The actor discusses playing the seminal director in Michel Hazanavicius-directed Redoubtable, which hits UK theatres next week
Louis Garrel isn’t Jean-Luc Godard, and he wants to make sure you know that. In a new film based around the politically feverish years of the French-Swiss director’s career, Garrel’s an actor playing an actor playing Godard. “There’s a distance” he says in his thick French accent. “That was the rule of the game.”
This “game” is Redoubtable. Helmed by the Oscar-winning director of The Artist Michel Hazanavicius, this film depicts the years Godard spent married to actress and novelist Anne Wiazemsky, played by Stacy Martin, who penned the memoir (A Year After) from which Redoubtable takes its inspiration. It was during these years that Godard also made some of his most iconic movies, many of which were inspired by the anti-capitalist protests that erupted in France in May, 1968.
Several years into the project, Hazanavicius sent his treatment for the film to Godard, to gauge his thoughts before the actual filming began. But he never heard anything back. Garrel on the other hand didn’t seek out Godard’s advice or even his blessing to play the role. “He gave [the media] so much. He’s used to talking about cinema all the time. Advice? No. It’s ‘de-constructivist’,” he says. “A classic question from an actor to a director would annoy him.”
Instead, he delved into biographies and recorded interviews to help form his depiction of the director’s most controversial years, when he threw out his exuberant, Nouvelle Vague filmmaking in favour of a colder, more politicised style. Garrel calls this “the story of a man against everyone” and spent time trying to understand Godard’s mindset. “I had to understand where he got this energy from. This energy to say: ‘I know exactly what I’m doing’ – even if everybody around him was telling him he was doing wrong.”
Previously known for playing complex fictional characters, it wasn’t until Louis delivered his César-nominated performance as Jacques de Bascher – Yves Saint Laurent’s lover in the 2014 film about the designer’s life, Saint Laurent – that he discovered the joy of playing real-life people. “It relaxes me to be far away from myself. You draw a character,” he says. “My grandfather was a puppeteer, so I can understand the pleasure of control.” The late Philip Seymour Hoffman, he says, was the master of this layered, cinematic mind game. “He achieved such beautiful work hiding behind characters. When you watch him, the question isn’t ‘Who is this character?’ but ‘Where is Seymour Hoffman? Where is he hiding?’”
Assuming the role of one of France’s most respected and recognisable cultural figures came with some challenges though, particularly when it came to Godard’s fans. “People love him so much that you can see some think Godard belongs to them,” he says. “It was hard to discuss the movie with them, because he’s holy. He’s sacred. It’s beautiful, though, that kind of relationship that people have with his movies.”
Although his skills in front of the camera have earned him numerous accolades, Garrel has ventured behind it too. In 2015, he made his feature-length directorial debut with the Cannes-premiering romantic drama, Two Friends. Has playing Godard inspired him to direct more films? “Yes.” Does he want to engage in political issues via film? “It was so good that he was able to allow himself to do that, because what’s interesting about his career, and even with that period of his films, is that [it’s] complicated,” he says. “I’m not as good as Jean-Luc Godard, so if I was to do that, it would be a terrible thing for everyone!”
But whether he’s in front of the camera or behind it, one thing always stays the same: his love for cinema, though he sometimes struggles to pin down what the medium means to him. “It can change three times in one day,” he says. “Sometimes, I need a movie to learn something. Or when I’m the middle of a situation and I don’t know how to solve my problems, I need a movie to solve them. And then, suddenly when everything is grey or I have a headache, I need a movie to not think about it.” There’s an old French saying, though, which does much to express one’s love for art – and it can be applied to cinema too. “Art’s purpose is to make life more interesting than art,” he says after referring to the translator. “I like that!”
Redoubtable hits UK theatres 11 May
