more to Marcos, but once they started to believe in and trust what I said, they begin to go with what I’m doing.
LF
Do you let them have final cut in the editing room?
CR
No. I don’t let them think, pure and simply. Once they’re in the film, they have to trust me completely, and accept that they are just instruments. I let them be themselves, but in conduct they have to be exactly what I want them to be. I chose them because of who they are inside. I don’t like them to ask questions, why this and why that. Only Anapola sometimes, because she’s very nice. I’d answer their questions to make them feel comfortable, but not very often.
LF
A lot of directors that work with non-professionals, like Ken Loach who uses a mixture of professional and non-professionals, sometimes don’t let the actors see the whole script and just give them the page they’re doing on the day. Is that how you do it, or do you talk them through the whole arc of the story, and let them know where they’re going to go by the end?
CR
Actually, the reason I don’t use professionals is different from that of Ken Loach. I don’t want them to represent anything, I’m not interested in representation. I’m interested in who they are, and what they radiate. It’s a bit like photography, you don’t ask a person you’re going to photograph to believe that he’s a spy from the secret service. You just say stay there, be yourself and I’m going to photograph you. It’s as if you’re photographing a tree or the sky or a baby. That’s what I like. When I first saw Anapola, for example, she wasn’t what I had in mind right at the beginning. But rather than adapting to my own character, I adapted to hers. I let her be her inner self all the time even though she may have felt trapped sometimes. I also don’t like working with actors because I think it is not pure having seen these people before. The moment you see a famous actor, no matter what you think, your subconscious tells you here you’re seeing Nicole Kidman doing a nurse in the eighteenth century and here she is as a prostitute in the twenty first century. But it is always Nicole Kidman. And I don’t like that interference.
LF
Anapola, did Marcos ever try to stop you from acting or curb your performance?
AM
No. It’s not like I could do a lot of acting because there was no need. For example I speak a lot with my hands, and in the movie all the actors have small motions. So it was a little hard sometimes. I had to be a little more slow.
LF
Did you have to rein the other people in the film a little bit? Were they tempted to take method lessons?
CR
No. What’s interesting is that although Mexico is a mixed country with Indians and Europeans, psychologically there is no such mixture. People are either occidental or something else. The only way to explain this is that some people have a linear sense of time, as Ana does, and some may have a circular sense of time. This has a lot to do with self-awareness. Anapola is like a Westerner. She is self aware, and can carry herself very well. But the others couldn’t care less. Marcos is interesting in this sense. In the press pack, all the answers they have us giving elaborate, sometimes too much. But Marcos responds with one line: everything is yes or no. When asked how was it to walk up the red carpet in Cannes, he just said “normal”. They said “what?” He just said, “yes, normal, I just went up the stairs”. But he doesn’t intend it to be ironic. Actually, he’s right, he’s probably the wisest. So there are never any problems or questions, the actors just do things like that. They just couldn’t care less. Even when Marcos saw the film in Cannes, he just said, “good”. That’s all! Then, “my wife is going to leave me now. That’s good”.
LF
Has she?
CR
That’s the funny thing, and very Mexican. This anecdote will explain a lot about the film. Marcos has wanted a divorce for five years. But he doesn’t dare ask for it, because he doesn’t dare face his wife. So he wants the film to come out so that she divorces him. At the same time he’s worried about it, but because he’s wanted it for five years, he’s really happy. The other thing that you asked, no, I don’t show the actors the screenplay. Ana, a little bit, but not on the whole, and as for the rest, not at all. I don’t want them to have an internal idea that they are representing someone. I just tell them it’s a film where they’ll be sex or you’ll have to jump out of a window – physical things but never anything psychological, like character.
LF
Was the big woman who plays Marcos’s wife comfortable with doing the sex scene? Normally we see perfect bodies, and it’s unusual to see someone with that kind of texture.
