Interview: Claire Denis on Bastards and the Mystery Of Cinema

I do not create the space for the audience. I simply need them in the storytelling. Many filmmakers gravitate toward mysteries, but few have created puzzle-boxes that function as inventively as Claire Deniss Bastards. We sat down with the acclaimed French director.

Internationally revered auteur Claire Denis is one of the most well-respected filmmakers working today, constantly experimenting with narrative forms (her famously inscrutable feature The Intruder was based upon a work of philosophy by Jean-Luc Nancy).

Denis is back with Bastards, her take on a specifically tragic kind of film noir, which is partially inspired by William Faulkners lurid, written-to-get-rich-quick novel Sanctuary. Like Sanctuary, Bastards concerns an abducted young woman, though in the case of Deniss film the young woman has returned from abduction as the film begins.

Our protagonist, however, is Marco (Vincent Lindon, somber and perfect), a sailor who quits his job and returns home to help his sister after her husband commits suicide and her daughter Justine, the aforementioned abductee (Lola Creton), turns up walking down a Paris street wearing only a pair of high heels, in a fugue state. As Marco gets to work on figuring out who was behind Justines abduction, and whether or not it relates to the businessman (Michel Subor) who bankrupted his brother-in-laws shoe factory, were plunged down an increasingly terrifying rabbit hole of exploitation and double-crosses.

Like in all the classic film noirs, Denis has constructed a narrative that pits one good man against an almost institutionally powerful network of nefarious, self-serving interests; but unlike those classics, Denis has structured her film in a postmodern, elliptical fashion, with some scenes being presented achronologically and other scenes being revisited over and over again as new pieces of information surface.

Cleverly pairing the form of solving a mystery with the form of a flashback-riddled film, Denis exposes some fascinating formal potentialities lying dormant in the basement of cinematic style. I had the chance recently to sit down and discuss the picture with Denis, a uniquely mysterious filmmaker whose thoughts often retained the opacity of her moody, atmospheric story.

Tribeca: Your film recirculates to certain images over the course of the film, over and over again. It made me think of the way a mystery functions, in which you are perpetually returning to clues and looking at them from different angles, and it also made me think of the way cinema functions, in which you turn images over that become kind of bored into your mind. It recalled Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Last Year At Marienbad, for me. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the connection between the structure of mystery and the structure of cinema, formally?

Claire Denis: Its not like a tool, like something you use when youre cooking - its something that shows when youre writing the script. The effort of writing a script - its important to have a sort of inside reason, or leitmotif, something that will anchor any narration into something that will be deep inside, like a motif, you know? I think of course this shape is already there in the script.

It would be terrific for me to make an American film, to be funny like Tarantino, but Im me.

I have to say, if I dont feel that in a script, I am in trouble and I think I wont be able to make the film. It has to be - working on the script is sort of an exercise to be prepared for the shape of the film to come. So when you give me the example of Hiroshima, Mon Amour, I think the reason of the voice-over by Marguerite Duras and the sound of the voice of the actress, and the way Marguerite Duras says things as if the present was already past, it gives a sort of shape to the film, as if it was already gone. What is gone in Hiroshima, Mon Amour is what happened to the actress with the German soldier in Nevers, but what is gone is Hiroshima, the city - "You saw nothing at Hiroshima" - and what is gone is also the fact that the actress is leaving.

So I think all of that is contained in those voice-over lines, and its as if those two characters were in love, but in a non-existent time. Shes in the past, the city of Hiroshima is in the past, and the man she loves, his future is in Japan.

Tribeca: I wonder if theres something similar going on in this film. This film is about a guy trying to construct a narrative, in the present, of something that occurred in the past. Its almost as if the most important events in Bastards have already taken place when the film begins, and everything that happens from thereon out is like this inevitable chain reaction.

Claire Denis: I agree.

Tribeca: Theres something kind of tragic and beautiful about that narrative construction.

Claire Denis: Yeah. I was mostly inspired by Faulkner, something in Faulkner. Faulkners writing is the best way to describe what life is made of, to find where the tragedy is in life. Its not always a tragedy - sometimes there are good moments - sometimes you need to drink a lot to stand the bad moments - but everything is there, and you know exactly that they are heading in the direction of disaster.

In filmmaking, day by day youre fighting against all elements, like sailing a boat, you know? If its bad weather, you have to react to that. If theres no wind, you cannot move.

Something tells you in the beginning - a young woman is leaving home, walking on a road, pregnant, and shes walking to the next city, which will have tragedy for her, too - thats the beginning of Light In August. There is something in Sanctuary that I always remember, and thats the end. After the kidnapping and rape of the girl with the corn, the father is rich, and suddenly - there isnt even a new chapter, youre in the courtroom during the trial, and in the next line youre in a park in Paris. Its n

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