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Watch me!

Cédric Klapisch on Pio Marmaï, François Civil, Marion Barbeau, Hofesh Shechter and Rise

by Anne-Katrin Titze

Rise director Cédric Klapisch with Anne-Katrin Titze on seeing dance at 14: “My parents brought me … It was the time of Merce Cunningham, Carolyn Carlson - they were the hit dancers in the Seventies.”

Classical ballet dancer Elise (Marion Barbeau) in Cédric Klapisch’s riveting and dynamic Rise (co-written with Santiago Amigorena) suffers an ankle injury during a performance of La Bayadère right after having spotted her boyfriend and dance partner with another woman. With her future unclear on all fronts, Elise rises out of the ashes with the support of a number of illustrious characters in her life. Choreographer Hofesh Shechter (and Rise composer with Thomas Bangalter) playing a version of himself makes very clear that dance can have many forms. There is physiotherapist Yann (François Civil) who is overcoming his own heartbreak, and friend Sabrina (Souheila Yacoub) who also had to transition out of the field of dance. She now works with her boyfriend Loïc (Pio Marmaï), a chef, who invites both Sabrina and Elise to assist him in a catering job for an artist resort in Brittany, led by Josiane (Muriel Robin). Josiane, a great patron of all arts, bonds right away with Elise, not only because both of them are currently limping ducks.

Elise (Marion Barbeau) with her father Henri Gautier (Denis Podalydès) Photo: Emmanuelle Jacobson-Roques

Rather unhelpful in the recovery is Elise’s father, lawyer Henri Gautier (played by Denis Podalydès, who carries over from Arnaud Desplechin’s Deception some of Philip Roth’s self-centeredness and intense focus on the written word). Henri, a widower since Elise and her two sisters were children, has clear hierarchies of importance at all times. He is similarly dismissive about dance as he is about cooking. His comments are hovering perpetually at the border of insult, which makes them all the more infuriating. A spectacular dance sequence begins the movie and throughout there are numerous treats. The rhythm and the ratio of dance and drama stay perfectly in tune. Rise received nine César Award nominations, as did Albert Serra’s Pacifiction, bested only by the ten for The Night Of The 12th, directed by Dominik Moll.

From Paris, Cédric Klapisch joined me on Zoom for an in-depth conversation on Rise.

Anne-Katrin Titze: Very nice to meet you! The beginning of your film is spectacular! It shows how much you love dance. Did you always know that this was to be a beginning without words?

Cédric Klapisch: I had the intuition of that very early but I didn’t know how much the audience could handle that. So I didn’t know if it would be three minutes, five minutes - it finally is 15 minutes. I didn’t know it would be that long. I really enjoyed the challenge of starting the story showing only dance and the audience has to watch dance and hear the music and understand what the story is without words. It was great to go back to silent movies really. It’s not silent because you have a relationship to music, but I asked myself: how can I tell a story without dialogues?

Elise (Marion Barbeau) with choreographer Hofesh (Hofesh Shechter) Photo: Emmanuelle Jacobson-Roques

AKT: Do you remember the very first ballet performance you saw?

CK: No, actually. The early shows I went to see, I guess I was 14, and I guess it was Carolyn Carlson in Théâtre de la Ville which is a theatre in Paris which shows a lot of contemporary dance. My parents brought me there and after a while we had a subscription. Every year we saw a lot of dance shows, especially with my mother. It was the time of Merce Cunningham, Carolyn Carlson - they were the hit dancers in the Seventies.

AKT: My very first ballet, actually my very first theatre experience was La Fille mal gardée, and I loved dance ever since. The moment of injury in your film is extremely intense. There is a dialogue a little later in relation to it that felt to me almost as intense. It is when the father, played by Denis Podalydès says to his daughter something along the lines of, oh both your sisters also had a problem that night. A pipe broke and a WiFi issue. That is an unbelievable moment! It sums it all up, their relationship. How did this come about?

CK: A lot of the ideas came from interviews, because I interviewed a lot of dancers and especially female dancers. And I realised that very often they had a complicated relationship with their father. And very often I felt like they chose to become a dancer to be seen by their father. The father doesn’t pay attention to her and she wants to do something to be very visible so her father can react. I started with that idea because a lot of female dancers told me that story.

Loïc (Pio Marmaï), Josiane (Muriel Robin), and Yann (François Civil) Photo: Emmanuelle Jacobson-Roques

And I realised that very often men are not interested in dance, don’t go see dance shows and you feel like this father doesn’t really care. He has to follow the movement and has to bring the daughter to dance class but it’s really a drag for him. You feel it’s a job and he doesn’t have any joy with that. So I think the story can be about her succeeding getting the attention of her father. I thought it was an interesting story to tell - that you can make so much effort to say “Hey, I exist! I’m here, watch me!” Because I think very often fathers - and that includes me, I have three kids - you have to … Your kids tell you “Okay, I exist and I’m interesting, so watch me!” I think fathers more often have a hard time dealing with children than mothers for some reason. I think the movie is a lot about that difference.

AKT: He reacts the same way to another daughter who cooks a lovely meal and says “I didn’t say it was bad,” about her cooking. There is also the sentence that “like most fathers he has never been a good mother.” At first I laughed and then I thought that there is actually something profound in this.

CK: Which I really like! If you laugh and then you realise it’s profound - I really like that. Yes, the mother dies and he has clearly two roles to face. He has to replace the mother and he can’t replace the mother. That’s the tragedy of the whole family there, the three daughters are going to lack their mother and he does make efforts but he can’t replace the mother. A lot of the drama comes from that problem.

