NECTAR OF ABUSE OF WEAKNESS

NECTAR OF ABUSE OF WEAKNESS

In French filmmaker Catherine Breillat’s new film “Abuse of Weakness (Abus de faiblesse),” film director Maud (Isabelle Huppert) suffers a stroke leaving her with hemiplegia on the left side of her body. Lying in a hospital bed, she can’t move without help from doctors and nurses, and is not even able to laugh or recognize colors. Knowing that nothing will be the same, she struggles to accept her new self. After release from the hospital, she proceeds with a new film project and meets the irresistible Vilko (Kool Shen), a con man who grew up in harsh circumstances and has now become famous for his exploits. Maud is no exception; Vilko swindles money from her too but she deliberately falls into the joy of possession of this charismatic man.

The opening scene begins with a slow heartbeat that suddenly stops, as if implying the end of Maud’s life or her rebirth. Even though your mind is active, your body feels dead; you exist but don’t exist at the same time. Ms. Breillat describes this story as an inevitable return to childhood. You essentially become a baby without a choice: without help you are not capable of doing things that you want to do. You become weaker and fragile, and the power you had before suddenly collapses. The story is fictional but ultimately autobiographical of Ms. Breillat herself who suffered a stroke in 2004.

While carrying a broken heart, Maud tames the arrogant Vilko. Vilko opens the door for her and walks beside her, steadying her cautious steps. This tender side of the wolf pleases her. In real life Ms. Breillat ended up giving con man Christophe Rocancourt 678,000 euros over two years, however this isn’t a story of a disabled woman who becomes a victim. They cherish the synchronicity of themselves living in a dream that will end one day, just like Japanese culture admires the short life of cherry blossoms. With Vilko, Maud is able to descend into the void together. It is the timing and phenomenon. The two persuaders fall deeper and deeper until the dream bursts into the air.

COOL met the wonderful Catherine Breillat to discuss “Abuse of Weakness” during the 51st New York Film Festival.

In an earlier interview, you said that you were afraid to make this film. Could you talk about your fear towards making this film?

Yes, but I have never been afraid in my life to do what I am afraid to do. That is my character.

So there is no particular fear?

It’s something for me like objection. Always an aspect of my character is “against.” Not with, but against. It’s no problem. I do the contrary. I always do the contrary.

You wanted to depict an inevitable return to childhood. The physical part is more obvious, but could you talk about the emotional aspects of returning to childhood while still having maturity?

In the first month in the intensive care unit, I was supposed to never walk again. Never. It was real emotional, strangely. It was not for the invalid aspect but how I was so lost in my body. I was not the same; I was different. It was impossible to work, to go to the museum without a wheelchair. I hate that. So yes, but all that, in fact, I accept. Sometimes I’m crying when I am alone, but I accept. But for the movie, the worst for me was to go in the place where I become like a child with all the people who help me to walk again. I was very strong and didn’t need to have a person to console me, to be in their arms. But, in this place, my character changed and became somebody with such an appreciation, and said “thank you” to each person who took care of me, for the first time in my life.

What were you imagining in your hospital bed?

I dreamt of cinema, of the Bresson film “Lancelot du Lac,” a magnificent one, sort of mixed with a Shakespeare by—the Japanese movie with the Noh and the fog, very poetic, and always war. War and desolate movie, you know? And in the night, this finger was up. That was a movement. And when the professor came in the morning I said to her, “I think my finger moved last night.” I told her the whole story of the movie, and after I was so confused I thought, “I’m telling the professor when they have no time about a movie to save my finger.” She asked me to show her. It’s very difficult to do the more finer movements because you have to ask the nerves in the head to make the order for this movement. And my finger moved like that, and she said, “Make a scan, she will walk again.”

I was reading an interview you did in 1999. You were talking about your movie “Romance” and, in regards to filmmaking, you said, “I try to uncover in me or about myself that I didn’t know before.” Could you talk about that aspect in “Abuse of Weakness”?

