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KINEMATRIX Starting off, I
would like to ask why you have decided to make the problem of adoption the
main issue of your movie.
Claude MILLER I believe I’ve been interested in this field from my start in
this business and especially in the relations between parents and children.
I’ve always believed that it’s the children who manage their parents and not
the opposite. Maybe I’ve also been interested in adoption as, like I think
you know, this story that I present in my latest movie really happened. I
believe in this movie I talk about all the things I always do in my films.
But this time I was also interested in the great sorrow this situation must
have provoked.
So I understand the problem of adoption is just particularly important and
interesting for you. Now, while watching I’m happy that my mother is alive I
was constantly thinking of how much it has in common with Mike Leigh’s movie
Secrets and Lies.
CM Ohh yes, yes, of course. I saw this movie some time ago cause it’s not a
new release. It has indeed the same storyline, there’s a daughter who’s
looking for her biological mother, yes, you’re right. And what’s even more,
the daughter is black while the mother’s white! Definitely, I agree with
you, there’s a slight similarity between these movies.
Actually, I think both stories have a lot in common. In each the
biological mother belongs to the lower class, she hasn’t achieved much in
her life and the way she is can be something of a disappointment for her
children. But there’s also an important difference: in Leigh’s movie the
daughter accepts her mother while Thomas, your character, doesn’t accept
his.
Nathan MILLER Let’s not forget that there’s also the difference of sexes,
our character is a man. Maybe this is why it’s much more complicated for him
as he knows that she’s his biological mother but, at the same time, she’s
just a young woman. Yes, she’s also his mother but he hadn’t seen her for
years now. It’s worth recalling that when he meets a girl of his age and she
invites him out he says: “I’m with somebody else” and, of course, we know
that it’s his mother he has on his mind.
I think it was a very interesting moment, indeed. I believe he doesn’t
accept his mother since she has nothing to do with the myth of the mother- a
loving and caring one, who’s always there for her children, etc. Would you
say that your movie is to some extend a kind of rebellion against this
common idea of mother and maternity?
NM Well, of course he was extremely disappointed with her as she wasn’t the
way he had always imagined or wanted her to be. The last time he saw her he
was about five and she was young, pretty, he loved her much and she kept him
in her arms, etc. When he finally finds her he is disappointed. Also he
realizes there has been a kind of replacement as there is an eight-year-old
boy, her son. Anyway, despite his disappointment, he visits her again and
again. And at one moment he says to her: “I feel nothing when I call you
mom, completely nothing. Getting to know you hasn’t been interesting at
all”. Then he starts asking her all these questions, such as : why me, why
did you leave me, who is my father, all these questions that she doesn’t
want to or even can’t answer.
CM I’ve just wanted to say that what’s formidable in this story is
that...well, when you live with your parents, when you have real parents you
have all the possible ways and will to get used to them, to the way they
are. Thomas, he didn’t know his mother, so he created an ideal. Understand
me well, normally you have all the time in the world to get used to and
accept your parents, you manage to come to a compromise with the ideal and
the reality, right? Since he didn’t know her try to imagine the great
picture of her he must have had in his head.
Yes, I can imagine. So, could we suppose that
it’s because she’s not like a perfect mother why he wants to kill her ? Or
is it that he just wants to punish her for having abandoned him when he was
a child? What do you think is the real reason of his act?
CM As for me it was to some point a burst of anger, of fury, but it’s
impossible to understand this amount and diversion of feelings he must have
felt inside and which leaded to this explosion.
And why does this attempt of killing the mother take place at the time
when almost everything seems getting better between them, when he visits her
on a daily basis, when they get along pretty well ?
NM Before the moment of killing her he gets to know that she’s gonna keep
the other boy, the other son, since she has won the process, and also in the
previous scene he’s in a hospital visiting his father who has cracked
completely and he sees that on one hand there’s his family who has always
loved him and who he has always loved as well and which has been totally
destroyed, and on the other hand there’s his biological mother who turned
out to be not interesting at all and who disappointed him. So, speaking
about the reasons I guess this could be it. But there’s no logic at all in
his act, what he does is definitely not logical and there’s no point in
trying to find its sense. Of course that was also this frustration that he
must have felt that pushed him to do that, I believe. I was really confused
about how to film this scene when he’s trying to kill her as I didn’t have a
precise answer why he’s doing it, I knew nothing. So I decided to present it
as if he wanted to have sex with her, and that’s exactly what I said to the
actor, to Vincent- try to perform it as if you wanted to make love to her,
intensely and brutally. But, anyway, there are million of reasons:
frustration, disappointment, all those things that Claude has mentioned and
also there is this pulsation: he sees his mother who’s coming in to the
kitchen to make some breakfast, he’s alone with her, “goodbye, lovers”- her
son says while leaving to school, so there is this kind of tension, this
specific climate and then the unexpected happens.
