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Interview with the director
How did the idea for the film come to you?
It started with a quote of Marguerite Duras “To await love, is love itself.”… that which exists yet lies beyond belief, the space that lies between an ideal and reality. A musician’s life torn between all or nothing. I thought of a cellist..
Obsessive Rhythms depicts two connected yet opposing stories, in the same vein as a set of stairs we go up and down: the building of a hotel and love’s destruction. Is that the tale you sought to tell?
Love is broken down as the hotel is built up. Furio becomes more involved in his work as Margo fades into the depths of her broken heart. For Margo and Furio love is based on different foundation, just as the foundations of the hotel are not in line with building codes. Margo expects love to be fiery, not tepid. In expecting love to be everything, it crumbles. She gave herself wholly to love. She sacrificed her music for love hoping it would in turn fulfill her. She struggles to come to terms with its day-to-day banality. Tormented by the feeling of having lost everything, Margo misses what life has to offer.
Does that mean that being an artist and love are incompatible?
Art is not a labour and love is not routine. Art takes over where love leaves off, and sometimes they overlap. While art and love are not sworn enemies, they are foes that feed off of each other. Margo seeks out the boundary between the two. For her, playing the cello (albeit for a very minor occasion) is a way of not entirely letting herself go. She learns from art and from its windy paths things she did not learn from love.
She says, “I loved. I am loved no more.”
Yes. It is the feeling of loss. Forsaken, she falls into an abyss. Another character in the film says to her, “I would rather destroy things than become complacent with ugliness”. Here she realises this is also how she sees things. She can at last put words to her own experiences. She can bring about an end.
Furio (Nuno Lopes) says, “You’re making a spectacle of yourself. People think you’re mad!” Is she mad? Or more a woman who is pushing boundaries, breaking taboos?
No. Margo is not mad. She is always tempted by the desire to burn that which is sacred. There are those in life who are quiet and thankful for what life brings, then there are those who long to burn and be burned by it.
She is also a woman trying to find her place in a man’s world…
In a world that is different. She likes animosity, confrontation. Confrontation allows us to better define ourselves. We are forced to understand things, because if we don’t we will lose them.
"Obsessive Rhythms" is also a film about betraying one’s own ideals – ideals that come from ones youth. Margo’s music teacher says to her that she has given up on her calling and her career.
Margo believed in love. She gave up her music, and she bears this like a deep self-inflicted wound. Her character is mirrored my Carmine (Franco Nero), the man involved in shady, even illicit activities – whose childhood dream of a career in politics never came to be. He gave up everything and instead buried himself in cynicism and hustling.
Furio, tries to maintain his integrity, but in vain…
In his desire to make it through life he fights for all that is good. Unlike the others, he has no ideals – he is pragmatic. Despite his well-meaning nature he makes compromises that don’t serve him well.
Each, in their own way, must pay for their decisions.
Everything comes at a price. Whatever we may chose. It’s the tale of The Dog and the Wolf (ed. Fable by de La Fontaine).
How were the actors chosen for their roles?
“The land belongs to those who works it”, whether it be for the cinema or the theatre, an actor who says “yes” to any given role will always be the right actor. I love accents. Words have a different sound; sentences, a different rhythm.
The Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, and Romanian characters are only passing through the city that remains nameless. The only Frenchmen always there is priest Villedieu.
Asia Argento is very animalistic…
Margo is a tormented woman, but not a victim. Her being provocative is just her way of keeping her head above water, despite her ever-present slippery footing. She is almost infuriating at first, then suddenly disarming.
She and you are very similar… the voice… the way you move…
You think so? (smiles)
Let’s talk about Gérard Depardieu…
He turned up, just like that, one night during winter. He played the role of the priest as if he were a guardian angel who listens, understands without passing judgment, and is patient.
Let’s now talk about your directing choices. It is a very pictorial film.
I often wanted the characters to be alone in the frame with nothing else. Like how there is no one to talk to when you feel alone. I wanted closed doors, bare walls. I didn’t want to show the sky.
I wanted a ghostlike town, one that doesn’t really exist.
Music plays a major part.
Jean-Michel Bernard composed a theme, then made countless variations. The cello, played by Wieder Atherton, is only heard when Margo is a cellist – the accomplished musician who continues to be so, despite no longer having an audience to listen.
And there’s also the song by Luigi Tenco ‘ho capito che it amo’. It’s a love song that serves the dual role of both a talisman and a premonition.
It’s also a film that relies on metaphors.
True. The restoration process of the fresco teaches Margo how things from the past can be salvaged, even rewritten.
Why ‘Obsessive Rhythms’ for a title?
The rhythms of work, the rhythms in music, the rhythms of the heart.
Fanny Ardant Filmography
