UN PROPHÈTE (A PROPHET, 2009)—The Evening Class Interview With Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain & Tahar Rahim

Since first writing up Jacques Audiard's Un Prophète (A Prophet) at this year's Toronto International—where it arrived fresh from its Grand Prix win at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival—the film has secured numerous nominations and awards, including (most recently) the Best Actor and Best Sound Design nods at the European Film Awards; the Louis Delluc prize for best French film of the year; the National Board of Review's award for Best Foreign Language Film; Oscar® and Independent Spirit nominations in that category; and the Star of London prize for Best Film at the 53rd London Film Festival where Sight & Sound hailed the film as "the crime drama of the year."

Of course, it didn't take a gift of prophecy to see all this coming. I anticipated as much when I sat down to talk all-too-briefly with the film's enthusiastic director Audiard, co-writer Thomas Bidegain and the irrepressibly charming (though surprisingly quiet) lead actor Tahar Rahim.

* * *

Michael Guillén: Let's begin with the film's title. I'm aware, Jacques, that you have already stated that the title harbors no religious implication?

Jacques Audiard: Yes and no.

Guillén: Notwithstanding, I was reminded of the Biblical adage that a prophet has no honor in his own country and interpreted the prison as a country in which Malik must earn respect. So if Malik is a prophet earning respect in this prison, what is the prophecy?

Audiard: There is no prophecy whatsoever. As Thomas and I were writing the script, we detected there would be this irony with regard to the film's title; but, Malik is a prophet in that he is a "new" man, the one who is exploring ahead of the others, and announcing what's coming. As we were writing the script, we weren't sure and hesitated about the film's title. It looked and sounded good and—though now it seems obvious—it wasn't always so obvious.

Thomas Bidegain: At first we wanted to call it To Serve Somebody.

Guillén: After Bob Dylan's song "Gotta Serve Somebody"?

Bidegain: Yes.

Guillén: A Prophet operates on different tonal registers. The film shifts between an almost documentary-like naturalism, a stylized realism, and the phantasmagoric. Can you speak to your decision to shift between these registers?

Audiard: A Prophet was proposed as strictly a genre film at the beginning; but, this was not enough for me and Thomas. We were not satisfied. Tahar's character had no depth. So that's what Thomas and I focused on: to develop the character of Malik and to give him more depth. This necessitated changing the type of genre of the film.

Bidegain: The moment Jacques and I decided the main character Malik would be haunted by the ghost of the first man he killed, then the form of the film changed. Imagine if Tony Montana would be haunted one by one by all the people he had killed? Maybe that would have made him a different person? Maybe he would have killed less?

Guillén: Well, since you bring up the ghost, let's talk about him. Why is he on fire?

Audiard: Because he is angry. It's like in cartoons when a character gets angry and steam comes out of his ears.

Guillén: [Laughs.] That's a funny image! I hadn't quite associated Malik with Yosemite Sam! What intrigued me about the ghost was—though you say he was angry—he didn't seem to be a vengeful ghost. He didn't seem to even judge Malik for having killed him. In fact, by all appearances, he seemed to be helping Malik adjust to prison life?

Audiard: He's a well-meaning ghost.

Guillén: A Prophet is strengthened for being alloyed with genre. Why do you love genre and why does it work for you?

Audiard: There are many things I love about genre: the entire imaginary; the whole universe that comes with it; the acting styles in specific scenes. Genre allows me to reach spectators more quickly. As a director, genre allows me to work faster. One of the things that comes with genre is a clear definition of good and evil. That's useful. Another aspect that comes with genre is the definition of the hierarchy. Though the character of Malik in A Prophet comes off as something of a hero, this is not so common in French cinema. His characterization is not the usual way that men are depicted in French cinema.

Guillén: One might even argue that there's a certain amount of improbability to Malik's character. I'm not the only reviewer who—as much as I love the movie—finds the premise somewhat improbable. The speed with which Malik achieves power and rank in the prison suits the genre but doesn't seem wholly believable. Even you, Jacques, have mentioned elsewhere that the character of the Corsican boss César (Niels Arestrup) is improbable in the role of the prison king. I like how you described him: "He's an ogre in charge of a kingdom of spiders." How does that improbability further the truth of your film?

Bidegain: May I answer this? The film is a fiction so, of course, it is improbable that an uneducated young man who can't even read or write would learn Corsican from the prison boss in six years. He probably wouldn't be able to accomplish that even in 20 years, that's for sure. But that's why the prison as a setting is so interesting: it's a microcosm. It's like a magnifying glass on society. All the conflicts are tougher, faster, as well as simpler. All the problems that would complicate progress in the outside world—problems of integration, racism, the sociological problems—within the genre become justified for territory, power, or money. The improbabilities within the genre make the action simpler.

Guillén: One aspect I enjoy about the "heroes" in your movies, Jacques, is that I can identify with them. They're not too glamorous… [I turn to Rahim] Please don't take that the wrong way. What I mean is that they're not overly macho. They're smarter than that. I'm aware you look for certain masculine qualities that differ from the usual cinematic portrayals of male heroes, especially within French cinema. What was it that you saw in Tahar that you felt suited the man you wanted in your film?

Audiard: It was, indeed, my intention from the start that the spectator should be able to identify with the character of Malik and to the universe of the jail around him. It would have been an easy choice to cast muscular hunks in the roles of the convicts; but, I decided not to. Admittedly, when I started shooting, I became nervous because it seemed all the actors were skinny and tiny. [Laughs.] For a moment I thought I had made a mistake. But I have a taste for short, skinny men and women on which my camera concentrates.

Guillén: [To Rahim] So you're a skinny, short person, eh? [Rahim laughs.] Let me ask you a question, Tahar. As an actor, what did you give Jacques that he did not expect?

Tahar Rahim: I can't answer that because I don't know. All I can tell you is that I gave him all my trust. I gave him everything I had.

Audiard: When you work with an actor, it's a relationship comparable to taking a lover. You learn to open up, to surrender, you're not quite sure when it's going to happen that you'll be able to trust each other, but when it happens you can bet he will hit you under the belt.

