feature film - Paris Cinéma

ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET,
FILMMAkEr
In an 8-dVd boxed set
to be released on 6 november 2013
CArlottA FIlMS
T“tchatcher”. I taught him the word “tchatcher” (to gab…). And our definition
was: to talk about everything but not to talk about nothing. we were very
happy with our definition. this was in the car that we rode in every day to go
to the shoot. And we gabbed. Every day. In October 2005, during the filming
of Gradiva.
we gabbed, we laughed, we argued — more precisely he shouted at me
and I answered politely; we cooked up schemes for the day of filming,
we talked about actresses, the lighting, actresses, the cinema, last night’s
restaurant…, rossellini, Antonioni, Godard, shooting during ramadan,
houellebecq (lots of houellebecq; he wasn’t happy that I liked him),
actresses, Moroccan wine, Spanish rioja, life, not death...
At the hospital, after his operation in the winter of 2006, we started to gab
again. And then came the idea to continue editing of the film inside the clinic,
during his rehabilitation… On the doorstep, he said, “hi, I’m going to work. It
will do me good,” and as he was talking, I saw behind him on the film editor a
still picture, suspended. his handsome but wasted face in the foreground, and
in the background, a bit blurred, like a shot from an American film, the birth of
the world filling the screen, Dany Verissimo’s sex organ. It did him good.
In September 2007, we were at the Lund Festival in Sweden. we gabbed a lot
and, for the first time, we talked about his death. A funny, light conversation
that was quite sad. he didn’t think he would ever see the boxed set of all of his
films that we were preparing, an idea that he was fond of…
we had a new project. to make a film in an unlikely hotel that he knew in
the middle of the Libyan desert, to film conversations with contemporary
artists who would exhibit their works outdoors in nature. we talked about
it sometimes. we drew plans on a restaurant tablecloth. I don’t think he
seriously believed we would make it, or that he had the time to do so.
Man does not live by hope. Memories? we’ll see…
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TRIBUTES & RETROSPECTIVES
Alain Robbe-Grillet, filmmaker
PASCAl JudElEwICz
from La Règle du jeu (2008)