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Were there any documentaries that you looked at as a sort of guide for what you wanted to do here? For example, while the film that Agnes Varda did about your mother, “Jane B. by Agnes V.” is ultimately quite different than yours, the two still complement each other in a number of ways.
It was more of an homage though the title but then my mother very acutely said that in the same way that “Jane B. by Agnes V.” was not really a portrait of my mother but more of a portrait of different characters that Agnes loved. “In this case,” my mother said, “this isn’t just a portrait of me. It is a portrait of you and a portrait of a daughter looking at her mother that make it not only about me.” I think she was right about that. Once we stopped after Japan, I showed her this documentary about Joan Didion that was made by her nephew, Griffin Dunne. It is a very moving documentary because it is made by someone who loves her and who is obviously very close. That is what I wanted my mother to understand—I was coming from a very good place and I would not show anything that she did not want to have shown or that would make her feel uncomfortable or embarrassed. This documentary was very kind and her nephew had only delicate things to say about her and to show about her. Of course, “Grey Gardens” is the crazy documentary about two crazy women, a mother and a daughter—I wasn’t going there but you have to take that into consideration because it does ring a bell.
The focus of the film is almost entirely on the present, to the point where there is pretty much none of the kind of archival material that one might expect to find.
I didn’t want any archival stuff because everyone said that if you are doing a documentary about your mother, you have to take all of these archives of the shows that all French people know and all of my father’s songs. I didn’t want that because I didn’t want to see footage of her when she was young and her today—that was not the point. I wanted a portrait of her today with what she has gone through with her fantasy and her craziness and the sufferings she has had. That was very important and a real intention. Then, I didn’t want my father to be too omnipresent because when he died in 1991, she started touring with his songs, first as a sort of homage. Throughout the years, she kept on singing his songs and she was sort of undermining herself by being under his shadow all that time and I didn’t want that for this film. Of course, I wanted a few songs of his and I wanted him to be present in a way but it is more like his ghost is present than what we are used to.
There is one key sequence revolving around the father and that is the one where the two of you go to visit the apartment where he used to live, which has been kept exactly as it was at the time of his passing. What was it like to shoot there for the two of you?
I have lived with this house and the way it is today and I intentionally didn’t move a thing. I was only 19 when he died and I bought the house from my brothers and sisters. I really had the impression that his house was already a museum and that was what he wanted. I have tried for 30 years to convince the various ministers of culture that it was necessary to make it a museum and everybody was always convinced that it was worth it but the house is so tiny that it was difficult to imagine. I kept it for 30 years because for me, it was reassuring to go there, close the door and sort of have the impression that he could come back at any time—that time had not moved—and it was painful to come back out into reality. The moments that I have had in that house have always been magical. Now I am about to open it up as a museum and I wanted my mother to sort of validate it and I sort of understood that she had not been there for more than 30 years becauseI never invited her. I never thought that she would want to go because i thought she would find it painful. That is the sort of miscommunication that we have had all our lives.
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