interview de Jean Hugues Anglade concernant TONKA-620
Both. I wanted to tell this story and make a film of it. A film, therefore, on the story of a sprinter who, at the peak of a remarkable sporting career, gives in to his doubts and, in very particular circumstances, meets Tonka, a young woman of Indian origin. She runs by day on the runways at Charles-de-Gaulle airport, among the planes, and sleeps at night in a huge advertising can at the edge of the motorway. Gifted with amazing rapidity and charisma, Tonka, through her love, gives this man renewed confidence and the taste for running again.
A love story then ?
Absolutely. But not just any love story and more than a love story! Because it brings together two people whose worlds and bearings are so different that there is immediately a very special poetry, originality and emotion given off by their encounter, and because this story tells us how two characters, despite everything that opposes them (their roots, personality and preoccupations) are naturally brought to meet one another, understand and love each other. This made me want to take the film beyond the simple framework of a love story to open up to a more philosophical side by deliberately avoiding clichés. That is what I have tried to do.
Did you know from the outset that the character of Tonka would be of Indian origin and that she would choose to live near the Charles-de-Gaulle airport runways ?
Yes, this is something that comes from Nocturne Indien, Alain Corneau’s film. That was a shoot that left a very strong impression on me. When I first set foot in India, I was gripped by terrible anxiety. It’s a continent that’s in total contradiction with the West. It’s as if you realized that you’re built upside down, that you sleep head-to-toe with yourself. In Bombay, the cows eat newspaper and the dogs sleep curled up in the middle of the road! It’s extremely unsettling. Death is present everywhere. But the Indians display no wariness of it; unlike us they don’t live with the anxiety of its reality. They live in perfect harmony with it. Therefore, your certainties, principles and Western reflexes cause your ruin there. I was there six weeks. A nightmare.
A few years later – and this is what brings us to Tonka – I remembered two images. On my arrival, on the Bombay runway, through the window, I had seen an Indian family, walking alongside the plane, barefoot, totally free and ignoring the danger. I found that totally anachronistic and, at the same time, highly poetic. The second image was something I witnessed on the last night of shooting, once again through a window but this time of the taxi that was taking me back to the Taj Mahal Hotel. It was probably two or three o’clock in the morning. A little girl in rags, covered in dust, was running along the side of the freeway. We looked at each other and I remember that her eyes were filled with intense loneliness blended with an incredible lust for life. These two memories helped me to create the character of Tonka around the idea of an Indian girl, based in France, and then to locate the place where she would live, her ecosystem, if you like: the world of the runways and planes at Charles-de-Gaulle Airport. Finally, and above all, the experience of this stay in India allowed me to gradually focus on Tonka’s behavioural grammar, what characterizes her and fascinates the Sprinter, this apparent disorder, this logic that belongs only to her, a whole amalgam of intentions and contradictory truths that lend her a purity, generosity and incredible authenticity thanks to which the Sprinter will be reborn.
That’s all very romantic …
Yes, no. I don’t know. That’s life. It’s very "today" in any case! The end of the century is terrifying. Millions of people no longer work and because they have no social identity, they lose their taste for life. Tonka speaks to people through the basis of an original, amusing and touching love story, deliberately bathed in an optimistic light. I wanted the film to be deep and full of hope.
How did you create the character of the Sprinter whom you play in the film ?
The character of the Sprinter was formed at the same time as Tonka’s. In fact, I was looking for a common point between them. I found it in the idea of running. This led to the idea of an encounter between a sprinter on the decline and a tiny savage as fast as lightning. Each runs for different reasons. And their love story is built up on the foundation of these differences.
In practicing sport at a high level, the Sprinter lives in a precise framework, under the influence of a demanding trainer. Regularity, effort and the sacrifices inherent in the aims that he has set for himself are his bearings. Through the power of his legs and his results, he has forged himself an image of an exceptional athlete: a stadium professional whose ambition is to push his limits a little further back each time. But, in trying to win too much, he injures himself one day and what should have merely been one injury among others suddenly becomes the object of intense self-examination.