Elise (Marion Barbeau) in rehearsal with the company Photo: Emmanuelle Jacobson-Roques

AKT: There are two forms of nourishment that shine in this film and they work together. One is through dance and the performative, the other through cooking. You have the sister being a chef, and Pio Marmaï is playing a caterer who enters the picture later on.

CK: I try to show how different people express themselves differently in the movie. Clearly the father expresses himself with words, he is a lawyer, he knows how to use the language. He likes literature, he believes in words. He believes that words is the only language. And clearly his daughter has another language and she uses her body to express herself.

And the character Pio Marmaï plays is a cook and he really expresses himself with cooking. He’s also in this couple and they fight all the time and are very aggressive with one another. You feel they love each other, they have a sensuality together and the communication goes through food. It’s really through food and through sex. It’s really showing how you can have different languages. The body is one language and the words is another language.

AKT: I have a favour to ask you. When I spoke with Pio in 2019, he had never seen Vertigo by Hitchcock.

CK: Okay!

Yann (François Civil) working on Elise (Marion Barbeau) Photo: Emmanuelle Jacobson-Roques

AKT: Please ask him if he had had the time to watch it since! I remember he said “Oh but I’m only 22,” which of course was a total lie.

CK: Okay, I’ll ask him! It’s a good question!

AKT: It came up when he was in New York for Pierre Salvadori’s The Trouble With You. François Civil I almost didn’t recognise when he came on the screen. It’s very interesting casting as a physiotherapist who needs a massage in the first five minutes and constantly breaks down.

CK: François is so strong in changing from a drama scene to a comical scene. It’s crazy how he can make you laugh and cry in the same scene. He has that talent and he’s really one of the best actors in France right now. He’s the main character in every movie, it’s really impressive how he became a great actor.

AKT: He’s extremely funny here and has lovely interactions. I liked very much the sequence when the dancers are dancing with the wind on the cliff by the sea. Was that Hofesh Schechter who came up with the idea of that choreography?

CK: It was more me, but we had to work together to make that scene work. It’s maybe the only one where we had to create that scene together. A combination. I said I’d like to use wind, a bit like parachutists who fall from a plane in the sky. So the dancers were doing that with the wind and Hofesh created a dance scene.

Elise (Marion Barbeau) with cast Photo: Emmanuelle Jacobson-Roques

There were two things happening. There was the logic of the dancing and the logic of the story. Because I was telling that she was hesitating between two guys in the scene. And you feel like the dancing and the narration keeps on. It was really interesting to work with Hofesh on that scene because we didn’t know in the morning what would come up. It was really something that was improvised and created on location.

AKT: With the wind!

CK: With the wind!

AKT: Hofesh’s choreography is absolutely fascinating. And he did most of the film’s music, right?

CK: Yes, he always does the music for his shows, so he told me that I could use the choreographies and the music from his shows and that’s what I did.

AKT: All the tragic fates of women in classic ballets come up.

CK: Yes, Elise says it.

AKT: Swan Lake, Giselle, La Bayadère - all of them have tragic fates. Is your film responding that in the 2020s it’s not about tragic fates anymore?

Cédric Klapisch on asking Pio Marmaï if he has watched Vertigo: “Okay, I’ll ask him! It’s a good question!” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

CK: Clearly feminism, especially the new feminism that happens today, shows what people call empowerment of women. And the fact that women were often treated as a minority, were very often victims - women don’t feel like victims anymore and they don’t want to be victims anymore. I think that the movie, which is really a portrait of a young woman, shows a woman from today fighting not to be a victim.

A big intention for me was to do a movie about a woman seen by a man. I talk with a lot of women directors and it is a topic that is important for them. Of course for a man, the way of looking at women is not the same, the topic is the same. So for me it was interesting to have a male point of view on female issues.

AKT: Marion Barbeau is fabulous in the role. This is her first acting role, isn’t it?

CK: Yes, she never acted before.

AKT: She has a radiance and shows such power to overcome obstacles. She’s a hero who is wounded. There’s something bigger …

CK: … than her, yeah. You’re right. That’s what I believe. I think that great actors are always weak and strong. And she’s weak and strong. She’s weak because she’s injured and she has to fight to go back to life. All great actors in the history of American movies like Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe - huge actors like that - they’re very weak and very strong. What’s interesting is the combination of the two.

Loïc (Pio Marmaï) with Sabrina (Souheila Yacoub) Photo: Emmanuelle Jacobson-Roques

AKT: When they eat the pear dessert, Pio says it tastes like the music. I have synaesthesia and I think there is some synaesthesia you created in this combination of the world of dance with cinema. The balance feels very right.

CK: I like the fact that it’s talking about people who are artists. You can be an artist making food, dancing, writing. And when you’re an artist you have to feel the fact that you can use your senses. You can use the perfume and you can use the taste and how you perceive the music and how you dance, how you use your body. It’s really about choosing different languages. In that scene you see someone who’s a cook compare his food to the music and the dance.

You know, poets, especially the French poets in the 20th century and Baudelaire [from the 19th] talks about “correspondences.” Which means you have in fact relations between a smell and a taste and a touch. When you taste something it can bring you to a memory. I like that. I think that it’s really the little brick that brings you to having a feeling for art.

AKT: What is coming up for you? What are you working on right now?

CK: I’m writing a script and it’s a period movie. It takes place in Paris in the 19th century. It’s both today and 19th century, so it’s really face-to-face the past and the present. And I’m also preparing an opera to stage.