Official Competition 62 nd Int. Film Festival Locarno a film by Sarah Leonor A Real Life Guillaume Depardieu Florence Loiret Caille
A real life Directed by Sarah Leonor Written by Sarah Leonor & Emmanuelle Jacob Produced by Michel Klein & Laetitia Fèvre Cast Bruno - Guillaume Depardieu Isabelle - Florence Loiret Caille Manu - Jaques Nolot Martin - Benjamin Wangermée Ali - Rabah Nait Oufella Nouria - Fejria Deliba Emir - Bruno Clairefond Stephan - Tony Lemaitre Peron - Frédéric Jessua France 2009; original title Au Voleur ; Drama Feature; 35mm colour; 96 minutes; aspect ratio 1:1,85; Dolby SRD; original language French; available with English subtitles
Synopsis Isabelle is a teacher. Bruno is a thief. Together, they start believing they could find happiness. The day the police tightens the noose round him, Bruno runs away, taking Isabelle along with him. In the heart of the forest, they hide and love each other, timelessly, in an ultimate attempt to keep the violence of the world away.
Director: Sarah Leonor Born in 1970 in Strasbourg, Sarah Leonor grew up in Mulhouse, where as an adolescent she took up photography and discovered cinema as an open window to the world. Back in Strasbourg, she studied art history and Russian for two years and then started working with the film magazine Limelight. With a friend who was studying cinematography at the Ecole Louis Lumière she co-directed a first short documentary, Napoli 90 (1994). After Les limbes (1997), she made L arpenteur (2001) in collaboration with Michel Klein, a medium-length film that won the Jean Vigo Prize the following year and that recounts the first trip to Armenia made by Avédis, a young Frenchman of Armenian origin employed to draw up plans for a road that will link two villages in the south of the country. A Real Life (aka Au Voleur) is her first feature film. 2009 A Real Life (aka Au Voleur), feature film Locarno Int. Film Festival 2009 Official Competition 2003 La Goutte d Or, short documentary 2002 Le lac et la rivière, short film 2001 L Arpenteur. short film Prix Jean Vigo 2002 Pantin Short Film Festival 2002 Best Actor, Press Jury Special Mention 1997 Les Limbes, short film
Interview with Sarah Leonor by Isabelle Potel A man and a woman are on the run. They land up on a small boat, drifting away in the heart of a forest. What is the subject matter of this experience? Going down the river, Bruno and Isabelle return to themselves until they reach something primitive, something primeval, something childlike. All idea of time vanishes, play and reality merge together, an eternal present emerges. They experience a limitless freedom where there is no longer either past or anticipation. I am not referring to a lost paradise, but rather to an experience that potentially lies inside every one of us, an experience that simply is to be rediscovered. Beyond these considerations, it is the couple that interests me, this particular couple. How Bruno initiates Isabelle to the present, how Isabelle offers him her energy and her desire for happiness. But this state of grace inevitably reaches its limit. Probably even more than Bruno, Isabelle is aware that no couple can be self-sufficient. I don t hold a romantic vision of love at all. It is important for me to remain clear-headed about this! (laughter) When looking for locations, I took Laurent Desmet, the movie s director of photography, into that forest. Laurent named this forest Brigadoon, in reference to Minnelli s movie, in which villagers from another time reappear every 100 years. In that movie, two worlds, two temporalities coexist in the same place. The same kind of thing happens in A Real Life: Bruno and Isabelle reach a new time dimension. Who are Bruno and Isabelle? Isabelle and Bruno live on the fringe of our society, in which people behave as if it was still possible to believe in progress and economic development. They live on the outskirts of a small town, in a kind of disused urban area where no one ever stops, where trains pass at high speed without slowing down, where the never-ending traffic of the motorway constantly carries people somewhere else. Bruno s primary relation to the world is to take. He has devoted himself to becoming invisible. He breaks into wealthy houses with confidence because of his experience. His response to living in an economically-neglected area is to steal, not to get rich but to survive. Exhausted, he has come to the point where life is nothing but a rather sterile repetition. Isabelle is in the same situation. It seems she cannot feel anything but boredom and distress anymore. She is a German teacher, yet being only a supply teacher - a filling-in role, never permanent - she remains detached from society. What happens between them has nothing to do with a classic Lady and the Thief storyline. Though she has been to university, Isabelle comes from the same social background as Bruno. They both have more or less found a noble escape, one by mastering the art of stealing, the other through the adoption of a foreign language. I wanted Isabelle to teach German because it is a language often rejected by secondary school pupils. It is an unknown world to be discovered, the attraction of an elsewhere that she tries to communicate to her students. Noble, yet Bruno and Isabelle are still going round in circles in their cage, like the panther in the text by Rilke that Isabelle reads to her pupils. The poet had observed this animal deprived of freedom in 1902 at the Garden of Plants in Paris. Bruno and Isabelle s energy is compressed, suffocating between narrow walls. How did you conceive the first part of the movie that takes such an unexpected turn? Its structure follows a musical pattern rather than a strictly dramatical one. It features themes that respond to one another, that work as echoes and that suggest a muffled tension which can only lead to a violent rupture. I depict a static world, suddenly awoken by desire. A chain of events, notably the police chase, forces Bruno and Isabelle to run away. But it is rather their increasing desire for something new, as well as their mutual attraction that leads them to go through the looking-glass. Their only way to survive is to reject everything. This is the turning point: a diversion, a crossroad, a running away. The movie is constantly taking cover, it cannot be categorized. Which genre do you feel it relates most to? The script could give an impression of a dark movie with no way out. During the shooting, I was always looking for restrained emotions, a counterpoint to the dramatic elements. During casting, I felt Florence Loiret Caille s instincts, Jacques Nolot s subtle elegance and Guillaume Depardieu s overwhelming physical presence would avoid any superficial affliction, keeping my characters at an appropriate distance. The characters in the movie carry their own despair