CR
It was hard for her, but she was brave and overcame herself. She was happy doing it, but it was hard. It’s also cultural. In the studio where we filmed the blow job at the beginning and the end, and other things we did with the fat woman in the house, at the beginning the actors would get undressed, then we covered them up. But after 10 minutes, we’d see Ana and Marcos walking around naked. By the third day, they were naked most of the time, and didn’t bother to put the gown on at all, and no one paid much attention. If we were all naked from tomorrow, in two weeks time we’d get used to it very quickly.
LF
Were you tempted to get the whole crew naked to make them feel more comfortable?
CR
For solidarity, that would have been good. As it was, with the exception of Marco’s wife, Bertha, the cinematographer, the sound person and myself, I asked everyone else to leave the room. It was difficult for Bertha. But because she’s not self conscious, she wouldn’t feel as bad as a Westerner would feel with that body. She couldn’t care less. This is a reflection of Mexico and the Indian cosmology. If you go to Mexico, people are so badly dressed in a good sense, they don’t care. You’ll see American football jackets with every type of badly matching trousers and footwear. Go to Brazil and it’s very different. If you go to a beach in Mexico and Brazil, in Mexico nobody does sport and everybody looks like Buddha. It’s the second most overweight country in the world. First is the US, second Mexico. But in the US you have two hundred kilo people, then very thin people. But in Mexico you don’t have these two hundred kilo people, so the average must be chubby.
LF
It is a very tender and beautiful scene [where Marcos and Bertha make love]. I’m surprised that people describe this film as shocking, because although the murder scene is shocking, it’s still not a shocking film. How do you feel about people saying it’s a shocking film? Does this disturb you?
CR
Not really. When you give a present, say a flower pot, some people will put it away because it’s horrid, but when they invite them round they’ll put it out on show. That’s hypocrisy. I think that when you give a present, and they just smash it in front of you, you should still be happy because you are doing it as an act of giving, rather than as an expectation of how the other will react to the present. The film is there, I give it, and that’s the end of my job. It doesn’t please me when they say it’s scandalous and just provocation, but I understand it and I knew that it would happen. But I wasn’t prepared to censor myself and be disloyal to myself just because they’d say it was scandalous.
LF
You work with European financiers, specifically Philippe Hubbert, who has made lot of strong, brave films with many visionary directors, like yourself. How does that process work with Philippe and some of the other backers? Do they have suggestions or guidance or help that they can offer to bring your vision to the screen?
CR
It’s been very fruitful collaboration. In France there are funds that will make the French proud one day, in the sense that they are very generous and not so obsessed with the fact that you have to be French in order to be helped out. They even have funds for Third World countries. Arte, the beautiful TV channel just cares about human qualities. So, France has been very helpful. I have a very artistically challenging relationship with Philippe, and he makes me think twice about certain things, although usually my idea has been so clear since the beginning that I don’t change much. He does help a lot though. In England, we are working with Tartan [film distributors], and it’s nice to work with Hamish McAlpine. These people help, particularly in the last stages. At the same time, in the future, I’m going to look for a new system for independent films in the Americas. I don’t want to depend too much on Europe.
Audience Member
What kind of preparation was involved in the violent scene [where Ana is stabbed]? I found it a truly shocking moment.
CR
When I thought of that shot, I didn’t want any intercutting. Although sometimes when you intercut, it can look a lot more powerful to the audience, it’s still a trick. I wanted the shot to be really open, as if you were seeing it in real life – your sight does not allow you to intercut into the wound. I talked to some special effects people in Mexico and the US, who told me it was impossible. They said that the glove that had to cover the plastic veins in the hand and the arm was impossible to make, and it would show. In the end, I found some French people who said they could do it, and Anapola can say how it was done.
Anapola
It was a painful and funny moment. Marcos told Carlos that when you go in, hit her, really hit her: pull her hair and throw her about. But to me he’d say, don’t worry, everything is prepared, just slowly open the door and things will happen. So I open the door, and Marcos begins to pull me - it’s pretty real what you see there. We did that four or five times. But in the morning we’d shoot the veins in my hands, then in the afternoon it’d be a new stomach for me with blood inside. The French guys were really good.
