EuroAICN Special: A conversation with Jean-Pierre Jeunet, director of AMELIE, DELICATESSEN, & CITY OF LOST CHILDREN

Father Geek is proud to be posting Grozilla's wonderful interview with one of the current cinema's true visionaries, directorial genius Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Our Euro offices in Paris, headed up by Edgard, are landing more and more great bits like this one. Ol' Father Geek can't wait until their coverage of CANNES starts next month. Even though our own Harry will be there several days this year we really rely on Edgard and crew to file the day to day reports that makes Euro-AICN one of the best coverers of the greatest of international film festivals, but enought of me and on to Grozilla and the great Jeunet...

Hi folks... Edgard here with a special report from EURO AICN... I think Harry will be happy, as many other Jean-Pierre Jeunet's fans out there... LE FABULEUX DESTIN D'AMELIE POULAIN, Jeunet's new movie, will be released here in France in less than two weeks (yesssss !!)... All the reviews I read so far in the French press agree on one thing : this film is a real masterpiece... this film is wonderful... this film makes you happy... so I can't of course wait to see it...

Meanwhile Grozilla, the toughest monster around, managed to sit and chat with Jean-Pierre Jeunet... Also the director of DELICATESSEN (a classic), CITY OF LOST CHILDREN (another classic) and ALIEN RESURRECTION (if you remove the last 15 minutes, could have been a classic... I like it anyway... there's something special about this film that makes me like it a lot... I'm quite alone on this but that's okay...)... Anyway we will all agree JP Jeunet is one of the most talented director around... he's for me in the same league as Tim Burton... someone who share with us a wonderful imaginary world... sometimes creepy, but always damn cool to look at... A true director in the best definition of the word...

So here's for you folks an exclusive interview with Monsieur Jeunet...

* Julie Clapet in "Delicatessen", Miette in "The City of lost children", Call in "Alien resurrection", now Amelie ! They're all girls living in imaginary worlds who refuse to see what is obvious in their lives..

JPJ : Right. They're all the same kind. Amelie is a growing up version of Miette...Call is her american cousin, Julie another one she never met. I don't know why they all of the same kind. Sometimes it's better not to explain all. My next heroine will perhaps be an unemployed girl in th deep east of France. Something very realistic.. (laughs)

* Precisely, "Amelie.." is your film which deals the most with realism but quite reluctantly !

JPJ : I've got no trouble with realism in film. I love "Erin Brockovich", but as a member of the audience. It would bore me to direct it. I'm bored to death if I can't put an artistic touch on each second, on each frame of my work. I love to create an universe in film.. "Amelie", isn't quite a fantasy, because I wanted the audience to indentify with her. But I can't help myself of "poetizing" my films. I use the images and the dialogues to make something else of it. Even with "Alien resurrection". I felt it quite realistic, even with the cliché's of science-fiction which are in it. I can't stand the specific SF, where everything is possible, like writing " and then, the table became something else ". This pisses me off. That's so easy to do. I need a minimum of realism in my stories. The story with the blindman, I dreamed to do it in reality, in life. I didn't dare. I could inside my film. What Amelie does to the grocer, I dreamed of doing it to a film critic who treated "The City of lost children" like shit. Now, it's maybe because of him those scenes exist...

* More than ever in your films, the city is important in this film !

JPJ : I've been in Paris since 1974. I remember my arrival there as something incredible. Then I get used to this feeling, and today I just notice the bad things of Paris, like dogshits anywhere on the sidewalks... I left Paris for two years, working in USA. I saw there "When the cat's away". The good memories of Paris came then back to me, just by seeing the roofs of this place in the film. I just told myself than my next movie would take place in Montmartre (editor's note : a very popular district of the French city) and I would create the Paris I've got in mind. It must be fake, idealized ! When foreigners will see "Amelie" in their countries and then come to Paris, they sure will be disappointed ! We worked on everything : moving cars, removing signals, graffiti's...(laughs).

* It¹s your most optimistic film...

JPJ : That was the genuine idea of it. I had in mind a box full of tiny happy events ans stories. I wanted to use them to make audience feel happy. With my co-writer, we knew that using those things which make us happy could get the same on other people. Using black humour was easier when I co-directed movies with Marc Caro. When you're two people for this kind of job, you must put emotion aside. I kept it inside me. Now I work alone, I needed to tell some more sincere feelings.

* The emotion arrives more clearly in the second part of the film when you get to know the characters in a more intimate way...

JPJ : It's probably because from the moment Amélie decides to change other people's life, her life is also changing...

* This film is as full as an egg can be. The frames are full of details, the camera always moving... Is it by fear of missing something ?