Introductory photo of Audiard, Bidegain and Rahim courtesy of Brian Brooks at indieWIRE. Cross-published on Twitch.

ARGENTINE CINEMA: LOS SANTOS SUCIOS / THE DIRTY SAINTS (2009)—Q&A With Luis Ortega

Speaking with Diana Sanchez at the start of this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), she advised that one of her criteria for choosing Latino films for TIFF is to determine the films that most characterize the cinematic landscape of any given country's national cinema for the current calendar year. From Argentina she brought two widely divergent examples: a polished big budget police procedural love story El Secreto de Sus Ojos / Secret of the Eyes (Argentina's submission to the Academy Awards®) and a raw, independent film Los Santos Sucios / The Dirty Saints, indicative of the evolving vision of one of Argentina's young auteurs, Luis Ortega, of whom she's written: "With only two feature films under his belt, Luis Ortega is already considered one of Argentina's more impressive and original directorial voices. His first feature, Black Box, stood apart from the social critiques that characterized the films of his Argentine contemporaries."

Luis Ortega was born in Buenos Aires and attended film school at the Universidad del Cine. At the age of 19, he wrote the screenplay for his feature directorial debut, Caja Negra / Black Box (2002), which received several festival accolades: including the SIGNIS Award and Special Jury Prize at the Mar de Plata Film Festival; the Don Quixote Award along with two others at the Fribourg International Film Festival; and was nominated for the Argentine Film Critics Association's Silver Condor for Best First Film. His second feature, Monobloc (2005) won the Horizons Award at the San Sebastián Film Festival and a Special Mention at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema. His latest film Los Santos Sucios / The Dirty Saints (2009) boasted its World Premiere in the Vanguard Program at this year's TIFF.

I admired Ortega's wild and seemingly wounded persona as he addressed his audience, nervously combing an unruly mane with his hand while baring his soul to scrutiny; never a comfortable proposition. Equally, I was pleased when he and Rodrigo Vélez—the lead actor in Colombia's El vuelco del cangrejo / Crab Trap (2009)—embraced like brothers after the screening, proud of each others' accomplishments. Their mutual encouragement was palpable and fundamentally sweet to observe.

On Who Are the Dirty Saints?

This movie started out with these people I knew—these friends of mine—who were living on the street. I met them 10 years ago and I started writing the story for them. Eventually, when we began filming the movie last year, they all started passing away. The movie was supposed to be with non-actors but they just didn't make it. The final thing that happened was that the last one who was alive flipped out. He lived on the street and drank a lot and the week before shooting he went completely crazy. Thus, I had to act in the film myself and that wasn't part of the plan. None of the real people who the story was based on are alive anymore, except the one who went crazy. Now there are professional actors in the film, like Rey (Alejandro Urdapilleta), Monito (Martina Juncadella) and the kid, though he's more of a circus-kind of actor. The other guys are not actors at all.

Los Santos Sucios is inspired by the lives of these street people who were able to transcend the daily difficulties of life with a great sense of humor. I had my home and all the standard things and yet I couldn't enjoy life as much as them. That's why that place where they get to in the end, that's where they would really get: standing in a corner, maybe not even going to the bathroom, with their pants all dirty in a terrible terrible state; but, they would smile, more than normal people. I had to put that out there. So I imagined this place where there's nothing, which is definitely better than something when everything is already rotten and experience runs out. There's nothing left to do. You don't know where to run. It's a spiritual exile. It's like getting out of this world without having to die.

On What the Character of Monito Represents

Monito is love or the idea of love. As a word, love is trouble. We all know that. Love wouldn't have made the trip [across the Fijman River] possible. I did film her traveling with them and included her in the sequence where they are each facing the wind; but, the idea was always that she would stay behind. [Sanchez describes Monito as "a creature desperate for love and affection, not yet ready to leave humanity behind for an unknown future."]

Though I'm against reproduction, I don't expect audiences to think that way; but, by her staying behind, some new race could start over, some new people. She stays behind and finds the map and a book. The idea was to leave something pure, to leave a little bit of hope behind, even though this movie is not about hope; it's just about will—they just have to cross the river—they don't want to live and they don't want to die. They just want out.

On the Liebig Corned Beef Advertisement

That looks like a smart joke; but, that really exists. That's like a little monument in this little town where we shot this film. There's this big factory there where they used to make that corned beef. I got to that town and I saw that sign and it was like a Warhol thing. It was too pop for what should be in the film; but, I couldn't avoid it. It was there. I had to do it. It's still there.

On the Symbolic Significance of the Door Handle

Everything comes out of something that you're living and going through. I used to live in a house that had no light, no water. It was just a house. I used to live there with a guy that didn't speak. We didn't have a door with a key, we just had the doorknob. When we left the house, we would leave with the doorknob. That's how I started thinking about it. But then it's supposed to be the door or the key to somewhere; but—since they're going nowhere—it's okay that it gets dropped along the way. They don't need it. Los Santos Sucios is like Waiting for Godot, only more like Going Towards Godot. Even if we don't know who Godot is, where he is, if he is, if he's God, whatever. Eventually, the idea is that you don't need anything at all to reach that place. I'm not Zen-like. I'm just a really anxious person. I can't stand watching this movie; it's too slow. But it's still the movie that I wanted to do.

On Using Sound Design

to Represent Interior States

Film tries to copy reality; but, that's not how life sounds when you're alone. When you're alone, you hear all sorts of creepy things. If some of you are a little paranoid, maybe you know what I'm talking about. That sensibility where you're on the edge all the time because reality is so hallucinatory. The sky: I get up every day and I just can't get used to it. I get up and I go, "Whoa, shit." I have to assimilate what things are every day. That's why I wanted this world to look as strange as I see it. Not as we've all agreed it is so that we understand left is left and right is right. That's just an agreement not to bump into each other. But there are different laws of nature and it's really much more crazy than what civilization is holding down.

