For Chinese audiences, even those who like to watch literary films, the name of the French director Benoit Jacquot will sound a bit unfamiliar. However, among those who have intersected with him, there are many people who have had an important influence on French culture, such as Henri Langlois, Marcel Canet, margaret Duras.
Born in 1947, he was the youngest audience member in the French Film Archive, and at the age of twelve or thirteen he was mixed up in it, watching American films with Truffaut, Godard, Houmai, Levitte, Chabrol, and other hairy boys based on the Film Manual and waiting to set off the "New Wave" movement.
Benois Jacobs served as an assistant director to Duras and was a close friend of hers.
At the age of 21, he became an assistant director for Marcel Canet, and was later introduced to Margaret Duras, a writer who wanted to make films, becoming her longtime assistant director and close friend.
Since 1975, when she collaborated with Anna Karina, the royal actress of the "New Wave" director, to shoot her debut novel L'assassin musicien based on Dostoevsky's novel, Benoy Jacob has made more than twenty feature films.
In terms of style alone, he may not be an author-director, but he has a special love for one theme - women, French women, especially French women who face the stagnation of life are his favorite protagonists. For this "fetish", Benoy Jacob once gave an irrefutable reason - because he was a man.
Anna Karina in Deadly Musician.
So, like a caughtigator, he included one of France's most stylish actresses into his work. Anna Karina, Isabelle Huppel, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Adjani, Virginie Ledoyan, Charlotte Gansburg, Leia Saidu... Some became passers-by, some became friends.
Isabelle Huppel (left) and Dominic Sanda in the film of the same name based on Henry James's novel Wings of the Pigeon.
And the films they appear in are the cases in which Benoy Jacob explores French women: a mother-daughter who falls in love with the same man ("Wings of the Dove"), a teenage girl who is asked by her boyfriend and mother to have sex with someone else ("No Longer Fascinated"), the aristocratic mistress who falls in love with a young man ("Adolf"), the girl who is pregnant with a child but decides to break up with her boyfriend ("Single Girl"), the wife who receives hypnosis therapy for the treatment of theft but is forgotten by her husband ("Seventh Heaven"), the husband of her sister is a man who has been in love with her ("The Seventh Heaven") Half-hearted"), the maid who is despised by her employer but tries to take control of her own destiny (The Maid's Diary)...
Isabelle Adjani in Adolf.
Virginie Ledoyn in Single Girl.
Charlotte Gansbour (left) and Ziara Maschuyani in Three Hearts, Two Minds.
Leia Saidu in The Maid's Diary.
Recently, At the invitation of the World Film Research Center of Shanghai Normal University and the Cultural Department of the French Consulate General in Shanghai, Benoy Jacobs came to Shanghai to attend the "From Novel to Film" film festival, during which he was interviewed by the surging news (www.thepaper.cn), reviewing his experience as an assistant director for Duras and his impressions of the actresses he has worked with.
Recent photo of Benoy Jacob.
Jacob: What do you think of the theme of this time , "from novel to movie"?
The Paper: I think it's a good fit to discuss French cinema.
James: Why? Now I'll do the interview.
The Paper: Many of Renoir's and Marcel Canet's works are based on novels.
Jacob: But this is not a phenomenon unique to France, and the first hollywood films were adapted from novels. Movies are like thieves, stealing inspiration from other artistic disciplines, not only literary works, but also theater, music, and art.
The Paper: But Hollywood will mostly choose famous books, and French directors, such as Godard of the New Wave, will choose some cheap detective novels and adapt them in their own way. And the subject can be used to explore your work, many of your films have been adapted from novels, and you were an assistant director for Margaret Duras.
James: Speaking of Duras, that's another story. She had been writing novels before, and only in her later years did she adapt her works into films, which is a phenomenon peculiar to France.
The Paper: I once read in an interview with you that duras actually hates movies, so what can you learn from a movie-hating side?
Jacob: Duras hates movies, but she loves the fact that her work has been adapted into a film, and she only needs to work with jeanne Moro, Gerald de Padio, which is a new thing for her outside of writing, but she doesn't care about the problems she actually encountered during filming. It was very helpful for my initial growth because I was able to take full responsibility for many things that were shot in the film. What I was doing was a bit like translating, understanding what Duras wanted and then communicating with the staff.
The Paper: So would Duras like to watch movies based on his own work?
Jacob: She didn't like to watch other directors shoot, except for Alan Renai's "Love in Hiroshima." Although she liked this film, she also felt bad, she thought that Renai stole her inspiration, and it may be because of this that she began to make her own films. However, no matter who comes to shoot it, she likes the money she earns by selling the adaptation rights of her work.
Duras only liked her own films, and being able to soak in the cinema all day was like rediscovering a masterpiece by another person, which she found fascinating.
The Paper: You have worked with actresses of all types and ages in France, who impressed you the most?
Isabelle Huppel is the actress with whom Benois Jacobs has worked the most, and the picture shows the shooting scene of "Villa Amalia".
Jacob: Each has its own uniqueness, but I've worked with Isabelle Huppel the most. We've made five films together and we're about to make a sixth. We would cooperate every once in a while, like a date, and as if to confirm that something had changed with each other, and we had such an unspoken tacit understanding before. Compared to other actresses I work with, she is probably the one with the fewest acting and the most interpretive when she makes films.
The Paper: In your work, my favorite is "Single Girl", why did you choose the inexperienced Virginy LedoYan to play the heroine?
Jacob: I was attracted by the strength of her newborn calves who were not afraid of tigers, and she was eager to make movies, and I felt that I could be an adult beauty. This movie can also be regarded as a proof of her growth.
The Paper: If you hadn't spent time in the French Film Archive founded by Henri Langlois as a teenager, would you have chosen another job?
Jacob: At that time, I couldn't even study, and I was obsessed with watching movies in the archive, and this experience really had a big impact on my determination to become a director. Without this experience, I might still be making movies, but I wouldn't have achieved what I have today.
The Paper: So are you still a fan, and which one do you admire more of the living directors?
Jacob: I still love watching movies, but I think there are very few films that are made now. Of all the living directors, I admire the Danish director Ras von Trier the most, whose Melancholy is a masterpiece. I also like Jia Zhangke.
The Paper: It seems that every French director likes Jia Zhangke.
James: Because his work is really good.
The Paper: I personally feel that few new French directors have appeared in the international film scene in recent years, can you talk about the living conditions of young French directors?
Jacob: I also feel the same way, not only are there fewer and fewer new directors popping up in France, but there are fewer and fewer good new directors. But it's not a question of funding, and young french directors are the least difficult to make in the world, because the government has a lot of subsidies to motivate debut films.
I think this is because we are in an era of technological dilapidation, and the essential changes in the way movies are made and the way movies are presented are still brewing. Maybe in a few years, decades, until the directors who make movies in the traditional way have retreated and the new technology has matured, more and more good directors will appear.
The Paper: But I think your own work has been very little influenced by technology.
Jacob: I used to make films on film, and now I use digital cameras. The reason why I can ignore the technology is because I have made 25 films and know how to do what I want, but young directors may not understand it, after all, the essence of film is also being challenged. Film can refer to film, it can also refer to film, since we don't use film now, can we still be called a film?
The Paper: Back to the theme of this film festival, what are your favorite writers?
Jacob: Dostoevsky, Henry James, William Shakespeare.