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Dedales
English translation from the original French press kit
Sylvie Testud (Interview)
What was your first reaction on reading the screenplay for Dédales ?
I read it in one go and when I put the screenplay down, I remember being extremely impressed by the writing, the characters and the relationships between them. Probably more so than by the thriller aspect as such. I had the same feeling that I have after reading a good book, or when I used to read comic strips as a child : in other words, when you put the book down, there’s a world that you abandon along with it. That doesn’t happen very often with a screenplay. In general, when I read a script, I tend to have a more intellectual approach, trying to figure out whether it works for me or not. But, in this case, I felt that I had left a world behind. That meant I had believed in the story.
When you talk about a "world", are you referring to the descent into the world of psychiatry or something else ?
I have often been offered psychologically disturbed characters. So that wasn’t really what surprised me. Here, there was something haunting about the film. Something in the relationships between the characters that I was being offered. There was no reason for me to believe in it and yet I did. It was strange, there was a very powerful world and, as I read it, I thought to myself, "Am I simply dreaming this or can it be done ?" Usually, when I put down a script that I have loved, I know. Here, and this was the first time that it had ever happened to me, I put it down and thought, "I love it. If I had the guts, I’d do it." I had never read anything like it. It made me ask myself questions about myself. We were in a cinematic world where, all of a sudden, someone was saying to me, "Can you abandon your professional conscience to attain something impalpable." A world that I believed in, that I could sense, in which I could see the characters living but whose intensity scared me a little.
Does this idea of the fusion of multiple identities have a relationship with your profession ?
Being an actor means playing on that. People often talk about the character and the person playing it. But the character doesn’t exist. There’s a fusion between a notion of somebody, who would be the character, and the actor. You have to play with what you truly are deep down and that sometimes overtakes you. Occasionally, it’s a matter of total osmosis. It’s astounding and I still don’t know how it happens, what form of concentration you have at that point. That point when the truth becomes reality. When the character, the situation and me/us form one. And not the situation with me to one side of it. That moment when you stop performing and when the character appears. Actors have to show their emotions. You have to be packed full of them, fill yourself with everything that allows you to interpret and develop a story. But you have to show restraint too. And not be indecent within the emotion. There’s nothing worse than indecency within emotion. An actor who appears and who stops performing is moving. Whatever he does : whether he kills, loves or laughs... You have to lose yourself at all costs. That’s the least an actor can do. You’re way off the mark when there is a target to be reached and you think that you know exactly how to get there.
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