On Tarkovsky As Influence and Inspiration

For those who know Andrei Tarkovsky, he's like Jesus for me. I was influenced by his idea of putting your soul in the scenery. This was a low budget film. Thank God we had these smoke machines and all we needed was the wind to blow the smoke the right way. And it happened. Sometimes it doesn't happen. I'm influenced by the idea that the space and light have to tell you how you're feeling, not just the actors. Tarkovsky is the main influence on this movie. [Diana Sanchez referenced the same in her program capsule wherein she wrote: "Ortega's approach is anarchic and unexpected. Incorporating influences from Tarkovsky's Stalker, the film likewise transcends science fiction, working as a commentary on humankind's deepest anxieties and questions about our very existence. Ultimately, though, The Dirty Saints is a film about spiritual and physical exodus. Our five travelers decide to cross to the other side of the river, preferring to discover the unknown rather than wait on Earth, in a Godot-like stasis, for nothing to happen and no one to arrive."]

At first I wanted to do a remake of Stalker. But I didn't have the talent or the money or the time, even though that was what I wanted to talk about. No one watches Tarkovsky's movies anymore. They just go onto YouTube to watch the scene where the guy puts himself on fire. But when you see that scene in Tarkovsky's movie, by the time the character gets to that point, it's just a big trip. I'm talking about nostalgia. The difference is that Tarkovsky was a person with a lot of faith and I'm not. I share the feelings with him but I just don't have the hope. I'm pretty much hopeless; but, I'm full of joy.

When we were walking in that final scene over the desert, we were really hot, and we were joking, "What do you think's on the other side? A shopping mall? A golf course?" The movie's a little romantic in topic—and that's how I loved it to be—but, unfortunately, we can't travel together. It's a lonely journey. This is as close as we can get. We have someone to love, to make love to, and that's the end of the solitude for a while. Eventually, the trip is so lonely that it's better to start enjoying it somehow. That's what this film is about.

These people are completely exhausted. But at the end those birds appear like a little celebration. That wasn't planned. We just walked into the bird zone. Most times films just end how they're supposed to end. I was bitching at the birds because I didn't want anything to appear in the final frame. I was bitching at them, thinking I would have to go and digitally erase them. But so many flew in that I finally just had to give in to it. That's the third element that we don't control. That's the wonderful thing about making films. That's why I wanted to leave everything. Like just walking down the street and accepting everything.

On Whether Film Is An Alienating Medium

Film is like a virus. If a virus kills you, it's tragic; but, if you kill the virus, it's tragic for the virus. It could be alienating. It's hard for me to talk about that. I can talk about it now because you've seen the movie and something is broken. Alienation is just a way of protection. Society is alienating because—if it weren't—there would be more people that would be free and celebrating a different sky every day. But it's Monday and we each have to go to work.

I'd rather have a poetic alienation than a civilized one, which is like a militarized scene, a box for the soul with not much chance for surprise. So even if it's scary, I'd rather just see everything, forget what the name is, just see it, and let that happen to me. You could go crazy. That's why my friends didn't make it into the film. They eventually went crazy. That's a consequence of repression. When we actually find freedom, it creates a kind of madness.

Maybe poetry is the end of alienation, even if it's the beginning of silence. Maybe the beginning of silence is the way to stop feeling lonely. Maybe it's the opposite. I wanted to create a unique, alienating world and share the voyage. This is all I can do for people. I love people. And I try to do it the best I can. It's my tribute to humanity. Even if it seems tragic for me, really it's just a celebration. We don't have to have a reason.

Cross-published on Twitch.

TIFF09: LA SOGA

Early on at this year's Toronto International, I had the chance to sit down with programmer Diana Sanchez to discuss the Latin American fare she'd programmed for the festival. Interested in whether or not she targeted Latin American audiences for Latino-themed TIFF films, she admitted she did not because there's not much of a Latino demographic in Toronto to target and, truthfully, most Latinos are not interested in the kind of Latin American art house fare favored by film festivals; preferring, instead, testosterone-charged action and sexy rom-coms. It's primarily non-Latinos who are interested in films by such art house luminaries as Lisandro Alonso and Lucrecia Martel, Sanchez suggested; a sobering if familiar insight I've heard from programmers of Latin American cinema, especially in the States, and now from Canada.

Nowhere was that divide in public taste more apparent than at the world premiere of Josh Crook's La Soga, a U.S./Dominican Republic co-production which is the only film I caught at this year's festival that received a standing ovation (the first of several, I understand, among its public screenings). The TIFF emcee for the world premiere commented that she hadn't seen such a public reaction since Slumdog Millionaire. Perhaps more important than La Soga being the most popular Dominican film at TIFF is its claim as the first Dominican film to play the fest. My thanks to Lauren Tracy and Scott Feinstein of 42West for pulling me a ticket for the world premiere screening.

As Jane Schoettle writes in her TIFF program capsule, "La Soga is a film of such raw energy and ragged beauty that these elements alone would justify its viewing. Beyond this, though, it contains a story both timely and timeless, brutal and elegant, for what is at stake is the redemption of a man's soul." Schoettle adds that La Soga is "a work of such poetic ferocity that much of its imagery will be stamped on the viewer forever." Well, forever is a long time. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that La Soga delivers what its audience seems to want right now: favela thrills, sultry erotics, torturous violence, and poverty beautifully lensed by Zeus Morand. If you're a fan of City of God (an acknowledged influence on La Soga) or Elite Squad, or even Sin Nombre, the film's flashy visuals and driving music score will fully satisfy you. It's not my café con leche, but I respect that it was beloved by its audience, some who bragged driving all the way from Boston to see it. At the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Goldstein writes that "La Soga is as much a meditation on the embattled Dominican culture as it is a crime drama" with a "soulful intensity."

