Objects of desire
Summer Hours director Olivier Assayas and star Jeremie Renier speak to Screenjabber's Michael Edwards
Olivier, the film originally sprang from an initiative by the Musee d'Orsay, did you personally choose all of the antiques used?
OA: Yes. But the thing is that the film had a starting point with the Musee d'Orsay initiative, but then we had to drop it very early. They wanted to have some kind of collective movie to which directors from all over the world would contribute to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the museum so I started with a few notes around what I could do - a short story that could happen in that context and then the movie happened from that. I wrote the first version of the screenplay and then I realised that we needed the objects. I mean there were the paintings, a desk, I had no clear idea of what the objects would be but somehow I realised that some of the emotion in the film and a lot of the story had to do with the story of the objects. So I got myself a pile of books on late 19th century and early 20th century art and started doing doing my casting. I feel I cast the artworks and fitted them in to the story, and in some places they kind of inspired specific scenes; for instance I was going through one of the books and I bumped into this silver tray which is made out of the imprint of a leaf and I looked at it and it was so beautiful, so close to my notion that art comes from nature and some art has to be used in everyday life, and I wrote this specific scene around the tray... so yes, I chose the objects! [Laughs]
Although I felt that that Jeremie's character was trying to do the same thing in a global sense. Summer Hours seemed to me to be broadly about the importance of identity in terms of where you're from, and Jeremie, you're character seemed very dislocated.
JR: Yeah, it's important for him to move quickly because he's the youngest child and he feels that it's not the past that's important but the present and the future. To move to another country away from his own is a big thing but it's him looking to the future.
The film seemed to be showing Jeremie and Adrienne (Juliette Binoche's character) representing a future progress away from this physically located past, whereas Frederic was being left behind. Was this something you tried to bring out Olivier?
OA: I think it's also a matter of generation, as you were saying Jeremie, it's because he has a broader view of the world which is much closer to the current view of the world we're expanding geographically and losing our connection to our roots. Whereas Frederic is from another time, but you know some things we feel the contradiction inside all of us.
JR: We all have this sensibility of the family too. You see the past or you don't see the past, but you still see them.
OA: Yes, it's like we have different voices inside us. On the one side there is this way globalisation opens up our world: it creates connections, it creates contacts. it creates exchanges ultimately between worlds that were completely separate. But at the same time you miss whatever you grew up from.
The film was very much about man's relationship to objects — did you both have any objects you held dear before and now see in a new light?
JR: For me, the family is the most special thing in my life. There's never been a strong feeling when I see this sort of stuff.
But is there anything you were attached to, or something you owned that you began to think a bit more carefully about in terms of the meaning we embed in an object?
JR: For me the stuff isn't very important. I keep some small things from the past, pictures from movies I shot but the objects don't hold value.
OA: For me it's a little different in the sense that I ... I don't collect or anything. No stamps! My friend collects Coke bottles and things, but I suppose that making movies makes you aware of objects. And I started as a painter really, I did some design too, so I've always been interested in modern design and I think that I got interested in objects from the past when I made Les Destinees Sentimentale and I had to research so much from the period and understand a very specific culture of this French South West and there's this very civilised relationship between lifestyle, objects and the beauty of everything around you. So I don't live like that but I kind of understand how people have that kind of relationship to things that are part of their everyday life. The other side of it I suppose is, well, I lost my mother a few weeks before we started this shoot, back when I was writing this script, and there are so many things about the past of your family that you become responsible for and all of this stuff, even though you have things that
belong to your grandfather, or this part of the family this is stuff I'd see at this place and just be happy that stuff was there and I did not have any kind of responsibility. But all of a sudden I just have all this responsibility on my back and I start to wonder what I am going to do with it, and I look at this vase or whatever and think "sure, it's beautiful, but does it fit my home? Not exactly. What am I going to do with it?" because it has some kind of sentimental value. That stuff carries emotions with it. Ultimately the importance of the objects in the film is how they echo the character of Helene. It's really because Helene is gone but the objects are still there and whenever we see the objects they are not beautiful in themselves per se, they just have some of the beauty of Helene.
There was a slightly tenser aspect to this that made me feel awkward, beginning in the scene when Helene "fades away" in the dark room. A sense that she leaves these objects that suddenly seem very stoic, very limp and lifeless. They lose their vitality. Was this a deliberate contrast to the mobility and vitality of the characters?
OA: For me it was obvious that the desk, for instance, the Marjorelle desk, you look at it with Helene, or in the studio with all the mess around it, and it's beautiful. A very beautiful piece of furniture. Then you see it in the museum and realise it's not that great, you realise that it's a conventional piece of art nouveau furniture but the beauty of it is whatever meaning it has in a context. Out of its context it becomes a fish out of water.
I found the museum scene very cold, which is strange given where this sprang from!
OA: Frankly I was a little scared because when I gave the screenplay to the people of the Musee d'Orsay they were so helpful, but I thought that maybe when they say the film they'd have a surprise! You know, that maybe it describes museums in a way that they don't see it because obviously I'm showing it and filming it like a zoo or a tomb. Which the specific architecture also invokes! So to me it's meant to be kind of chilling. But they were good about it, they understood very well; I think it's the basic debate on museums, they live every day with these questions, they know they're there.
A lot of people don't come from families with such wealth, owning antiques and so on, did you ever worry that you wouldn't reach people who couldn't identify with that kind of thinking?
OA: I enjoy science fiction movies. I can relate to people who live on planet Mongo so I thought that the audience that people who are not so very far from where they live. And also it's not my background either, I absolutely don't have that kind of family, we don't have Corot...
JR: You don't have a Corot in your garage? [Laughing]
OA: [Laughs] But I think it's very universal issues, you could tell the story with a cupboard, a fridge or a stove. But it's more interesting if you're dealing with artworks because they're not just material possessions, they have some kind of a soul. So if you start dealing with artworks you have to have characters who will be able to own such things and that automatically gives them some kind of standing, but you have to be careful at the same time. I used a house that's not a typical bourgeois house, it's not luxurious it's an artists house. And the house is beautiful because it has a beautiful garden and an accumulation of history. So of course I was concerned with the issue but I tried to play around it.
Where do you think this family is going? Can they stay together as a unit or are they all going their separate ways?
JR: The two brothers are very connected and life changes, life moves but perhaps Jeremie will keep coming back to France whether it is for 10 days or 10 years. It was the same for my family, I had a big extended family and my grandparents were the centre of this big Christmas gatherings but now they're gone all the family has moved on and I lose touch. Sometimes when one person moves or dies the whole family falls apart. It's normal, because afterwards you create your own family.
OA: But it's the part that everybody can decide. I think maybe Jeremie's going to be fired. [Laughs]
What are your plans for the future?
JR: I have Le Silence de Lorna, from the Dardenne brothers coming out soon. I'm also in a Nicky Caro project [Vintner's Luck] which is really a beautiful film. And I'm writing a movie with my brother, but I don't want to talk about it too much because we're just at the start.
Sounds fun! Olivier?
OA: I am making a film that's very different from Summer Hours. It's a story of Carlos, the Jackal, and it's a complex project because it's three TV movies and one long feature. It's very tiring. It's the first time I've had to do a lot of historical research. And we start shooting in January.
That seems like a complete direction change.
OA: Well I think I always change ... or I never change, I don't know! It's about reinventing yourself after every movie.
• Summer Hours is now showing at cinemas across the UK — read our review