The contrary is Tonka. Bare feet, grace, the arrogance of pleasure, speed in its pure state, all of which seem to say: "I’ve been given legs; look how I use them." The Sprinter realizes that he has got everything wrong, that he needs to start from scratch again.
How did you feel about being both in front of and behind the camera ?
I think that I can say it was a very positive experience. In several respects.
Firstly because, as an actor, I felt a number of points in common with this sprinter. Both, in their own way, practice an individual sport that requires very steady mental balance. The sprinter’s identity is one of loneliness, ambition and the quest for perfection. That of the actor too. At the same time, in the mind of each of them, there exists the following permanent doubt: will I be up to my ambitions? Am I really destined for the goals I seek? For all these reasons, I felt a sort fraternal bond with him. In addition, this double capacity gave me the advantage of remaining in direct contact with the actors and, in particular, with Pamela Soo who was making her acting debut in the film. I didn’t want there to be any intermediary between her and me, given that the actor playing the Sprinter would constantly need to adapt to the unexpected aspects of her performance. And, a little like Truffaut in L’Enfant sauvage, I wanted to be there to highlight her as much as possible, given the importance of her character and the immense potential offered by her personality.
Indeed, Pamela Soo reveals amazing presence in the film. Did you look for an actress for long before settling on her ?
No, yes. In fact, I pretended to. The producers at the time, who weren’t the right ones, strongly advised me to "cast" other Indians because the person whom I was suggesting to them (Pamela Soo) scared them. This little game lasted long enough to become boring and depressing. I found skilful and graceful girls but not one of them had Pamela’s physique and unpredictability. Pamela is exceptional. She has no knowledge of acting techniques and yet she knocks the most experienced actors for a six. Her audacity is quite simply stunning because it isn’t at all calculated. The cinema needs people like her. I waited five years to make this film with her. I could have waited ten. This film would never have been made without her. If everyone were to hail her performance now, I would be over the moon.
How did you meet Jean-François Lepetit ?
In reply, I feel like quoting a line from John Woo’s "The Killer": "You don’t always win but you can’t keep on losing…" And so, one morning at the café "Le Dôme", you meet the right producer! I had reached the seventeenth version of Tonka. He said to me, and I quote: "It’s impossible, your screenplay is completely stunted! After all these drafts, there has to be one that truly reflects your intentions! You find it and I’ll produce the film!" "With Pamela?" I asked. "Of course! Can you see anyone else in the part?" He smiled at me. There. This man is an angel or an Indian god…
Were you apprehensive of your first steps as a director ?
No. I never approached Tonka as a challenge on a directing level. The important thing was for the film to exist. Through this film, I’ve never attempted to prove that I was a director but simply to tell a powerful story that marks people. In any case, I’m convinced that the story brings about the style and not the opposite.
Have you learnt a lot from the directors whom you have worked with ?
Yes. And I thank them all enormously. But those whom I thank above all are my first assistant, my director of photography, my script supervisor… and all those who stuck their necks out. Those people have all my gratitude.
How did the shoot go ?
It was tough but that’s what I expected.
Apart from the encounter between Tonka and the Sprinter, one of the strong points of the film is the fact that it lends a genuinely poetic dimension to apparently very ordinary settings. This is the case with Charles-de-Gaulle airport as you have filmed it but also with the giant Coke can that Tonka lives in…
Everything is linked. The poetic dimension of the settings is related to the function of what you place within them, the characters, situations and dialogue. To attain emotion, you have to find the fair balance between all these elements and many others…
Where did you get the idea of using the Coke can ?
The ideas are the first thing you have!! (laughter). No, seriously, three or four years ago, a similar can was there, at the side of the motorway. Everyone was able to notice it. At the time, I was hanging out in that area trying to find my story. When I saw the can, I immediately thought that it would be a perfect place to sleep safe from any problems. Secondly, it was a place that resembled my heroine. I said earlier that Tonka was an amalgam. She absorbs, she immediately takes over everything that crosses her path, the best and the worst. She is at the crossroads of several cultures: India through her roots, France where she was born, the "American way of life" through this giant Coke can. Mix all that together and you have a character from here and elsewhere, a free zone character.