Yes, because I know the fact, but I don’t know not only the reason but who I am in this situation. Where I know that I do that. You know what you do but you don’t know who is the person who does that. It’s just a realistic ascertainment but I think that life is not so realistic. What you do is not the definition of who you are. Perhaps it is an expression of what you are but not only. I think it’s something stronger than the conscious or the unconscious, and this thing is also the very small nothing between you and me to be the same human person. All is us. I think we do not exist, but we exist like that. We are not made of what we do. And before “Romance” it was the same, in fact, because it was a quest like with a knight, like in “Lancelot du Lac,” like the quest of the Grail, of something which is more exalted and it is above the real life of a knight. I think art is that. Because normally we know that we have to die so why wake up? Why do you want to do something great? What is the difference of doing something great or not? But it’s so important for me that it’s ideal. We have to live with ideal because we cannot awake if we don’t have an ideal. But this ideal is completely nothing. I say that it’s a dream. I know that. “Romance” was that, in fact. Even if “Abuse of Weakness” is about a new attempt which belongs to me, when I make a movie it’s not a biographic moment of my life. It’s the quintessence of an ideal, which is for me cinema. That’s reality.

Some people say that tears and laughter are always together, and horror and Eros are always together, but in your films horror, Eros and laughter are always together. Could you talk about those three elements in your films?

Isabelle was very surprised when she understood that it is also a movie with comedy, because it’s so tragic in fact, and it’s so tragic in my life, but it is also a kind of comedy. I invented the scene with the boot, and of course it’s funny because it’s a joke of solution. What is more, I discovered to come back into the life and be able to say I am very lucky. Isabelle and Kool Shen understood that all the scenes had not to be tragic. But also, it was so delicious in “Abuse of Weakness” because it was to become again an adolescent. For me, I always claim to be an adolescent. Becoming and adult is really repulsing. I think when you become a real adult you are dead. When you are adolescent you have all the life to create something, which is not the life of your parents. The majority of people become exactly like their parents. They think when they are adolescent that the worst for them would be to become like their parents. They think they escape. When you stay adolescent, even when you are forty, fifty and sixty, it’s crazy but not crazy; for me, it’s life. So it’s funny to have a joke of adolescent person outside of the real life. That is comedy for me.

A major theme of your films is female sexuality. What fascinates you about depicting female sexuality in film?

In this film there are not many female sexuality subjects, just in the project of the movie with him. But here you understand what is the sexuality and the power socially between men like, do you know this American movie “Back Street”? The man in the feature film she wants to make is like the woman in “Back Street.” But he becomes violent and he wants this violence. She wants to push; she’s not afraid. That is about sexuality. It’s very, very important for the movie after because it is in fact a resume of what happens after with him and her. It’s not a murder, it’s not sexuality, but its metaphoric for the same things.

I read that you like “In the Realm of Senses” by Nagisa Oshima.  In that film, Kichizo always obeys or agrees with Sada’s ideas or offers.  In your films, I feel the men are kind of like Kichizo, they agree with the women and do things for them. Could you talk about your view of men and women?

You know, my vision or my obsession: first, I hate man; I like boys – the boyish side of the man. Life is painting, like Michelangelo, the beautiful man – that is boy for me. It’s not boys with the horrible strong attitude of virility. Where the intelligence adjusts the physical strength. I think that the solution is in another place where nobody has the power over the other. Also for the woman, because me, I am not a feminist who says “I want to be above men.” That’s horrible. I don’t want that. Of course it’s a sort of power but more intuitive, it always escapes when you think you have it. And it escapes from one to the other one. What is beautiful to seduce and to be seduced and to be under the power? That’s what I like: to be strong and to understand that to be the stronger is to become and to accept to become the more weak. So, it’s a transfiguration from one thing to another; with cooperation to be the other. Me, I am a boy, but not a real boy.
text & portrait photos by Taiyo Okamoto

stills by Flach Film Production, Iris Films, Iris Productions Deutschland

 

Production companies: Flach Film Production, Iris Films, Iris Productions Deutschland
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Kool Shen, Laurence Ursino, Christophe Sermet, Ronald Leclerq
Writer-Director: Catherine Breillat, screenplay based on Breillat’s book
Producer: Jean-François Lepetit
Co-producer: Nicolas Steil
Director of photography: Alain Marcoen
Production designer: Pierre-Francois Limbosch
Music: Didier Lockwood
Costume designers: Catherine Breillat, Francois Juge
Editor: Pascale Chavance
Sales: Rezo Films
No rating, 98 minutes.