with high-spirits and remain alive all the way. This is what matters. For A Real Llife, I thought a lot about classic films noirs: Nicholas Ray s They live by night, Raoul Walsh s High Sierra, in which a couple on the run keeps fleeing further and further into the wilderness. I also kept in mind Terence Malick s Badlands, though my characters are older and their running away is less violent. Maturity is a key element in the movie. Undoubtedly, Isabelle and Bruno must have been angry and excessive when they were young, but they are now post-anger, postdisillusion, even though they have not become cynical. In the end I only kept the framework of film noir: thieves, robberies, policemen, a car chase. I don t feel the need to relate to a specific genre. You need to create your own language, regardless of genres. I would say that A Real Life is a bright film noir. You made some quite original choices in terms of music. I wanted to start from the origins of folk music, that is to say American music, with anti-establishment and primitive accents. I played Woody Guthrie s Grassy grass grass to Frank Beauvais, my music consultant. This song underlines the turning point of the movie, the escape into another world. Having read the script, Frank prepared a selection of several hundreds of tracks, which ranged from traditional chanting through rock music, crossing different continents. Like the characters, the music in the movie goes back in time, from the contemporary to the primitive, like Algerian percussions and a pygmy chant. In the urban part of the film the music is narrative, it is the music played in the places where the characters go; in the forest it is the interior music of Bruno and Isabelle that can at last be heard. It is the music of the couple inventing themselves. During the shooting, were you aware of the strange gentleness that radiates from the movie? I guess this must be my way of looking at things. The atmosphere on the set could sometimes be very tense. Therefore when I looked at the rushes I was very surprised to find that peacefulness I had been looking for. The depth of Florence s acting as well as her subtlety helped me a lot. As for Guillaume, I asked him to give himself up to the light, to the forest, to let himself go. Our discussions sometimes felt like boxing matches, but we had signed a pact of mutual trust. It did us both good. Guillaume was full of contradictions, slow and fast, evil and tender, chaotic and precise. I wanted the three of us to find our own harmony. It was probably harder for Guillaume to achieve that, but he did finally. Harmony and discord... We used to talk a lot in musical terms when preparing a scene. Guillaume could quote Schoenberg s Theory of Harmony and the next minute he would sing a French pop song. Is the ending open in order to make it more disturbing? From the beginning my mind refused to chose. Bruno is wounded, lying on the ground, the police is about to arrive, but I wanted a feeling of a great life force. Several times during the movie, a whistle can be heard. It is like an Indian warning in a Western that means Danger! Run away! When Bruno whistles at the end, he invites Isabelle to carry on with the journey, to keep the motion alive. They must part because life and freedom cannot be given up. The will to live is essential. Isabelle will never be the same. She is now wearing the jacket Bruno never took off until then: he passes her the mantle of the challenge of freedom. For Bruno, as a free man, free of society s rules, dying or surviving in prison is the same thing: it is over for him. Yet, as he says in the movie, it s all part of the game. Guillaume Depardieu s death inevitably brings an ill-fated interpretation to the end of the movie. Guillaume was very attached to the idea that Bruno s death could convey a certain conception of freedom and a rebellion against an established order. He has always wished to personify some kind of rebellion, the kind that never surrenders, the kind that leaves something behind. I hope this is the case.
Filmography 2009 A Real Life by Sarah Leonor The Way Beyond by Alexandre Iordachescu 2008 Lovebirds by Christine Dory On War by Bertrand Bonello Stella by Sylvie Verheyde Versailles by Pierre Schoeller 2007 Blindfolded by Thomas Lilti La France by Serge Bozon Don t Touch the Axe by Jacques Rivette 2006 Célibataires by Jean-Michel Verner 2004 Process by Christian Leigh 2003 The Pharmacist by Jean Veber 2002 Once upon an Angel by Vincent Perez A Loving Father by Jacob Berger Like an Airplane by Marie-France Pisier 2000 Love and Other Curiosities by Miguel Santesmases Elle et lui au 14ème étage by Sophie Blondy 1999 Pola X by Leos Carax 1998 White Lies by Pierre Salvadori 1997 Marthe by Jean-Loup Hubert Alliance cherche doigt by Jean-Pierre Mocky 1995 The Apprentices by Pierre Salvadori 1993 Wild Target by Pierre Salvadori 1991 All the Mornings of the World by Alain Corneau Guillaume Depardieu (Bruno) Revealed in 1992 in Alain Corneau s All the Mornings of the World, for which he learned to play the viola da gamba, Guillaume Depardieu s talent was confirmed in Pierre Salvadori s comedy, The Apprentices, in an amusing scene in which he skies down a staircase. Parallel to these comedies in which he was so brilliant, he was Josée Dayan s favourite actor in several of her TV productions (The Count of Monte Cristo in 1998, Castle in Sweden in 2008). He also played a tormented hero for Leos Carax and, more recently, a crazily in love army general for Jacques Rivette, a lost soldier for Serge Bozon and a homeless person in Pierre Schoeller s first feature. He was never better than in the extreme roles of marginal characters, played with a subtle panache, echoing his own personal borderline.