The fact that she should find a shelter in this can seemed both possible and totally improbable to me. It’s like walking alongside a jumbo jet on a runway. It is both real and improbable and it’s poetic because it evokes the co-existence of the individual and an incredibly violent and brutal world. In fact, this image expresses a lot of what I feel in life.
Did you know the world of athletic competition well ?
Let me say right now that Tonka isn’t a film about sport. Athletics is merely a background, a pretext. I could just as easily have used any other social or professional category concerning the Sprinter and, clearly, this is not what people will remember after viewing the film. But, as I said earlier, I was looking for a common point between Tonka and the Sprinter. I wanted Tonka, physically, to contain in her all the elements that could instantly confront the Sprinter’s problems. There again, I had to carry out a genuine investigation to enter the world of athletics and to learn its rules in every detail. I gave five years of my life to this film.
Like Pamela, I trained as a sprinter for two years. I’d put on spikes and train at the INSEP (l’Institut National des Sports et Education Physique) several times a week. It was hard physically. At my level, I was able to "appreciate" the whole range of pain inherent in this discipline. Enough, at least, to understand that sprinting is a very particular feeling, a very fleeting one which is both highly technical and very mental. To run fast, you need to be both determined and relaxed. Once again, it is very close to an actor’s performance: you have to aim for something and, at the same time, demystify it completely if you want to have a chance of reaching it. This is part of the paradoxes that I am particularly fond of.
The relationship between the two characters is very touching but also leads to often very amusing dialogue. Was this intention present in your mind as you were writing ?
When people laugh, it’s always a surprise. Because even if you’re more or less aware of it while writing and making the film, the fact that you see the same situations over and over again a thousand times means that you tend to forget the humour that may be present in certain scenes. In the case of a film where emotion is predominant, this is a pretty good thing. But I never insisted on this aspect during shooting. It arises naturally, particularly from the character of Tonka who is always there where you least expect her, who often takes one word for another or who uses striking short-cuts in embarrassing situations. This is partly the film’s reason for being. And I’m delighted if it works.
You’ve asked Gabriel Yared to compose the film’s score…
I’ve known Gabriel since Betty Blue. Over the years, our friendship has grown stronger. I had him read Tonka at a time when the film was far from being a sure thing and he had liked the subject a lot. When I showed him the film for the first time, I had used other borrowed pieces of music that gave a very precise idea of the emotional intensity that I was aiming for. I had chosen all kinds of music: a brief baroque adagio, a piano ballad by Badalamenti, David Lynch’s musician, a hard American rap tune, a sort of melting pot of famous tunes played on the organ, with nostalgic and old-fashioned tones, etc. Gabriel understood perfectly what the film was relating at its heart and genuinely served the story. He composed the first themes that overwhelmed me. The music and the film are inseparable as far as I’m concerned, just like Gabriel and I. I could never have conceived of entrusting the film’s score to anyone else. I think he knows that.
By the way, where does the name Tonka come from ?
When I was at acting school, I staged a play called Hunting Scenes in Bavaria in which one of the characters was a young prostitute called Tonka. That’s a happy memory. And so when I started dreaming about the character of this young Indian woman, for a thousand and one reasons, I wanted to call her Tonka. Later, I found out that Tonka is also the brand name of an indestructible range of toys and that in South America, Tonka is the name of a hallucinogenic flower that is used in perfume. All these different interpretations were added on later, during writing. There may well be others that I don’t know yet.
Without giving the end away, did you hesitate over it for long ?
The one that I have chosen fits in well with the story as it unfolds. Her love for the Sprinter leads Tonka to take the risk of leaving her world to follow him. When she returns to the airport, she has lost her bearings. Danger is necessarily present. After the Charlety meet, the film changes radically. It’s a series of unfortunate and traumatizing situations. Tonka, exhausted, is in an intensely fragile state. Given what happens next, I had to write such a conclusion. All I can say is that, in my eyes, there could be no other ending for the film. As Le Clezio wrote in le Livre des Fuites: "True lives have no end".