In the translation, the word game The Sisters Brothers is
lost, but the slogan "Sisters of surname, blood brothers" retrieves
it. We are talking about the new film by Jacques Audiard, The Sisters brothers,
an atypical western, which reinterprets the codes of the genre and addresses
the fragility of male characters, beyond machismo and through the theme of
brotherhood in the broad sense with its also utopian drifts. To be released on
May 2 with Universal, he won the Silver Lion for directing at the last Venice
Film Festival and 4 César (direction, sound, scenography and photography).
Taken from the Canadian novel Patrick DeWitt Arrivano i Sisters features John
C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix, flanked by Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed and Rutger
Hauer in a small participation.
Reilly - who strongly wanted this project of which he is
also producer together with his wife, the Dardenne brothers and the Romanian
director Cristian Mungiu - has carved out the role of a killer with a tender
heart who travels with the scarf that gave him his promise he marries and gets
excited about one of the first toothbrushes in circulation in the wild West of
1850. He works in tandem with his brother Charlie (Phoenix), harder and more
bloodthirsty than he. The two Sisters are at the expense of a gold digger (Riz
Ahmed) who is also being followed by a private investigator (Jake Gyllenhall).
"I like the westerns of the 70s but I don't consider
myself a fan of the genre - explains Audiard, Palme d'Or at Cannes 2015 with
Dheepan - Here the mythology is missing, what really interested us was the
discourse on the violence of the founding fathers, besides of course to the
component of the training novel. This film is about love, even if it is not
between a man and a woman, but between two brothers. "The 66-year-old
Audiard is in Rome, on the occasion of the Rendez-Vous Festival.
How did you come
to this project, your first one in English?
It was John C Reilly, whom I met at the Toronto Film
Festival, who proposed the adaptation of the novel. If I had discovered The
Book by myself, I would have loved it, but it would hardly have occurred to me
to be able to make a film of it. John, on the other hand, absolutely wanted to
play this character and he thought of me.
Why was Reilly so
interested in this book?
John has a great comic and dramatic career but always as
a supporting actor and characterist, it was so even when he worked with Paul
Thomas Anderson. The American system is hard and claustrophobic and remains
anchored forever to a certain category. It is almost impossible to change,
which is why, I believe, he appealed to a foreign director
How faithful or
unfaithful was he to the book?
In the novel there was already this irony towards the
western, the description of the intimate life of the cowboys, the details on
personal hygiene, the use of toothpaste, masturbation ... no, that's something
I added.
Is it true that
the western is of little interest to you?
I'm French and I don't have a relationship with the
mythology of the West, even the re-readings of the western of the last decade
didn't particularly fascinate me. I approached this story indirectly. I saw it
as an initiation novel, the story of two adults who are like 12-year-old
children, they fight, they play tricks, they make farts like they're on a
camping trip. Reading their story is like leafing through the pages of an
illustrated fairy tale. There are no female characters because they are in a
puberty phase and women only arrive later, when the existential problems are
solved.
How did you work
on the western landscape?
I shot in Spain and Romania, but I'm not a gardener, I am
interested in characters rather than landscapes.
As in his previous
films, especially The Prophet, there are also tyrant fathers.
Violence is one of the components of the western, which
analyzes the coming to terms with the brutality of men, of the founding
fathers. In the film by John Ford The man who killed Liberty Valance we talk
about these issues, about the end of this system based on violence. I am very
interested in the question of inheritance, of what we do with the world that
has been transmitted to us.
She maintains a
constant and intense relationship with literature.
My father was a screenwriter and director and here is a
family legacy that counts a lot. I remember his reading tips well, while I
don't remember any recommendations on the movies to see. I have been editor,
screenwriter and then director, but as a screenwriter I focus on situations
rather than dialogues. Perhaps this is what the fight with my father is all
about.
What did you
advise her to read?
Many things. Proust comes to mind immediately because I
do nothing but read it and reread it, I haven't left yet. I wanted to broaden
my literary horizons, but I have just picked up in the shade of the flowering
girls.
Did shooting in
English make any changes to his language?
My last two films were shot in a language that is not
mine: Dheepan in Tamil and this one in English. Maybe I want to distance myself
from a language I think I know to create another relationship with the actors
and change what I expect from acting. It is as if I spontaneously left a more
intellectual approach to something musical.
Speaking of
revisited westerns it is impossible not to think of Sergio Leone. What
relationship do you have with him?
I admire him more than love him. I recognize in his
westerns a unique formal audacity and a synthetic thought that arouses deep
emotion. I love less films like Once Upon A Time in America Than Your Westerns.
He is a filmmaker whose legacy has not yet been exhausted, we are still
influenced by it. I can't remember what his films tell, but the images are
imprinted on me, as is the use of music and sounds. His way of creating is
masterful. I would have liked to talk to him and ask him some questions.
How did you work
on the western imagination?
We wrote and rewritten the film several times with
screenwriter Thomas Bidegain. At one point it was all at night, in black and
white, and the characters were like vampires crossing the screen. We thought we
were pushing stylization to the extreme. I knew there had to be some things: a
spider entering the open mouth of a man at night, the toothbrush, the fight
between the two brothers. The only form that could contain all these elements
was the fairytale imagery. In the end we decided to do it in color but with
desaturated colors, like the drawings in a children's book.
You made all your
films with the great musician Alexandre Desplat.
Yes, we took our first steps together in the cinema,
thirty years ago. He has a unique talent and is a great friend. There have been
great changes in our collaboration. At first he gave me samples to use on the
set, now he is waiting to have images to work. Normally I use both his original
music and the source music, to give an idea of the passing of time, while his
music allows me to draw situations and characters.
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