And when he finds the photos, the photos of her, half naked, he…well, he
doesn’t want to see them, right?
NM Of course, it is that this special feeling he has for her isn’t at all
conscious ; there’s no desire, it’s not that he wants consciously to make
love to his mother, neither does she, but there is a special tension between
them. She seems not to notice that Thomas is in fact her son, she treats him
as a nice guy, she thinks he’s handsome, she flatters him, and her behavior
and attitude create a truly unbearable climate for Thomas
CM Moreover, he can no longer stand the fact that the way his mother is
doesn’t correspond with any version of a mother that he could ever imagine.
Also he can’t accept this kind of feeling that he starts to feel. So he
wants to erase this picture, erase this image of a mother, as if it had
never existed.
NM Also, I believe he chose to kill her with a knife without a reason. He
might have tried to kill her in any other way, he might have pushed her off
the balcony, strangle her or anything. Instead, he penetrated her with a
knife, so I don’t think it was by chance. Of course it doesn’t explain
anything, it doesn’t say why he attempted to kill her but it’s certainly not
insignificant
Personally, I find your movie interesting as unlike in Leigh’s movie,
where Hortense, the main character, accepts her mother the way she is and
doesn’t judge her at all, your movie shows the impossibility of acceptance,
which maybe is even more truthful. Anyway, do you think we could consider
the act of killing as an act of love, either in a psychological or sexual,
physical way?
NM Well, I wouldn’t say so… no, definitely not. Actually, I wouldn’t want
anyone to think this way
So, the conclusion is that he kills her since he can’t accept her, am I
right?
CM He couldn’t accept her and also there was this disillusion which is
closely related to becoming an adult. Cause what does it mean, becoming an
adult? You know, when one is a child, he’s surrounded by mythologies of
this, of that, he has a lot of dreams which he doesn’t always fulfill. So I
see this act of murdering as a impossibility of accepting the fact that the
reality has nothing to do with the myth.
(…)
And, Claude, I must admit that this movie is a bit shocking, I was really
devastated when I was watching the scene of the killing. Would you say that
you used to make lighter movies, less dramatic, such as, let’s say,
La petite Lili?
CM My idea was that you got touched by what’s going on the screen. I didn’t
want you to just forget it after the movie ends but to keep it in mind. But
speaking about La petit Lili,
this is not a comedy, it’s not a comedy at all. As you may know some time
ago I made Secret and it’s definitely a drama. So, no, I wouldn’t say that I
have recently changed my style and my field, that from a director or let’s
say lighter movies I turn into drama maker.
And how was the cooperation going between you two while making the movie
?
NM Of course before starting we had a lot of questions in our minds abort
how to organize it all, how to divide work between us, etc. I’ve worked with
Claude for many years but never as a second director. So we were wondering
how to make a movie together. Finally, we decided, generally speaking, that
Claude would handle the actors’ performance and I’d focus on how to film it.
And then we realized that what’s good in theory doesn’t always work in
practice.(…) there were constant problems with passing information between
us. I would give some hints to an actor and then Claude would receive it
like some time after. Or Claude would give an information to our technician
and I would get it much too late. So, in fact, we would waste too much time
on collecting all the information and actually it was a mess. Then after
some time working in such bad conditions Claude took me aside and he said:
“it won’t work like this. You will do it all by yourself.” The reason he
decided so was to keep the integrity of the whole project. He wanted me to
act like Salomon, you know, to be in charge. So, from then on we would
consult everything just with each other, I mean if I had some indications I
was to give them right to Claude and Claude would talk to nobody but me. And
this is how it went on.
Well, I believe it’s a good cooperation technique and the result, your
latest movie, only confirms it. Ok, so thank you for such an interesting
analysis of your film and for the interview.
CM, NM Thank you very much.
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a
cura di HOLOWNIA