CR
There was a pump that pushed the blood out and you see it as a jet. I wanted the jet to be half a metre long, not because I’m into gore, I’m not, but I’ve seen someone stabbed in the arm, and the blood pressure is incredible. It was difficult to do because the veins were so thin. With the choreography, we had a knife that had a limit, so it’d be like a razor that’s only one millimetre long. It would really cut Ana’s glove, so we didn’t have to choreograph the scene. Wherever the knife landed, it cut.
Anapola
The knife would also go inside itself, so in the stomach, the knife went inside itself.
LF
Did you feel upset or drained after shooting the scene?
Anapola
Seeing it was stronger than acting it. I’d never seen myself die, so that was quite interesting. It’s very shocking. There was a part of the movie when the police arrive and Marcos is holding me, then the police hit him and try to wake me up. The actor that tried to wake me up was quite bad – then Carlos said, I’ll do it. So he got into costume, and then literally starts hitting me. So I actually cried, and I felt for a moment that this really could be dying.
CR
I did it really hard. I banged her head on the floor because it had to look good. As I said at the beginning, she trusted me completely. When they’re in the countryside and Marcos gets hit in the face, I knew I’d only get one shot at that because otherwise it doesn’t look good. In the film it doesn’t look as good, but in real life it was shocking.
AM
Was Marcos madly in love with her? To me it wasn’t just the guilt of the kidnapping, but at the same time the story alters when she says that he has to turn himself in.
CR
I agree with what you’re saying. It’s a question of layers. We read in the newspapers this morning that some woman was killed in a village in Essex by a man because she didn’t give him the house in her will. But the truth is that this may have just been the final straw in a long sequence of events that pushed him over the edge. It’s the same thing here. With the kidnapping, it’s just one layer, and maybe even not the most important one. So there’s the layer of a longing for love that he has for Ana. There’s also manipulation and power – the power that she has over him. People ask me, why was she killed? Some people say that it’s class hatred, others that it’s just a love thing, and other’s think that Marcos was going to hang himself, but that he was afraid of going to jail so he turned himself into the police. The only person he told the truth to was Ana and his wife, so he has to kill her. All these explanations are right, and it was my intention for all of them to be right. It wasn’t my intention to make a cartoon. It was to create something similar to life when nothing can be explained by one single thing. My personal feeling about life and the film is that Marcos knows that the only way he can be with Ana is through death. In this world, there is no future for them for many reasons. So unconsciously he knows that only in death can they be together. This is mystical, but all the other reasons are fine too.
AM
You create scenes without commenting on them: for example when the kids come out of the car and start pissing on the luggage and the Mexican staff start taking it out.
CR
Like in life. Last night I went out and I saw a lot of drunkards doing strange things on the street, and nobody commented on it. You don’t need to underline these things. Powerful moments of pleasure turn into pain and the other way around, this happens often in life. A sublime moment in the morning can be interrupted by bourgeois boys making a riot and noise, then they do an act and that’s it. Then everything changes and turns. A lot of things happen, just like life. I didn’t want to tell a simple straight story like a children’s story.
LF
Have you come across an inspiration for your next film?
CR
There are always many ideas that come which I come across but there is also always a single main thing. I’ve known since I did this film that since it is violent, my next film will be very relaxed, as if it was in another world where everything is peaceful and full of love. Some people think that this film is dreadful, sad and depressing, but in my opinion this isn’t because there is a longing for something better underneath. There’s only an impossibility of accomplishing the longing. The new film won’t be a longing, but an act – that’s the main idea. Everything else will just enrich this idea. I’ll try to stick to that. Of course, there will be longing that won’t come to fruition, but then there will be a miracle.
AM
Do want the audience to feel sympathy for Marcos?
