Luc Besson and Rie Rasmussen

We’re on our way.

She’s going to do it in the fall.

No, no, no, a whole new one.

Sometimes you see young people and you smell that they’re talented and full of imagery but the process of making a feature film has a certain digestion of things. You need a minimum of time to secure a few things. So even though she had done so many things the last two or three years, she was in the process of learning everything by doing two shorts, being on Angel-A for ten weeks and being part of the whole process. So now she’s ready.

Yeah, it was very fun because I worked with [cinematographer] Thierry Arbogast on both Femme Fatale and Angel-A. I was following him around half-naked on the set saying, “Thierry, remember in La Femme Nikita…” and he was like, “This girl’s crazy.” Then I got to work with Luc which was a thrill. Luc is a hero and an idol of mine. He has shaped me as a female with Le Femme Nikita so to be right there and let go of control and let him direct me was fantastic. I am an observant young girl so I was able to learn and I did.

It was about seven weeks. But some of the days were very short because there is the magic hour in Paris where you can’t fight the light. Sometimes we would rehearse a lot then we would get together and just shoot for an hour or two.

Then that would be it.

That would be it for the day. We were able to shoot full scenes in that short time though. For example, when they fight on the bridge, it is two Steadicams and a third camera on my shoulder.

That took like an hour and a half. But we would always do a full scene, no matter the number of pages, like a small theater piece.

The scene in the mirror happened to me with a girlfriend of mine, like probably 15 or 20 years ago. We were fighting each other and she grabbed me and pushed me in front of the mirror and said, “Okay, look at you and say it.” I couldn’t. I couldn’t say it. I said, “What’s wrong with you? Of course I can say it.” She said, “Okay, then say it” and I couldn’t say it. I thought “Why is it so difficult? Why can’t I say it? What’s wrong with me?” I never forgot this feeling and it took me like 20 years to understand that nothing was wrong, you just have to accept it. At least now, I can watch myself and say, “Okay, I like you, all right? Don’t bother me.”

Yes but she’s at a much more mature place. She can go to the mirror and kiss herself.

[laugh] I love myself. My parents were so supportive of me in everything I do, and they love me immensely; therefore, I do not have this question.

That little rejection of yourself always comes from your parents. They give you a reflection of yourself that you don’t like.

I have an extended, huge family. They live for the kids. There are nine of us and we are the gods, we are the religion and my parents are exceptional parents. That is their world. I would never question that because they love me.

My parents divorced when I was really young and then they remarried and they made other kids. That’s very difficult for you to love yourself because you are the only sibling that has seen that it didn’t work. My parents didn’t understand that, they were too young. They loved me a lot, but they didn’t know how to explain it or to say it. That stays with you.

No, I’ve had this story in my head for a long time. But I never found the girl and I never found the boy.

No. The script was in stand-by, but I never went more with it because I didn’t know if I could finish it. I met Rie and then I met Jamel [Debbouze] a couple of months later. I thought, “Oh. Maybe the guy I’ve seen over there and the girl I’ve seen over there would be good together.”

We were exactly what Luc needed us to be. We had the perfect energy on screen. Through Luc’s brilliant casting, we worked perfect as Angel-A and André.

Yes, from the beginning there was only this.

The film has a very important premise, love yourself, and others will love you. Respect yourself and others will respect you. If you can love yourself with your flaws, then you can love your neighbor with their flaws. Then maybe our cultures could start talking, maybe then the world would start functioning and we wouldn’t have to kill each other. The point of this film is a little social commentary about that no matter how different we look or we seem, with a little bit of love, a little bit of acceptance, we might make this things work easier.

When I make films, I am more interested in the content than the shape. But most of the time when I read papers and talk with people, it seems that people are much more impressed by the vision, the color, the shape and the music. For me, that’s the easy part for me so maybe unconsciously this was a way for me to fight that. To say, “It’s a man and a woman and they’re going to talk all day long.” But I couldn’t help myself because the film is still beautiful.

You got Luc Besson, that’s enough fucking motivation. He is the producer of the largest grossing, highest profit film company in Europe mainly because of his writing. He’s hands-on all day long. When you come on set, you better know your shit because this guy’s going to turn it out. It is the respect for him as a producer, as an artist, as a director that motivates me. You’re working with Luc Besson; he’s a fucking hero. So do it and do it well.

I think that the preparation is the most important. The relationship with the actor or the actress, talking about the script, knowing the lines by heart, rehearsing little by little so if you really prep enough, shooting is easy. It’s the signature at the end of the paper.

