Page 90 - FOYER_Cannes 2001

PAGE88 BERLIN • LOSANGELES • MILAN • FOYER • CANNES • TOKYO • LONDON DIARY
CREATINGATHREE Les Destinées Sentimentales, the latest
OfilmfromFrenchmanOlivier Assayas
n screen, the drama different seasons that it was impor- covers many decades, tant to get just right.
and follows the for- “And I think Eric did that, in tunes of its characters terms of the softness of the greens through momentous and the texture of it. It was close to events in 20th Century that impressionist painting look we history, as well as pro- were after. I know Eric worked hard
found changes in their professional to develop his own ‘shadow’
and personal lives. screenplay that would relate to the
Les Destinées Sentimentales is an epic film from Frenchman Olivier Assayas, and a bold chal- lenge for a director who admits this movie cost more than all his others - films that include Irma Vep and Late August, Early September - put together.
The drama was pretty intense off screen too, as Assayas and his third-time collaborator, cinematog- rapher Eric Gautier (who also lit the recently released Those Who Love Me Can Take The Train), worked together to create a beauti- ful visual palette that would do jus- tice to the unfolding story.
“I think that I’ve shot most of my films on Fuji,” explains Assayas in near perfect English. “I find something incredibly sensual about it, in terms of its colours and sub- tleties. In Les Destinées Sentimentales we had many scenes in the countryside, across many
light, the colour and the passing of the seasons in the film. For the scenes in the factory, we were always asking ourselves whether it was summer or winter. It was an enormous undertaking and Eric built this amazing sort of gantry to light it. So it was extremely chal- lenging in terms of the photogra- phy, certainly the most complex film I’ve ever made,” Assayas adds.
The story is based on a semi- autobiographical novel by Jacques Chardonne, and follows the for- tunes of a country parson (Charles Berlinger), lured away from the priesthood and back into the fami- ly porcelain business in Limoges. He marries the beautiful Pauline (Emmanuelle Beart), and over the years the couple come close and drift apart as they are separated by events like the Great War, and the increasing pressures of an increasingly outmoded and old
Photos main: Emmanuelle Béart as Pauline; and Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart and Charles Berling in various scenes from Les Destinées Sentimentales