There's no question that La Soga's writer/producer/lead actor Manny Perez has—as Stephen Holden at The New York Times phrases it—"charisma to burn." Whether or not his "redemption" is believable is another negotiation altogether, as it concerns recovering a lost innocence ("We all are born innocent," the poster's tagline reminds us) more than expatiating for murders too numerous to count. As director Crook states in the press notes: "In the film we follow a lost, hollowed-out shell of a man. He is a professional killer searching for the soul he lost a long time ago. I tried to bring to life that space we all live in when we were innocent, before we lost our way, when we knew who we were intuitively. The world changes all of us and while this is inevitable, we feel a longing for that self that was lost in the process. La Soga takes place mostly in the neighborhoods outside of Santiago, but La Soga, the man, searches for his soul in a place we all visit; a dream of what we were like before the world corrupted us."

Perez admirably tackles the conflicting nuances of Luisito, the sensitive vegetarian son of a village butcher (the film's original title was El Hijo del Carnicero / The Son of the Butcher) who—after witnessing his father's death at the hand of Rafa (Paul Calderon), a drug dealer deported from the U.S.—becomes the chosen assassin of General Colon (Juan Fernández), the head of the Dominican secret police who keeps promising to deliver Rafa to him for revenge. Luisito becomes "La Soga", which refers to the rope noosed around a pig being led to slaughter. The film addresses how the blind thirst for vengeance can leave one susceptible to corrupting forces; i.e., law enforcement in both the D.R. and the U.S. Lots of pigs get butchered in this film, as do a lot of deported drug dealers, and the resemblance is intentional if not overbearing. By film's end you want all these meatheads to be led to the chopping block, even if you don't necessarily want to hear them squeal. It's akin to not wanting to know how packaged meat gets into your local Safeway.

The audience for the world premiere had the opportunity to interact with director Josh Crook, writer/producer/lead actor Manny Perez, actor Juan Fernández, and actress Denise Quinones in her first feature role as Jenny, the childhood sweetheart who restores "La Soga" to his original innocence.

Perez related that he had worked on the script for La Soga for seven years, which grew from two seeds of experience. Born and raised in a small town called Baitoa in a rural area outside of Santiago, in the Dominican Republic, Manny and his family moved to Washington Heights in the United States when he was 11. Returning to Baitoa one summer, he adopted a piglet. The day before he and his Father were getting ready to return to the States, he woke up to what sounded like a child screaming. It was six in the morning. Manny got up and ran outside to find the local butcher stabbing the piglet to death, preparing it for his going-away party. The screaming of that little pig left a traumatized impression on him.

On a subsequent summer vacation, Manny met up with a childhood friend who had "gone bad" and been deported back to the D.R. from the U.S. While they were chatting, a bullet-ridden car pulled up, three men chased and apprehended his friend, who they dragged to the middle of the town and shot summarily in the head. Having witnessed both events, Perez later learned in test screenings of the film that such executions were happening not only in the Dominican Republic, but in every third world country. "So it's a universal theme," he emphasized. "It's not just about corruption in D.R.; it's about corruption worldwide." He's unsure of how the film, which offers a frank critique of political corruption in the Dominican Republic, will be received in its home country; but, he hopes La Soga will put the Dominican Republic on the Hollywood map in the same way City of God put Brazil on the map.

Asked what La Soga meant, Perez said it referenced a rope and that it became the nickname of his character. In the film when "La Soga" fucks with one of his victims, he says he's going to tighten the rope around his neck. It's a secondary meaning of what the rope means: to play with a victim, to let them go and then pull them back in.

Of all the stories that could be told about the Dominican Republic, Perez was asked why this one? After witnessing the death of his friend (on whom La Soga's character Fellito was based) Perez had to come to some kind of understanding of what he had seen. Without saying a word, this man dragged his friend to the middle of the town and shot him in the head. "I had to find the heart to get to the man who did that to a friend of mine. That's the reason for why this story came about."

Though Josh Crook admitted shooting the film was a complete pain in the ass, he acknowledged it was equally a profound experience to stay true to Manny's vision. Refusing auteurial credit, he emphasized the film was a thoroughly collaborative venture, from everyone in the crew, to all the people of Baitoa who fed them food and kept them going during the shoot.

Juan Fernández added that—when he first read the script—he recognized it as a story about the human heart. "It's a love story. That's what I felt after I read it. I made my decision after a second." Then he arrived early on the set to look into the eyes of Josh Crook to gauge who he was, how genuine he was, and how committed to the work.

Seeing La Soga at its world premiere was the first time Denise Quinones had seen the completed project and she was visibly proud of her first feature role. "I fell in love with Jenny's character," she confessed. "She's like La Soga's conscience that brings him back to life. She reminds us that those people we think are monsters really aren't; they're human beings."

Cross-published on Twitch.

TIFF09: TO DIE LIKE A MAN—The Evening Class Interview With João Pedro Rodrigues & Alexander David

"There are no secrets; only shame."—Tonia.

[This entry is dedicated to Johnny Ray Huston, whose Cinema Scope article "Double 'O' Heaven: The Vertigo Pop and Phantom Desires of João Pedro Rodrigues" provided some of the first working language to appreciate this Portuguese maverick's films more fully. Thanks, Johnny! João Pedro says hi and looks forward to seeing you in Vancouver. This entry is not for the spoiler-wary!!]

In his most recent vision Morrer Como Um Homem (To Die Like A Man, 2009), Portuguese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues has staged some uneasy equations. The film begins with a close-up of a soldier's face applying camouflage paint. You hear the voice of another soldier—who you will later learn is Zé Maria (Chandra Malatitch), the son of drag queen Tonia (Fernando Santos)—complimenting his friend on how he looks, adding some finishing touches to his lids and cheeks. The parallel to how women apply their daily war paint is obvious and these militarized men are tainted by a suggestion of femininity. They break away from their patrol to wander AWOL in the night. Zé Maria leans his feminized friend against a tree, pushes down his pants and spitfucks him hard. At this point, you realize this is not your father's war movie. Their lust satiated, the two soldiers continue exploring this dark enchanted forest of the night that they have entered. They come across a house brightly lit in the darkness wherein two men dressed as women are singing at the piano. The sodomized soldier suggests candidly to Zé Maria that perhaps his father knows these two? Zé Maria hardens, mutters, "My father is dead" and shoots his friend in the chest. Rarely has a spit-stiff dick and a rifle penetrated flesh with such enraged and internalized homophobia.