Florence Loiret Caille (Isabelle) Discovered in Claire Denis Trouble Every Day in 2001, Florence Loiret Caille has worked with numerous directors like Erick Zonca, Benoît Jacquot, Michael Haneke, Xavier Giannoli, Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, Agnès Jaoui and, more recently, Zabou Breitman. She also is the faithful accomplice of Jérôme Bonnell, for whom she played a young girl in mourning in Olga s Chignon, a prostitute in Waiting for Someone and Malik Zidi s borderline sister in The Queen of Clubs. Filmography 2009 A Real Life by Sarah Leonor La petite chambre by Stéphanie Chuat & Véronique Reymond The Queen of Clubs by Jérôme Bonnell Someone I Loved by Zabou Breitman 2007 Let It Rain by Agnès Jaoui 2006 Waiting for Someone by Jérôme Bonnell The Walking Man by Aurélia Georges 2004 Victoire by Stéphanie Murat Une aventure by Xavier Giannoli To Paint or Make Love by Arnaud & Jean-Marie Larrieu 2003 That Woman by Guillaume Nicloux L ennemi naturel by Pierre-Erwan Guillaume The Intruder by Claire Denis 2002 The Time of the Wolf by Michael Haneke La petite chambre (short) by Élodie Monlibert An Embrace (short) by Eskil Wogt 2001 Friday Night by Claire Denis Olga s Chignon by Jérôme Bonnell 2000 Trouble Every Day by Claire Denis Final Exams (short) by Pascal Vincent 1999 Love Bandits by Pierre Lebret The Mechanics of Women by Jérôme de Missolz Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys by Michael Haneke 1998 O Trouble (short) by Sylvia Calle 1996 Alone by Erick Zonka 1997 Elles by Luis Galvao Teles
Jacques Nolot (Manu) After a season in a luxury grocery store in Lourdes, Jacques Nolot moved to Paris at the age of 16. He worked in a supermarket, took acting lessons, acted in theater plays and a few films, and through necessity wrote a few plays: La Matiouette, Le café des Jules, La nuit d Ivan, Glowing Eyes He directed a short movie in 1986, Manège, wrote the script of I Don t Kiss. He then directed his first feature, Hinterland, advised by Agnès Godard, adapted Glowing Eyes into a screenplay and directed Before I Forget: a trilogy about a character at different stages of his life, like a painter revealing each of his periods. Filmography As a director 2007 Before I Forget 2002 Glowing Eyes 1997 Hinterland As an actor 2001 Beach Café by Benoît Graffin 1998 Hinterland by Jacques Nolot 1996 Diary of a Seducer by Danièle Dubroux Nenette & Boni by Claire Denis 1994 Forget Me by Noémie Lvovsky 1993 I Can t Sleep by Claire Denis The Wild Reeds by André Téchiné 1992 My Favorite Season by André Téchiné 1991 Borderline by Danièle Dubroux 1990 Après après-demain by Gérard Frot Coutaz 1988 Le café des Jules by Paul Vecchiali Three Places for the 26th by Jacques Demy 1987 The Innocents by André Téchiné Rosa la rose fille publique by Paul Vecchiali Scene of the Crime by André Téchiné The Comedy of Work by Luc Moullet 1985 Rendez-vous by André Téchiné 1983 La Matiouette by André Téchiné 1981 Hotel America by André Téchiné 2009 A Real Life by Sarah Leonor This is the End by Arnaud & Jean-Marie Larrieu 2007 Before I Forget by Jacques Nolot The Witnesses by André Téchiné 2005 To Paint or Make Love by Arnaud & Jean-Marie Larrieu 2002 Glowing Eyes by Jaques Nolot Under the Sand by François Ozon
Credits Director - Sarah Leonor Writer - Sarah Leonor & Emanuelle Jacob Editor - Francois Quiqueré Director of Photography- Laurent Desmet Production Design - Brigitte Brassart Costume Design - Marie Cesari Make Up - Sylvy Ferrus Production Companies - Les Films Hatari & Studio Orlando Producers - Michel Klein & Laetitia Fèvre Cast Bruno - Guillaume Depardieu Isabelle - Florence Loiret Caille Manu - Jaques Nolot Martin - Benjamin Wangermée Ali - Rabah Nait Oufella Nouria - Fejria Deliba Emir - Bruno Clairefond Stephan - Tony Lemaitre Peron - Frédéric Jessua 2009 www.eastwest-distribution.com
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