Juliette Binoche delved into the craft of acting and her emerging voice as a director during a packed masterclass at the 7th Hainan Island International Film Festival, drawing on decades of collaborations with filmmakers including John Boorman and Krzysztof Kieślowski.
“You have to develop a relationship with everybody, all the technicians as well as the director and actors. With John Boorman [director of 2004’s ‘In My Country’], at the beginning of the shooting, he was always in another room with the monitor, and I expressed it to him that it was difficult to establish an artistic relationship with him because he was so far away,” said Binoche.
“He changed totally as we went on, and by the end he left the monitor and came to the camera to be with me when I was acting. And he said to me it was the best experience, because he went back to his love of filming.”
Binoche added, “With Kieślowski, when we did ‘Blue’ he would make me rehearse five times and do just one take. And at the end of the take, he would say ‘it’s not like the rehearsal’? And I said of course, because I don’t know what’s coming out of me, I’m discovering it as we’re going. So I said to him, why don’t we do just one rehearsal and then five takes?”
She continued, “He said, I cannot do that, because in the editing room then there are too many possibilities and its too difficult to choose, also in Poland we don’t have money, so we only do one take (on film). I said ‘Here we can do many takes, because we’re not in Poland.’”
Binoche also responded to questions from the masterclass about the direction, challenges and prospect of filmmaking in China, pointing to the importance of national subsidies in France as a vital lifeline for risk-taking cinema.
“I feel that the art of cinema is not easy. Going to the new you have to be free. Free of mind. Free of heart. Free,” said Binoche. “In France we are very helped by the money that can help young directors, [help them] in their artistry of becoming the director they can be, and I think the fact that in France our system that gives money, it allows a special cinema in a way, and is key for cinema to be alive.”
Binoche also reflected on the financing journey that brought her directorial debut “In-I in Motion” to the screen.
“I gave [footage of “In-I in Motion”] to a Belgium producer once, and he watched a little bit of the tape and he said, ‘Yeah, it’s probably interesting.’ But then life went on,” Binoche said.
“I don’t know if [the producers of “In-I in Motion”] didn’t come to me and say ‘we’d like to do something with you… I don’t know whether – when I would have done it,” she added. “But because they said yes and they had the desire for me to do something new, then it opened me the doors as a director. And I want to continue because I feel that I have that in me that is natural. I have a certain, natural authority. And that you need to have as a director. If you don’t have it, there is no way you can drag 50 people along with you.”
Later, speaking with Variety, Binoche shared advice from directors she had worked with, before embarking on “In-I In Motion.”
“Tran Anh Hung said to me once, ‘each time you cut to another shot, a new shot, you’ve got to be surprised,’” said Binoche, who worked with the French-Vietnamese director on 2023’s “The Taste of Things.” “So it’s not cutting just to follow a movement, you’re cutting because there is something new that you’re going to discover. There is something new that needs to be given.”