This violent act initiates To Die Like A Man's portrait of transgendered Tonia, a veteran drag queen in Lisbon circles whose life has begun to unravel. The drag queens are getting younger and more competitive. Audiences want a different style of performance. Her son Zé Maria has become a deserter and a murderer and her boyfriend Rosario (Alexander David) is pressuring her to have a sex change operation. Her silicone breast implants have poisoned her body and she is dying of cancer. Sometimes it's just not worth waking up in the morning. In order to forgive and be forgiven for the slights endured over a long life as a drag queen performer, Tonia devolves her body back into a male form and seeks reconciliation with her estranged son, even if it be by way of dementia.

To Die Like A Man arrived for its North American premiere at the Toronto International after competing in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. David Hudson gathered those decidedly mixed reviews at The Daily @ IFC. At Toronto—where day after day I caught one adequate film after another—To Die Like A Man stood out as a uniquely energized and distinct vision, strange and special. As indicated at Wikipedia, the story of Tonia was allegedly inspired by the life of Joaquim Centúrio de Almeida (artistic name: Ruth Bryden), and has motivated a lawsuit by Carlos Castro, the author of de Almeida's biography. I welcomed the opportunity to sit down with João Pedro Rodrigues and one of his actors Alexander David to discuss the film.

* * *

Michael Guillén: João, To Die Like A Man is a fascinating film and difficult to talk about because it operates on multiple registers: it's sublime, it's ridiculous, at times sad and frequently hilarious. Perhaps it would help me more if we start at the end of the film?—that closing fado?—whose lyrics synopsized what I had just witnessed and perhaps not fully understood. For starters, who sings that fado?

João Pedro Rodrigues: That fado is sung by Fernando Santos, who plays the transvestite Tonia; but, the song is a fado from the '80s from a singer who is not very well regarded in Portugal. He was a rebellious maverick of the fados in the '80s. As a man, he would wear skirts in the streets—quite the crazy guy!—but, he wrote strong lyrics. That closing song is a particularly beautiful fado. Fados aren't what I listen to most; but, especially that song expressed a lot about the film and sublimated Tonia's character. I wanted Tonia to have the aura of the grande dame of the drag show. At the same time, in this film I tried to go against the usual films that feature drag queens. I wanted to do something different. I wasn't interested in shooting Tonia's stage performance, at least not until the end of the film when it becomes a special moment; when it becomes something different.

Guillén: As far as I'm concerned, To Die Like A Man is now the definitive transgender movie and has set the bar for subsequent transcinema. Not only does it speak uniquely for the transgender community; but, it has a "formal audacity"—as Eye Weekly's Jason Anderson phrases it—that is downright thrilling, precisely for its difference. You dalliance with some stunning visual flairs.

I suppose why the fado struck me so much was because it desirously expressed what I have long felt is the underlying fear of gay people: the confrontation with their unapologetic androgyny; that they suffer no façade of what is male and female and operate at their best when remaining true to both. Their particular desire might be argued to be a longing—in fact—to remain both male and female, to remain—as the fado puts it—plural. "I want to be plural," Santos sings. He wants to be understood for being more than what he appears to be; that the singularity of his appearance might deceive his true plurality. For the singular, unfortunately, plurality is judged as an abomination, something supranatural exceeding division. Its excess is suspect. In the face of such inexplicable androgyny, a single sex suffers deficit.

That being said, I guess my true question is who is this movie for? Who do you imagine to be your audience? Or do you imagine your audience?

Rodrigues: I don't think about it. I'm the first audience of the film. I think of myself first as a viewer; but then, it's hard to tell. But I don't mean that I only want to do films for myself. The way the film is shot and the way it resembles my other films, I suspect you either like it and understand it or you don't. Even in terms of space. When I think of filming a room, I prefer filming pieces of the room. If you then try to combine the pieces to see how the room looks as a whole, you can't. In my films I try to build a space that—though not real space—is close to reality. Reality comes first. I like films that are real even as I try to arrive at some imaginary space. Of course, any film is about building an imaginary space constructed from shots and sounds, all the more so because the film also goes into the direction of a fairy tale. It's hard for me to know a priori what kind of reactions audiences will have toward the film.

Guillén: You're no stranger to controversy so I'm sure you're used to mixed-to-negative reviews?

Rodrigues: I am.

Guillén: Now, I want to be clear that I am wholly respectful of your singularly unique vision; but—as I was preparing how I wanted to approach this interview—I found I could understand To Die Like A Man better by comparing it to the work of other filmmakers. If I mention other filmmakers, I don't want you to interpret that in any way as some judgment that you're derivative because that's not what I mean at all. And nothing could be further from the truth. It's more that I find your films to be in the same domain of energy as certain other filmmakers.

Rodrigues: I do that too. I watch a lot of films so it's normal. Although I went to film school, I learned how to make films mostly by watching other films.

Guillén: As To Die Like A Man starts out, two AWOL soldiers have separated from their patrol and are alone together in the dark forest. This reminded me of how you claim night's terrain as a mise en scène within which to frame the fractured passions of obsessed psyches, which I wrote about when I reviewed your last film Two Drifters. As with that film, because To Die Like A Man starts with a night sequence, I am once again reminded of Djuna Barnes' Nightwood query: "Watchman, what of the night?" This seems to be the presiding question that addresses your films. Within your films, we watch the night. In this, they remind me of the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and the "Plaisirs de la forêt" series of photographs by Pierre and Gilles. All three of you share a fairy tale element to the night. Can you speak to what night means for you in your films and why you use it so frequently?

Rodrigues: This might not be at all what you're thinking, but I wanted the movie to start as a war movie in the style of classic Hollywood cinema, like Raoul Walsh's Objective Burma (1945). In that film you follow an abandoned troop of soldiers. I wanted To Die Like A Man to start as one thing so that it could turn into something else altogether, though of course you return to characters in the film that you glimpsed in the beginning. I wanted the film to be always changing and surprising, even if only little surprises.

