Marc Cassivi: Your film celebrates French quality through culinary art. Is this a love letter to France for you?
Trân Anh Hùng: It’s a love letter to France, yes. I drew all my first impressions from within myself when I discovered France. There is a beauty in the French spirit that is summed up for me with the word “measure.” It’s never exuberant. Whether in architecture, in painting, in all the arts, there is a certain measure.
M.C.: It’s not flamboyance, but elegance…
T.A.H. : Quite. I really wanted to make a film that had this substance, with restraint, even feelings. It is in this sense that I say that it is a tribute to France and not to gastronomy. It’s really the spirit, that’s what counts.
M.C.: And was going through gastronomy a good vehicle to pay this homage?
T.A.H. : Yes quite. There was not a fierce desire to make a film about French cuisine, but to make a film about cooking as art. I think that all directors want in their life to make a film about art. Some choose painting or music. I preferred culinary art because it’s true. It’s not like someone pretending to paint a Van Gogh. And I pompously challenged myself: I wanted to make a film about food that would give a hard time to the next director who wants to make a film about food!
M.C.: How did you discover the historical novel [by Marcel Rouff, published in 1924] that inspired the film?
T.A.H. : I came across this rather old-fashioned book by chance, especially in the treatment of human relationships. But there are some wonderful pages about food. I found it amazing how people talked about it and kept these pages to tell another story. The one which, ultimately, precedes the book.
M.C.: So it’s very loosely inspired by the novel…
T.A.H. : Yes, because I wanted to give a particular tone to this love story. I wanted it to be a conjugal love, that is to say a love which is not passionate, but rather a search for harmony to be able to last a long time together. And that, obviously, is a real challenge because it’s much more exciting and easier to show passion and confrontation than to try to create a form of harmony that isn’t boring! [Laughs]
M.C.: Obviously, you feature Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche, who we hadn’t seen together on screen for 25 years, at Diane Kurys [for Les enfants du siècle]. We feel that there is chemistry between them, perhaps also because we know that they have already formed a couple…
T.A.H. : For me, it was obvious that it would be these two actors. Juliette was there from the start of the project, because we had promised each other a long time ago to make a film together. She stayed on the project despite all the difficulties of COVID which occurred and which stopped everything. I told him about Benoît from the start. She didn’t think it was a good idea. She thought he would never accept because of what happened between them. We waited a long time, and then finally I went to ask Benoît and he accepted straight away! On the set, it was wonderful because they are, on the one hand, extraordinary actors, and on the other hand, great professionals.
M.C.: The French press was less enthusiastic about your film than the international press at the Cannes Film Festival. That doesn’t really surprise me. Abroad, we have a certain idea of France and we like this vision to be embraced. Maybe the French found it too cliché?
T.A.H. : It’s a very special thing. It’s linked to my relationship with the French press. She has always been horrible to me, on all my films. I’m not surprised. I should have said, from my first film, that the New Wave is everything for me. I never said it. For me, Truffaut does illustration. I enjoy watching the Doinel cycle, I know the films by heart, the story is nice, but from the point of view of pure cinematography, it is very poor. While Godard is rich in cinema.
M.C.: For the French press, this love letter to France comes too late?
T.A.H. : No not at all. For the French press, it’s as if I said one thing and did something else. Maybe that’s it. For critics, it is not a love letter to France.
M.C.: From this point of view, is having been chosen to represent France at the Oscars a balm?
T.A.H. : Yes, it caused controversy [Anatomy of a Fall by Justine Triet was the anticipated candidate], but for me, it is a great pleasure to represent France at the Oscars. It is an honor. The Oscars are an interesting goal for the film and it’s really exciting for me.
M.C.: Was it for France that you were there with The Smell of Green Papaya?
T.A.H. : No, I was in the five finalists for Vietnam, even though I had already lived in France for a long time. What is important for me, when I make a film, is to provide the viewer with something of quality in terms of cinematographic language. French critics are too consumed by the theme and the story. I don’t think they know what cinematic language is. They don’t ask the question. The entire discussion is on the theme that is most current. That doesn’t interest me. In 100 years, if we still watch films, it will be the cinematic language that will take precedence, and not the little story that happened at a certain time.
M.C.: It’s not the story we tell that matters, but the way we tell it…
T.A.H. : Exactly. And through that, create emotion and meaning that only cinema can give. Most films, whether French or otherwise, are simply illustrations of stories and themes. There is no cinema. It’s very poor.
Born in Da Nang, Vietnam, Trân Anh Hùng arrived in France as a refugee at the age of 12.
Winner of the Golden Camera for best first feature film at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993 for The Smell of Green Papaya, he won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival two years later for Cyclo.
Vertically Summer (2000) concludes his Vietnamese trilogy. He adapted The Ballad of the Impossible, a novel by Haruki Murakami, in 2009 and directed Éternité in 2016.