CR
I don’t want anything from the audience. I just want to share. I feel sympathetic to the character, I like him very much. I like that he feels life very deeply and doesn’t run away from it. Although if he could he would. Maybe it’s just that he cannot escape, but I like the fact that he doesn’t. I don’t judge his or his wife’s attitude towards the problem, but I prefer Marcos because he cannot adapt.
AM
Why did you choose for the rich girl to be in a situation where she’s prostituting herself?
CR
Prostitution has many layers. A lot of Mexican girls, especially in high society, are basically trained to be prostitutes, not street prostitutes but something else. For me, marrying a rich guy and taking as much as you can is a form of prostitution. It’s allegorical. There are girls that have money who prostitute themselves, I know some of them. Some people who have money want more because they are into consuming expensive stuff. Travelling to Paris twice a month. I don’t know if it happens a lot, but it happens.
Anapola
I see it a lot in third world countries, but also if you go to Japan you’ll see the most beautiful European women, not just Russian but also French girls being hostesses for really fat Japanese men. They get paid $3,000 so why not? They get paid much more for doing much less. In a sense, women in the modern world are educated this way. They’re not interested in studying, especially in Mexico. If a girl graduates form law school, within the hour she’ll say that she doesn’t care because she’ll marry soon. So if you don’t get married with a good guy, you’ll get your friend’s boyfriend. I don’t have friends who are prostitutes but it feels like it’s something that certainly could happen.
AM
With regard to the relationship with your actors, particularly the level of control you have (you refer to them as instruments), do you feel that the actors could have contributed something to the characters that was denied? Or perhaps missed out on the performances reaching a new level because you denied them access to the screenplay? Will you continue to work in this way?
CR
I do need full power. If they wanted to propose something, I would let them propose it and if, in my opinion, I thought it was a good idea I would put it into action. Technically speaking, there’s a traditional system where an actor has a technique to represent something, and together with the director they work in this way. Then there is another technique which was a route for me, which is the Bressonian technique. Bresson talked about his actors as if they were models or mannequins. He would not let them do anything at all. Not even, as I do, psychological indications. He’d really rein them in and ask them not to express anything in their faces. Up to a point, I liked his films very much, but now I like them less and less because of the fact that these people are made to look like stone - in the end what happens is that all the characters are very similar. In his last few films all the characters could have been interchanged. There is no individual humanity in them, although there is humanity brought into them as characters. What I do is very similar to Bresson, but for example, when I want Anapola to look out of the window, I’ll just say “look out the window”. If she looks with hope or boredom, I’d let her do that. I try to take what she has inside into the camera. If Bresson saw that she was expressing something, he would stop her from doing this. The woman in my previous film, Japon, and Anapola, Marcos and Bertha have all, in the end, their own personality. Although they are physically not moving very much, and are static, they have a continuous personality. A personality that I wanted to give off in the film, because that’s who they are. Although it’s not Ana’s real behaviour, the character is very similar to her in real life. It’s the same with Marcos and Bertha - I try to extract from them who they are. Ana sometimes would say, I wouldn’t say that but this, and I would say, you’re right. Sometimes I’d even ask her, how would you say it? But I would only ask her sometimes, and if I found it a good idea, then I’d use it.
LF
You talked about the Kuleshov effect, and how the juxtaposition of images can change how you read an image. Going back to the writing aspect, do you find yourself re-writing when you get to the editing suite?
CR
Not re-writing, but trying to find the perfect shape. I spend a lot of time editing, but I do the first edit really quickly – ten days – and it looks like the film. They’ll only be five or ten per cent that will change. It’s like the difference between my watch and a Gucci watch: they’re very similar and maybe there’s only a ten per cent difference, but that difference will cost $20 as opposed to $20,000.
LF
Was there a specific scene that you really worked on?
CR
When Marcos and Ana leave the house one morning and they meet the guy in the wheelchair and his nurse, and they all look at each other. I cut this in various ways and with different timings. I couldn’t come to terms with it. At the gas station however, the first edit is what you saw.
AM
Some may accuse you of exploitation, but you said at least Marcos got to go to Cannes. I was wondering why he’s not here with us today. Is there no ethical conundrum in you, in terms of the difference in the way you treat him as opposed to Anapola?