As for the night, well, first, it's mysterious of course. Sex is connected to the night. Though To Die Like A Man starts as a war movie, the two AWOL soldiers start fucking. While I was writing the script, it seemed obvious to start it that way. Sometimes I don't know how to put into words or to explain my choices. Sometimes they're instinctive. Through the film work, things come up and I don't know exactly why sometimes.

Guillén: Inversely, as spectator, those who do understand what you're filming experience a commensurate instinctual response. As a filmmaker, you tap into something spectators instinctively recognize. I found it difficult to explain to myself why I was reacting to the film the way I was. But that's your gift. You have a knack for the numinous.

I don't mean to be overly literal, but I'm curious what the blue swing means in your film? Not only that it's there in your night scenes but that it's also pushed and set swinging each time it's passed?

Rodrigues: That came from a book called Casa Susanna, which is a bunch of photographs of men dressed as women that were found in a flea market. The pictures are from the '50s and the '60s. The two men who edited the book [Robert Swope and Michel Hurst] didn't know who the individuals were in the photos, but were intrigued by these men dressed as women drinking tea or walking in the woods. They're a bit like William Eggleston's pictures sometimes. They possess that mystery of finding images of people who you don't know who they are. One photo shows a transvestite in front of a tree on which a sign is nailed: Casa Susanna. You can just imagine their social encounters in the middle of the woods somewhere in America.

Guillén: We used to be able to have social encounters in the woods. It's all been privatized now so we can't do it anymore for fear of prosecution. But it was fun while it lasted!

Rodrigues: [Laughs.] Anyway, there's one very beautiful image of a man dressed up as a woman in a swing. That's where the image of the swing came from. Also, because I framed that shot exactly the same way the two times you see it, it's like a doorway into another world; a swinging door into a fairy tale world.

Guillén: One interesting visual flourish with Alexander's character Rosario is that you take this broken young man whose masculinity is frail and contingent and you dress him in macho t-shirts. I often see this on public transit—scrawny kids wearing Conan the Barbarian t-shirts—it's their way of expressing a masculinity that is not readily evident. Which leads me to ask about the performance of gender. Acting like a man. Acting like a woman. Passing for either. Sometimes possessing masculine attributes through feminine gestures.

Rodrigues: That idea was built with João Rui Guerra da Mata, the art director of the film, who's worked with me on all my films. Everything is constructed—the clothes, the décor—everything is worked out even at the writing stage. The idea was that there are these young guys like Rosario in Portugal who go out to the clubs with drag queens. I don't even know if they're gay or not. They pretend to be with their women. That's the idea behind their wearing—what you call—macho shirts. Also, there's a playfulness in that. Rosario wears a Robin Boy Wonder shirt too. We were playing with the idea of Rosario as an eternal child, not a feminized young man, but a playful, childish one. Rosario's relationship with Tonia, they're more than lovers, they're almost mother and child.

Guillén: There's also a slightly sadomasochistic co-dependency going on. An almost necessary cruelty passes between them. Much in the same way that a teenage son would rebel against his parents by punishing them with juvenile behavior. Further, there's also another quality that I've come to think a lot about in my middle years that was introduced to me during the Men's Movement some years past: that there is a specific male nurturance that is not an imitation of female nurturance; a male nurturance that is paternal, not maternal, and specific to the male gender, where some older guy helps a younger incomplete guy get along with life, much as Tonia did with Rosario. I sometimes question whether the unhappiness of drag queens like Tonia might have something to do with their misunderstanding this nurturing impulse within themselves, defining it as feminine and maternal when in fact it's one of the best masculine qualities they have: an ability to guide, to take care of others, to provide, to make decisions.

Alexander David: With them also there's something of a shared survival instinct. She helps Rosario but Rosario helps Tonia too. I'm not exactly sure in which way; perhaps just by being with her, providing companionship. I imagine they were in love when they first met; but, that faded away as they lived together.

Rodrigues: Tonia is also a very lonely person. That echoes my other characters in my other films, as someone who doesn't really know how to deal with that and who can't face that she's really lonely.

Guillén: That I understood, unfortunately, through personal experience. [Rodrigues laughs.] My partner of 12 years passed during the AIDS pandemic. It's now been 13 years since his death and I've, of course, had to move on with life; but, the truth is that since him, I've never been able to fall in love again in the way that I loved him. I have found and lost other lovers and have now discovered—in my middle years—that all I can do is to unconditionally further love in others. If I know there's something I can do for someone else, that's the only kind of love I have left. I don't feel the passion I used to have for my partner. So in my experience I have, like Tonia, taken young men under wing who frequently remind me that they believe they have stolen from me what I have offered freely. But there is still enough power and love within me to absorb such slights and to help them achieve their goals in life.

I agree with you, Alexander, that Tonia and Rosario give each other reasons to keep going, even though they're a bit abusive to each other. The relationship between Maria and her partner Paula likewise has a level of abuse going on, much like a diva with her stagehand. Can we speak about Maria Bakker (Gonçalo Ferreira De Almeida), who—in my estimation—took your film into Fassbinder territory: unapologetically melodramatic, over the top, chewing the scenery.

Rodrigues: [Chuckles.] That character Maria Bakker pre-existed my writing of the script, even though Gonçalo Ferreira De Almeida usually plays Maria Bakker in English. For Gonçalo, Maria Bakker is a fantasy character. He does shows and sings songs. At first, he didn't want to do it in Portuguese because for him it didn't make sense that Maria Bakker would speak Portuguese. For a while we considered that Maria could speak in English and Tonia in Portuguese and that they would somehow understand each other. Perhaps in this strange world people could understand each other even if they didn't speak the same language? But then we decided it would be too strange. [The idea of something being too strange in a João Pedro Rodrigues film made me chuckle under my breath.] Maria Bakker in my film, her hair, all of that comes from the character that Gonçalo already created. Also, it's a little past the halfway point in the film when Tonia and Rosario arrive at Maria's house. At that point, I wanted the film to go towards the direction of comedy.

Guillén: And that's where it went!

Rodrigues: But it's very difficult to play comedy. Still, I wanted to try. Did people laugh during your press screening?

