- The Observer, Sunday 30 July 2000
In the last few weeks of the twentieth century Patrice Leconte was the most talked-about director in France. Every major newspaper ran articles and editorials devoted to him, praising him and deriding him. But the strange thing was, Leconte didn't have a film out at the time.
The entire debacle was a mistake. What actually happened on 13 October 1999 was that Leconte finally put down on paper some of the thoughts that had been vexing him over the past few years. The French media, Leconte felt, was not supportive enough of the indigenous film industry.
At the height of the New Wave French critics and film directors had been pretty much indistinguishable, most - like Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol - swapping the typewriter for a movie camera after serving an apprenticeship on pioneering intellectual film magazine Cahiers Du Cinema.
Nowadays, thought Leconte, critics were simply acting as judge, jury and executioner, effectively killing French films before they could even reach their intended audience. In a private letter to the Society of Auteurs, Directors and Producers, Leconte said the issue was nearing crisis point and suggested a summit meeting. He also added a list of the publications whose reviews he felt were most damaging, but as a result of an administrative slip-up, his memo ended up being faxed to them as well. The next day, all hell broke loose.
Was it really an accident or was he being disingenuous? And if it was an accident, was he really so surprised by the reaction? Actually, yes. Leconte, 52, a modest, wiry and conservatively dressed man, recalls the affair with detachment and perhaps a little irritation. 'I was surprised,' he says quietly, 'because of the scale of the whole thing. It just became huge. It blew up so much. When the critics - and that's a very small portion of specific, targeted critics - started writing pages and pages and pages I was shocked, really. I felt like saying, "Do you realise what a state you're getting yourself into?" Because, initially, all I wanted to say was "Please, just be a tiny bit careful about what you write, and show your readers that you really love cinema." But it just blew up beyond belief. And it really annoyed me.'
Interestingly, Leconte's new film is also about unlikely heroes. Starring Juliette Binoche, Daniel Auteuil and moonlighting film director Emir Kusturica, La Veuve De Saint Pierre takes place in 1850 and tells the story of an alcoholic sailor, Neel, who stabs a man to death in a drunken argument. The cause of the crime is beyond comprehension - in court, Neel recalls only that he cut the man open to settle an argument as to whether he was 'big or fat' - and the jury on the French-Canadian island of Saint Pierre sentences him to death. The problem is, there is no guillotine on the island, and even when one arrives in eight months time, there will be no one to act as executioner.
As he awaits his appointment with the chopping block, Neel is placed in the care of the Captain (Auteuil), whose wife, Madame La (Binoche), pleads for special allowances for the condemned man. Over the next eight months Neel is totally rehabilitated; he renounces drinking, carries out odd jobs for local widows and risks his life to save the town café and its owner.
As the execution date looms, the islanders begin to realise that the man who will die is not the same man who committed the crime and so they strive to stop the killing. Based on a true story, La Veuve is a surprisingly emotional and moving film from a director who usually presents his sharp intelligence in much more guarded terms, as in his breakthrough film, the Hitchcockian thriller, Monsieur Hire, made in 1989.
'I totally agree,' he says. 'But I knew that I had this desire to shoot a big melodrama, a film that would be a really novelistic film. Tragic. But obviously on condition that it would be with dignity, that it would be a very beautiful story.
'So, paradoxically, I was actually waiting for that kind of project. It wasn't that I was simply indulging myself by doing something different yet again. I wasn't chasing around after that. But I knew that, within me, there was this taste for the beautiful, sad things.'
That said, there's an extraordinary sense of wit underlying this apparently dark, morbid story. The idea, for example, that a convicted killer can charm the whole neighbourhood to become something of a local hero. And there's also the idea that, for all her good intentions, the socially conscious Madame La is simply pushing matters towards their obvious conclusion, while actually making things worse for herself and her doting husband.
To call it a black comedy would be going too far, but there's certainly something at odds with the ravishing, dark mood. 'I'm not consciously doing that,' says Leconte 'but it could be a reflection of my second nature. It's not necessarily humour you're seeing, but there is a kind of irony that comes through. And it's simply because I am incapable - violently incapable - of taking myself seriously. But it's also because in making this film - which I deeply wanted to do, was passionate about and which really moved me - I didn't want to risk becoming too heavy.'
Likewise, the film doesn't seem so concerned with history itself. Like Leconte's 1995 film Ridicule - another period film, which concerned itself with the social intrigues of the court of Louis XVI - La Veuve seems less interested in history than the conventions within it. 'You could say that,' he shrugs, 'but what interests me more is the customs of the people. I'm more interested in people as human beings, so obviously their behaviour is more interesting to me. But it's true that I haven't really got the soul of a historian. I was a very bad student in history at school and I haven't really changed much on that score. And so when I make a film like La Veuve , I apply my own sensitivity as a man of today. I didn't make the film by projecting myself into the past.'
After the furore about French critics and French film, how was La Veuve treated in its homeland? 'Basically, they pissed me off by writing things that were nothing. The specific targeted papers just wrote stuff that was very tepid. Neither good nor bad. It was the worst attitude, actually. But at the same time, I don't regret having caused such a stink. It wasn't a bad thing because it had a positive outcome; on the first of January - the first day of the new century - I made a resolution. I swore to myself that never again would I read reviews, either of my films or of the others. And for a very simple reason: when you read a good review it makes you feel good for a little while, but when you read a bad review, the damage can be very harmful.'
So it's unlikely that Leconte will be reading any press on his new film, Felix And Lola, which he shot almost back-to-back with La Veuve - and with good reason.
'I often shoot films straight away because I like to be in the middle of a shoot while the previous film is coming out,' he says. 'I like to keep myself busy, otherwise if you're not, you're at home, waiting for the figures to come in.'
He sighs.
'It's just too stressful!'
Tales of obsession: three of Leconte's finest
Hairdresser's Husband (1990)
An entrancing and deeply erotic love story between an enigmatic hairdresser and a middle-aged man . The plot is negligible, revolving around their frenetic sex life and strange behaviour. But the pleasure is all in the details.
Le Parfum d'Yvonne (1994)
Set during a heady summer on Lake Geneva in the Fifties. A young writer seeks refuge from military service and the Algerian War, falling in love with a cool beauty and embarking on a sensual journey of self discovery.
Ridicule (1996)
Trenchant comedy set during the reign of Louis XVI. An idealistic baron goes to court to win funds for a drainage system to benefit his peasants. There he discovers a gift for courtly humour and fame which threatens to corrupt him.
• La Veuve De Saint Pierre opens 4 August