CR
For Marcos, going to Cannes was not a reward. He did it for me as a favour, and he hated it actually. I don’t want to make him suffer any more and he’d be pissed off here. He’s much happier where he is. Ana’s happy to be here, although maybe she’ll get fed up soon – going to Cannes is not a reward for everybody. Marcos wanted to go back to Mexico as soon as he could.
AM
The lines are delivered without emotion and comes across as ironic – was there any intention to be ironic?
CR
It’s highly probable that out of this kind of acting some irony is given off. Everything is potentially ironic. This happens sometimes, but that’s only one way to look at it, which is why I say “potentially”. Everything is also potentially truthful or human – it depends on how you read it. Sometimes I feel the irony more, and sometimes the humanity. I’m more interested in truth rather than reality. We often draw a parity between truth and reality as if it were the same thing as falseness and unreality. But often these categories don’t go together. This is why I try to make some of the lines static or stiff – I tell the actors to say things in a cold fashion because it can give off some real truthfulness in spite of the fact that reality may be reduced. I call this ‘hot cinema’, and mine would be ‘abstract’ or ‘cold cinema’. ‘Hot cinema’ is supposed to be the one that is realistic and where you have codes of acting that are recognisable, but you don’t get any reality from these codes, or truthfulness. For example, for me Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood is ‘hot cinema’. What you are seeing gives off emotion at each precise moment you are seeing it, and you don’t have the time to see whether it is irony or truth because it is just hot. Hot action. Each way the actors act is hot. When you are watching it, you’re probably loving it, but when it’s over you’re thinking immediately about work or your girlfriend. For example, I was watching a film once, and the projector broke down and the cinema was pitch black – but it seemed as if everything had stopped – the world had stopped. It only started again when the film continued on the screen. I’ve seen other films which aren’t hot – they exist out of the screen, and if the projector breaks down, the film continues to exist. Then it lives out of the screen. So, sometimes I know that the identification process will be damaged, and it will be difficult for some viewers to relate the film because the action is cold, but there is tendency for the film to remain longer. This is very theoretical, but it’s my feeling.
AM
Yes, there’s a lot to think about and re-visit the film in your mind. It’s almost more interesting after the event than it is at the time.
CR
That is exactly my aim. Kiarastami said that he doesn’t want to kidnap an audience for two hours, but instead, plant a seed in some of them which might grow into a tree eventually. Many people, when a film is finished, find it hard to get excited because the identification mechanisms are not there. Direct identification is what we’re used to and what we like. Time is one of the tests, and the other thing is reviews. Usually, ‘hot cinema’, unless it’s really good (then it’s something else) gets better every time you see it. Some films the first time you see them you think are wonderful, then the second time you think, that wasn’t so good, then the third time you think you were ripped off. In other films, like this one, I hope that you’d like to go and see it again – and maybe it will get better. That’s a quality mark in cinema.
LF
Is this related to the religious element in your films? The way you talk about ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ cinema sounds like a liturgy or ritual.
CR
It might sound like that although I’m not sure it’s precisely that. It is like a mystery however. If you think about Kafka’s Metamorphosis, if it could be perfectly explained, it wouldn’t have survived. It would have been a great hit at the time, but we wouldn’t still be reading it today. It’s beyond the story, and exists out of the pure reality of the narrative. But when you read it, it’s not so hot. You could say it transcends in a way, so I get your point about sounding religious.
AM
Do you and Anapola plan to work together again?
CR
I want to do a porn film with her, and she’s thinking about it.
Anapola
We may do something in two years. It’ll be out in Cannes at the porn festival on the red carpet.
CR
As I told you, I only want new actors, so she’s burnt!
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This event was one of a series presented by The Script Factory as part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival in Summer 2005. to read transcripts from other Script Factory events - and click here if you'd like to sign up to our emailing list to make sure you don't miss out on hearing about other events.
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