JPJ : That's just style. I wanted to get one idea by shot. I read it was a rule at Disney's to make cartoons. So, one idea by shot, visual one or in dialogues... Something new must happen in each scene. Of course it's often more interesting to prepare it, to storyboard it than to shoot it. But as soon as actors are involved, it's when I have the most fun...

* You definitely need total control on your work, so is it easy to depend on special effects ?

JPJ : You just have to be there. My editing room was on the same level as the special effects' one. I get there three times a day. Anyway, those guys love directors to be around. They hate those who say " that's good " without looking precisely at what they've done. My sound engineer told me about some very big budget film he worked on. The director always told him "that's good enough for me". He waited for him to be gone to work again on his sound. Just to be at ease with himself. If the story needs it, I could maybe direct a film without needing of effects in post-production. But I guess I can¹t help myself for not working on an imaginary world. Anyway special effects are not just used to create things which don't exist. They sometimes can juste make the reality prettier.

* The script could have lead "Amelie" being just a collection of short-stories instead of telling only one...

JPJ : That was the danger at first. I wanted for so long to tell stories like those with the kid and the marbles balls or those with the suicidal goldfishes... During a long time, I thought that this film was made of dozens of stories instead of only one. I almost gave up making "Amelie" quite a few times until I realised that the heart of all this was this character who decides to change others' life, this free act of generosity. Then all took place very fast and easy.

* All those ideas told with using different ways of filming a stories - even integrating the "zapping", is it a way to avoid losing memories ?

JPJ : That¹s a very intellectual question ! I don't lose memories anymore since I store them in my Powerbook. Let's just say this film was a way of...

Audrey Tautou (Amelie) : ...of immortalizinf them. But all people do not want to store their memories on films...

JPJ : Well, that's my job !

* In what did your american experience with "Alien" influenced this film ?

JPJ : Nothing frontly. "Alien" was a joyful work to do, but also a fight. Now I know I can resist to any struggle. Quite nothing scares me anymore in this job. I learned in it to listen to other people, stay humble, and sometimes accept the proposal of studio's and assume they could be right. I learned then to build every angle of a story to make it understandable. Which wasn't the case with "The city of lost children". With "Amelie", I tried as hard as I could to make it understandable.

* Even if this could have led you to be didactic ?

JPJ : Any director takes the audience where they want them to go. Some do it in a smarter way than others. I want my film to be very prepared, precise. I don't leave place for the audience's imagination, I impose mine to them. In any case, as soon as someone has a strong bias in storytelling, there's a risk. But that's a good thing.

* One of your character says in the film that " times are getting hard for dreamers ". Is it your own opinion ?

JPJ : No. I'm kind of a dreamer. And I'm paid for it (laughs). This line was more an allusion to "The night of the hunter" where it's once said, that " times are getting hard for children".

* You often use actors with unusual faces. When they don't have one, you film them with distorting lenses. Why ?

JPJ : Again it's just a question of style. We never wonder there's styles in litterature but we always ask about it with films. There's so many films, especially in France, without any style, caring more about the characters or the script. It deeply affects me. Without style, I'd be bored to death. I like the idea that one could pick any frame of my films and could hang it on a wall, as a painting or a photography. I don¹t say this the right way to do films. It¹s just mine. There are many others filmakers who work on another way and make good films. With Audrey, we've done lots and lots of technical tests before shooting. The shorter lenses I use, the prettier she was. You¹ll see those tests in the DVD !

* Time has passed between "Delicatessen" and "Amelie". With DVD and other stuff, audience gets used to technical aspects of movies like sound or photography. They became more hard to please on it. Did it became kind of a constraint for your work as a director ?

JPJ : I love DVD. I always look first at the bonus on it. Besides we are working on some for the "Delicatessen" DVD which will be released later this year. It didn't change anything to my way of directing, except some strange new reflexes : now I think to this media when I'm shooting. Sometime I told myself "uh-oh this thing won't be in frame in DVD ". That wasn¹t the case with my previous films. I guess I catched thoses reflexes because I now know that my films would stay forever on discs opposite to film which are short-lived stuff. Reproduction of artistic works is a true problem. I once bought books on Edward Hopper¹s paintings. Not one of them got the same reproductions of the same paintings.

* You directed films with Marc Caro, you're now writing with Gilles Laurent. Is working with a second person kind of a natural thing for you ? Or just more comforting ?

JPJ : Being two on directing isn't natural at all. In our case, it was kind of a miracle which could only last for a few films because this situation got its own limits. Being two on writing is important. It allows to have someone who has different thoughts than yours, than your ideas. But, as in a couple, you need to find the right person to make it work.

Thank you a lot to Grozilla for this Interview. And remember, if you haven't seen the AMELIE website yet, it's at : www.amelie-lefilm.com (and it IS available in English...)