Guillén: There were these two buffed up butch dudes who I presumed were straight laughing their asses off. They got it. It became interesting to me to watch when people would leave the screening, at what point, at what scene. Mainly it was women who left. I don't know if they felt they were being travestized, perhaps? I've known women who have admitted they don't like drag queens because they don't feel that they perform women; they feel they perform travesties of women, which insults them. I don't know how across-the-board that sentiment is.

Can we talk about things buried in the garden?! First, there's the soldier buried in Maria's garden, which startled me at first. I kept thinking, "What is that soldier doing buried in Maria's garden?! Wouldn't they have come looking for him precisely because he'd gone AWOL? And isn't this a dead giveaway with the soldier's helmet perched on the cross on the grave?" Then there was that wonderful sequence that actually moved me quite a bit where Tonia and Rosario dig up her memories from the backyard garden where her little dog has buried them. Perhaps as someone whose heart's cargo consists of memories frequently recapitulated, I once again identified with Tonia. I am often reminded of how important my memories are to me; they're like seeds buried in my garden.

Rodrigues: The idea was that—just before she falls ill—Tonia has a flashback of symbolic moments in her life. You got exactly what that scene meant. As for the soldier buried in Maria's garden … [Rodrigues starts laughing] … sometimes I can only answer you with silly answers. The soldier died in Maria's garden and there was no undertaker to remove him to a morgue and bury him in a cemetery, so they buried him in the garden. I wanted it to be like an Indian burial from the cowboy movies.

Guillén: So before we wrap up here, let me ask you Alexander how you approached your characterization of Rosario in the film? I didn't much like your character at first. He reminded me a little too much of the kind of young man I was talking about earlier who feel they have stolen what has been given freely.

David: I tried to follow the kind of acting style from Robert Bresson. João Pedro gave me some of Bresson's films so I could gain a sense of his style.

Rodrigues: But you're also naturally like that. That's what I liked about you. You're natural for what interests me in an actor.

Guillén: So what exactly is that? Is it a lack of affect that you're going for? What is it that interested you in Alexander?

Rodrigues: Again, it's instinctive. It was instinctive to play the character in a sotto voce tone. Basically [addressing Alexander]—not that you acted like you are; you're not like that addict at all—but, we talked about this: you were playing yourself a lot of the time.

David: I strived for low profile acting. There was no psychological construction of my character.

Rodrigues: We didn't talk much about psychology.

David: He didn't want that, so I didn't do that.

Guillén: Rosario was so angry, though. Where did the anger come from? Wasn't there some psychological motivation for that?

Rodrigues: The role was written that way.

David: Yes. Why was he angry? The stuff with the girlfriend. [He grins.]

Cross-published on Twitch.

TIFF09: JENNIFER'S BODY—Peter Galvin's Review

While most of the Twitch team caught Karyn Kusama's Jennifer's Body at Toronto's Midnight Madness, Evening Class contributing writer Peter Galvin caught the film's press screening in San Francisco. Though Twitch editor Todd Brown cautioned viewers to "adjust expectations accordingly", he credited Jennifer's Body for being "a much sharper than normal stab at PG-13 horror comedy" and predicted that it "will, no doubt, play strong to its intended audience." According to indieWIRE's Anne Thompson, however, the film "opened soft" this weekend with some confusion as to who its "intended audience" truly is. She characterized the film as "a classic tweener: neither a horror thriller for men, nor a coming-of-age horror-comedy for women." At The Auteurs Daily, David Hudson has scooped up the decidedly mixed-to-negative reviews, with only a few cheering the film on as an acceptable genre piece that will gain a cult following. My thanks to Peter Galvin for sharing his thoughts with both The Evening Class and Twitch readerships.

* * *

There's a great untapped market for Jennifer's Body. Men like blood and hot chicks, sure. Check. But instead of the tired slew of female victims being stalked and dismembered, writer Diablo Cody flips the script, making men the targets. It’s a feminist's dream. Hell, it's a college essayist's dream. Written, directed by, and starring strong, tough women, will the male-oriented horror audience flock to theatres to watch their male facsimiles be dismembered? So long as they're not expecting to actually see much of the dismemberments, they just might.

Jennifer and Needy (short for Anita; I catch the pun) are best friends. They've been BFFs since they were kids and swore to always be true to each other. Or at least Needy swore; Jennifer has always been more of an egotistical, hyper-sexual, selfish brat. Definitely not a virgin. So when a fire at the local "nightclub" results in a struggling indie-band sacrificing Jennifer to Satan, she comes back as a flesh-eating demon. And she's got a whole high-school of hormonal boys just dying for a date with her.

Right off the bat, this is very much Diablo Cody's film. All that love-it-or-hate-it dialogue you remember from Juno is back in full-force. However, I think horror might be a more appropriate avenue for Cody's limitless pop-culture references. Perhaps I'm less sympathetic to made-up catch-phrases in a coming-of-age film than I am in a teen-horror film, but here I was able to take it in stride as part of the charm. I don't even know if high-school kids talk anything like this, but I'll be damned if Cody hasn't got me convinced that they do. So, for what it's worth, I decided to strap in for a good time.

It's hard not to when the actors are having such a good time themselves. No doubt Megan Fox is a little zany—and the recent character she has created in the tabloids makes it a bit hard to separate fact from fiction—but she absolutely works in this role, delightfully making the audience squirm. Perpetually the second fiddle, Amanda Seyfried really comes into her own here. I've always found her a convincing actress, but the extra breathing room she has as the "final girl" hopefully gets her more starring roles in the future. Filling out the supporting cast, both Adam Brody and J.K. Simmons appear to be having the time of their lives, stealing every scene they're in as the lead singer of the indie band and a high-school teacher, respectively.

Overall, Jennifer's Body lays more squarely on the comedy side of this horror-comedy. Cody has seen enough B-movies to parody many of the more well-worn tropes—at times reminiscent of Slither—and it is often laugh-out-loud funny, even if Cody employs a "kitchen sink" comedic strategy. On the other hand, the horror doesn't fare nearly as well. In addition to skimping on the gore, the scares are flat and tedious, and I couldn't help but see squandered potential, most notably during the underwhelming climax.