The preparation that we did was spot on, Jamel and I, we would never go out in front of the camera without having rehearsed the scene with Luc a hundred times minimum. There was no improvisation in this movie. As an actor, you can improvise once you know your character completely. But you can’t improvise if you don’t know the text by heart because then you’re just bullshitting. Picasso could draw silly, funny-looking ladies only after he could do complete realism.

Laure Manaudou is a 19 year old French girl that is the world champion of swimming, the French one. She has a big smile. She’s cute. She’s a big hero in France because she won many gold medals. When I was talking with her, she told me that she swims 16 kilometers a day and does three hours of pushups. So when she does a race, of course she wins. It’s only 400 meters. She says the race day is easiest one.

Yes my first film was in black and now my last one.

Black and white gives you that feeling that you don’t really know if it’s real or if it’s a dream or if it’s a poem because black and white is not reality.

I like the stark contrast.

No.

Not so much. Making a film together is like being a football team. You’re all like, “Yeah, we’re going to make it.” Part of it is the experience of being together all the time.

Film is not the actors’ vision. I can be super-excited about anything I want to do but ultimately he may say no. There’s no reason to argue against that because he is right, he is the director. It is his vision and that’s what you follow so there’s no like back and forth because he is the master. No is no.

Fucking cool, man. [laughs]

No, he might have been once but he does live in a mysterious Brian universe. He’s very quiet, very reclusive, very tired until his naptime. He’s the opposite of Luc, I would say.

Yes, Luc goes out and talks to all the other young people and meets new ones and gets inspired by the bird in the sky and whatnot. Every time I see him he has a new project running. Whereas Brian’s like, “Look, I’m going to take my time. I’m going to have a nap. I don’t want to talk too much.”

It’s funny because when I was younger, Brian inspired me a lot. I really like him a lot. I met him like two years ago and he’s older now and you can feel a little sadness. I think that the few times he tried to go the more commercial route through Hollywood hurt him a lot. It makes him sad. But I think when you are a real artist, and he is a real artist, you always have a moment in your life the Hollywood mermaid comes and says, “Here’s the money; here’s the power.” Sometimes you get attracted to it and say, “Yeah, maybe I should try” and I think this is what he thought. But I say never do it.

Don’t even try it. If you’re an artist, stay an artist. There is nothing to win. It doesn’t mean the Hollywood system is bad. It’s just another system.

Luc has always written everything he’s directed. He’s never been a writer/director for hire. But he started a company in Paris that will give a chance to young directors and it is profiting immensely so he knows how to create a flow of books and music and I think he gets his creative juices satisfied. He doesn’t have to look for money because he’s funding it himself with his own creativity.

I’ve worked in the movie business for 30 years now and for each film I work 40 different distributors around the world. The American distributor on Arthur [The Weinstein Company] was the worst I have worked with in my entire life, in any country. I think this is the essence of all the problems. Why the critics didn’t like Arthur was because they changed so much of the film and tried to pretend the film was American. The critics aren’t stupid. They watched the film, they vaguely smell American but they can feel the film is forced for an American audience. The film is European. It’s made by a Frenchman. This was the only country where the film was changed. The rest of the world has the same film as France.

What I really liked was to say that the savior of the universe would be a woman. She won’t be full of muscle. She would have no weapon. She won’t speak any language that we know. I liked this funny idea of the world being saved by this tiny, charming girl who wasn’t there for the last 10,000 years. She’s just come back in town and she’s discovering everything. She’s speaks 9000 languages except this one. At the time, I tested so many girls for the role. The test was so funny, for example I would point the camera at them and say, “Close your eyes and when you open them I want you see the world as if you have never seen it before.” The first time I did the test on Milla [Jovovich] she thought she was terrible and she was very surprised when we called her back for the second round.

Top secret details, I don’t know what I’m allowed to say.

In the fall, in the fall [laughs].

It’s basically about borders. The little red lines in the sand that creates little countries that Mother Earth wasn’t born with, meaning that all that violence and bloodshed and terror would be gone if the red lines were gone. I have a sister from Vietnam who was trying to get papers to get to Denmark for five years. My family wants her here but she’s not allowed to live in the country that her family lives in. We have protected those red lines on the map with bloodshed and terror for so long because we think this little piece of ground is so important to us. Also it’s the female’s point of view of dealing with equality.

Yes, I’ve directed myself in my own short films and I know the dialogue because I fucking wrote it. So I won’t be the little bitchy girl who won’t get up in the morning.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck