For her latest work, Director Mia Hansen-Løve inspects the unpredictable nature of life and the ways in which one woman navigates the death of her mother, loss of her job and the discovery of a cheating spouse. To find out more, French journalist Laure Adler spoke to Hansen-Løve about the complex issues tackled in Things to Come…
For you, has cinema always been a way of exploring the inner workings of a person who is constantly evolving?
MHL: Yes, it’s also the possibility of capturing existence, through a presence. To my mind, films are moving portraits and only cinema is capable of making that. It’s as much about pinning down that which may be sensitive, sensual or simply ephemeral, as trying to find an opening onto the impalpable, the infinite.
In Things To Come, your characters’ destinies are not set in stone. You film life as an eternal chance to start over.
MHL: I have an ambivalent relationship to that idea. How is it possible to believe simultaneously in freedom and destiny? This creates tension, between the conviction that you must allow yourself to be swept along and the belief in possible fulfilment through movement one cannot control.
It often feels as if Isabelle Huppert’s character has absolutely no idea not only what tomorrow, but also what the very next moment will bring. Does that come from liberties that you allow yourself on set? Do you stick closely to the script or do you look for happy accidents?
MHL: My films aren’t cut out to be rehearsed before we shoot simply because the truth of every scene relies heavily on the setting, its lighting, its atmosphere, and how that influences the actors. The script, structure and dialogue are very important but what is at stake on set is bringing it to life, and that comes from an interaction between cast and director that can only occur at that precise moment. It may take some time or slot swiftly into place, it may be how you pictured it or take you in a completely different direction – there are no rules, except to maintain a state of openness, total acuity.
Things To Come is the portrait of a woman of your mother’s age. How important is this notion of generations in your work?
I have always felt out of sync with my age, to an almost pathological degree that drives my writing. It nurtured a melancholy, from which cinema released me. You write to free yourself of your demons while constantly going back to them. When I shoot, my sense of removal from the world vanishes. The sustained tempo of writing and shooting over the last ten years comes from an addiction to this feeling of rediscovering the present. Whatever the age or gender of the characters, when I’m shooting, I feel totally at one with them, and with myself.
You explore an under-exploited theme in movies, which could be the world of ideas.
MHL: Nathalie’s destiny, her strength in enduring the breakup, is indissociable from her relationship to ideas, teaching and transmission. I could not approach that in an anecdotal manner. Moreover, what reinforced my desire to film a philosophy teacher who is possessed by her job is the cinema’s lack of liberty in terms of the representation of intellectuals and of the seesaw elaboration of ideas. There are few films where you know which newspapers the characters read, which ideas they are attached to and which political issues agitate them. I always try to establish my characters in the real world, but Things To Come was a chance for me to embrace fully this relationship to books and ideas. That cannot be reduced to a description of a social environment. It also involves a form of precision that may be seen not only as documentary but also poetical. I am touched when I hear the names of the places the characters pass through. Likewise, the names of magazines they read or bands they listen to. Patrick Modiano’s obsession with names, places and dates, as fixed points that one can cling to, is an aspect of his inspiration with which I have always identified. It’s linked to our need for memory, the fragility of life and the desire to bear its marks.
Where does Nathalie come from? How did she take shape in your imagination?
MHL: Partly, she comes from the couple my parents formed, their intellectual bond and my mother’s energy. Afterwards, there is the brutality of separation and the difficulty for many women over a certain age to escape a form of solitude, which I, like everybody else, have had occasion to observe. But I wrote the movie with Isabelle Huppert in mind, so Nathalie emerged from the encounter between my memories and observations, and Isabelle. The script of Things To Come practically wrote itself despite the fears I had about the theme and its effect on me. The subject matter frightened me because of a certain darkness linked to the fact of being a woman,but it had to be. If I was going to go there, I wanted to do so without fear or self-censorship. Fear, for example, would have been to introduce a romantic encounter to make it a happier ending. Self-censorship would have been to make Nathalie something other than a philosophy teacher. The more I worked on it, the more I realized the link between philosophy teaching as I experienced it through my parents and what cinema means to me. That which was passed onto me and that I reproduced in my own way is the quest for meaning. Constant questioning. It is also an obsession with clarity and preoccupation with integrity. Deep down, for me, art and philosophy are two possible routes to a single thing, and that is our link with the invisible. The strength and courage that our questioning, however scary, brings us are at the crux of the movie.
Isabelle Huppert succeeds once more in surprising us, as the ultimate incarnation of a character– the way she moves, occupies the space, talks, sunbathes, thinks…
MHL: Beyond the fact that I rate her as the greatest French actress, I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing the part. Besides the well-known facets of her talent (finesse, energy, humor, the hint of ferocity), I also had in mind the Isabelle Huppert that I had met away from the movies, who cannot be summed up by the characters we are used to seeing her play. There was some- thing else that caught my attention, a particular fragility and sort of tranquility in total contrast to the tough cookies she often plays. I was keen to bring that out and take her toward something more gentle, tender or even innocent.
Besides your hometown, Paris, you film nature a lot: the sea, Brittany beaches, mountains, snow. Nature plays an important role in the film and in Nathalie’s inner journey.
Yes, like in all my films. Switching from city to countryside, from one season to another, is a constant I cannot escape. I imagine it’s linked to the passing of time, and to a fairly impressionistic way of making movies. Similarly, I accord considerable importance to locations. I am drawn to places that have charm, soul and history. Other directors actively seek out the opposite and feel freer and more comfortable in neutral or sanitised environments. I need to sense a flux, a vibe, layers of life, so that I feel a connection and know where to put the camera. That’s why I couldn’t shoot a film in studio.
Things to Come is out now. To find out more and book tickets, head here.
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