But like I said, there's a market for this. Forgetting the subtext and satire for a minute, this is a movie written by a big kid for little-er kids. On that level, it should succeed with its intended market, and it shows a lot of potential for more films like this. If you can handle another round of Juno-logue, aren't looking to be scared, and aren't expecting Megan Fox's nipples, it's an enjoyable tongue-in-cheek effort.

Cross-published on Twitch.

TIFF09: A PROPHET

"Who you gonna get to do the dirty work when all the slaves are free?"—Joni Mitchell.

In an environment of imprisonment and enslavement, such a question is fraught with peril.

Jacques Audiard's Un prophète (A Prophet) arrives in Toronto for its North American premiere after having won the Grand Prix at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. As synopsized at Cannes: Condemned to six years in prison, Malik El Djebena cannot read nor write. Arriving at the jail entirely alone, he appears younger and more fragile than the other convicts. He is 19 years old. Cornered by the leader of the Corsican gang who rules the prison, he is given a number of "missions" to carry out, toughening him up and gaining the gang leader's confidence in the process. But Malik is brave and a fast learner, daring to secretly develop his own plans...

Although I immediately thought of the Biblical adage that a prophet knows no honor in his own country, Audiard disavows any Christian innuendo in the film's title other than that protagonist Malik—in a compelling, thoroughly convincing slow burn by newcomer Tahar Rahim—has acquired a gift for scrying the future after a (somewhat cryptic) near-death experience. At its simplest meaning, a prophet is one who sees the future. "Yes, the prophet is just a prophet!" Audiard advised Karin Badt at The Huffington Post, confirming the title's lack of religious subtext: "As for Jesus or Mohammed, I don't 'eat that kind of bread.' "

Rather, Malik's future—in which he sees himself freed from the "protection" that enslaves him—hints at what SBS Film's Lisa Nesselson suggests is "a changing of the guard." Which, in itself, is an incisive yet hopeful critique of French classism and racism, wherein a better future can be imagined (or seen, if you will). Audiard has also stated that—though there is no Italian mafia in France—there is a mob, which happens to be Corsican. As Nesselson explains further, "by sheer virtue of numbers, the Arab and Muslim populations in French prisons are an increasing force to be reckoned with. Malik navigates between clans, each with their codes of respect and honor." At The Hollywood Reporter, Peter Brunette writes that Audiard "explores this basic tribal confrontation like a seasoned anthropologist." In effect, the pressures and prejudices of the social world outside the prison are inflected in the microcosm within the prison. "It's not all that different on the inside or the outside," Audiard explains.

How one manifests a prophetic sense of the future becomes one of the film's main narrative concerns, rendering a sense of destiny as achieved through self-constructed identity. As David Phelphs phrases it at The Auteurs: "A man's identity is the moves he makes." Despite petty crimes, Malik arrives at prison as something of a tabula rasa. Though Malik has been sentenced for juvenile indiscretions, he's not quite yet a true criminal, as much as he is a desperate young man. We are told virtually nothing about his past and we watch his character unfold and mature before our eyes as he negotiates his position within the prison hierarchy. At the L.A. Times, Kenneth Turan observes that A Prophet speaks to Audiard's long-standing interest in what he calls "self-education, the building of someone's character." In effect, Audiard aestheticizes the autodidact, the self-made man. As TIFF's program capsule synopsizes: "Audiard turns this premise into a probing psychological study of a disinherited, rootless young man, who initially makes choices based on the animal instinct for survival. When that need has been met, however, another set of motivations comes into play." At Moving Pictures Magazine, Eric Kohn notes the "undoubtedly tragic irony" in which Malik "gets forced into criminality by the very system intended to condemn it." Let alone that this criminality is his initiation into manhood.

Further energizing this philosophic and psychological enterprise, however, is Audiard's well-known penchant for elevating genre to artistic heights. Dispatching to Film Comment from Cannes, Amy Taubin observed: "Not surprisingly, some of the most pleasurable movies were by directors who fully embrace genre. ...A Prophet is elegantly structured, arresting in its detailing of a little-known subculture, filled with fascinating characters, and gripping beginning to end."

"What interests me about genre," Audiard explained to Kenneth Turan, "is that the public connects immediately with it, it has certain rules, certain codes the audience recognizes. I can use that to create something very big," an aim which—Turan notes—includes "creating icons, images for people who don't have images, the Arabs in France." Audiard has become the new master of the polar (French thriller), which he has intelligently infused with indirect socio-political commentary. Variety's Justin Chang describes Audiard's project as "solid, sinewy pulp fiction with strong arthouse prospects." At Screen, Jonathan Romney concurs that "A Prophet works both as hard-edged, painstaking detailed social realism and as a compelling genre entertainment." The blend makes for thoughtful, absorbing and ultimately entertaining filmmaking.

The film also plays with the tension between the literal and the phantasmagoric. The prison—with its "brutally restricted iron-and-cement palette" (Romney)—appears real; but, ends up being a completely constructed set because, of course, all the prisons in France were serving as prisons. Thus, even though the real is configured at its most naturalistic—with actual convicts cast to play themselves in prison scenes—it is likewise always held in question as a cinematic conceit. At Variety, Justin Chang finds Malik's education behind bars "improbable." One might even say romanticized. Even more intriguing is the ghostly presence of a man Malik is ordered to kill early in his prison stay. Throughout the six years of his sentence, this ghost hovers around Malik in his cell, his skin burning (as if registering that he is visiting from Hell); intimate evidence of the decisions Malik has had to make to become himself and to ready himself for his release back into the outside world. Surprisingly, the ghost is not a voice of conscience or guilt. He doesn't seem to judge Malik, despite the fact that Malik has taken his life and committed further atrocities. The audience finds itself in a similarly spectral position of non-judgment, satisfied by film's end with Malik's transformation towards the heart of his prophecy. He has become who he has seen himself to be.

Cross-published on Twitch.