In the still of the night, lives are about to cross… a woman abandoned, a stranger awaiting his chance, a magical serial killer, and a best-selling author who imagines the thriller of the year. 

Deceptively layered and intriguingly misleading, this highly anticipated new film from Oscar-winning director Claude Lelouch (A MAN AND A WOMAN) stars Dominique Pinon and Fanny Ardant as an unlikely pair caught up in a game with high stakes – and deadly consequences.

Although this serial killer story is by way of the Art House and not the usual U.S. horror fare, it's still an intriguing mix of mystery, suspense and violent death. Horror.com got a chance to sit down with the legendary director to ask him about the scarier elements of ROMAN DE GARE, so look for that exclusive on-camera interview soon — in the meantime, here is a revealing interview with Lelouch; his fascinating thought-process will give you an intriguing preview of the movie (which comes out in the U.S. next month — look for our review to be posted soon, too).

INTERVIEW WITH CLAUDE LELOUCH

The title of your film is ROMAN DE GARE, which refers to a literary and cinematographic genre, as did such film titles as POLAR (familiar term for ‘police thriller’) directed by Jacques Bral, VAUDVILLE by Jean Marboeuf, SERIE NOIRE by Alain Corneau, or even THEATRE DE BOULEVARD, which was going to be the second part of your trilogy GENRE HUMAIN. Is ROMAN DE GARE a stylistic exercise?

Claude Lelouch: The term ‘roman de gare’ refers to popular literature, which is not derogatory: what works commercially is not necessarily bad. The title was inspired by some reviews written about my work in recent years, which compared my movies to photo romances or romans de gare (books sold in train stations: it designates an easy-read for the traveler, romance or thriller best-sellers). I said to myself: ‘Why not, I will demonstrate that if you extract the best from this genre, it can very well compete with more glorious ones.’  I played the game. I admit that it was a sort of provocation, a reply to a long ongoing debate. I do have an awkward relationship with the elite, ever since A MAN AND A WOMAN. But the film is also an open letter to film audiences, who often encouraged me and were moved by my movies.

This film was officially directed by “Hervé Picard” instead of Claude Lelouch. Where did you get the idea of using an alias?

C. L.: It’s a way to deal with fame. I wanted to send a message to those who dismiss my work. I wanted one of my movies to be seen for what it really was and not as a Claude Lelouch film. Of course, film audiences are prejudiced when they see the latest offspring of a director who gives birth to a new film every year, such as Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar or the Coen Brothers. I wanted to feel young again and treat myself with this film, which could have turned out to be a punishment instead, if it hadn’t seduced the public. Hence my choice of remaining anonymous. We thought of Romain Gary who won his second Goncourt award (the most prestigious French literary award) for a book he wrote under the alias Emile Ajar. I thought that all artists have this fantasy sooner or later, because they suffer from a public image of themselves that may have been long established but doesn’t correspond anymore to who they really are. Artists evolve. You believe that they always create the same painting, the same symphony, the same film, but it’s simply not true. I directed 41 movies and I’m convinced that each one of them was a draft for the following one. We are students who make a living studying, sometimes in quite comfortable conditions. I never stop searching for something I haven’t yet found, and, I think, that if I do find it one day, I will stop making movies. But, I don’t see it happening anytime soon…

When Romain Gary is sitting at his desk with a pen and paper, nobody knows that he becomes Emile Ajar for a few hours. But it’s a real challenge for a filmmaker surrounded by technicians, actors etc… How does one keep such a secret?

C. L.: I thought that this joke would stand for a week. In fact, after the very first day of shooting, I thought that was it… But then I asked everyone to keep the secret and they all did it. What I found fascinating was that no journalist showed any interest in Hervé Picard, not one! Nobody came on the set to discover this young director shooting his first movie. Which confirms, if need be, how the media only has eyes for established filmmakers, for those who sell. The joke was very successful and I could have pushed it further even.

Then why stop?

C. L.: Because I didn’t want to be a thief. If someone buys a ticket in a theater to see a film by Hervé Picard, it’s a scam to show them a film by Claude Lelouch… Besides, it became too complex when dealing with royalties and the protection of author rights, in particular for Pierre Uytterhoeven who wrote with me the adaptation and dialogue. You had to register with the CNC (National Film Office), the censorship Commission and other official organizations to whom I couldn’t lie. I was defeated by the tax and legal institutions. As soon as the film was selected for Cannes we started to tell the truth.

Is notoriety a burden sometimes?

C. L.: It can become one. If you are famous, prejudices and appearances are more important than the creation. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the themes of this film: it deals with appearances and the use of aliases. I personally experienced the story told in the film.

How did you cast your actors?

C. L.: I needed an icon. I needed someone believable for the character of Judith Ralitzer, someone who would have an aura of intelligence and whim. This role called for a star. Whereas casting stars for the two other roles would have been counterproductive. It would have been a disservice to the movie and spectators would have guessed too many things. With Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, it would be too obvious. You know very well that if you put these two together, they’re supposed to fall in love sooner or later. In this specific movie the love story must remain completely unexpected. You can’t picture these two as a couple for a second.

Why did you choose Dominique Pinon and Audrey Dana?

C. L.:  It’s true that Dominique is not usually seen as a seducer. But, I wanted him to become attractive by the end of the movie. I wanted to cast light on this evolution, how one can be charming without good looks. Appearance is valued too much in our society. People don’t bother scratching beneath the surface. Claude Goretta’s La Dentellière also developed this theme.

Dominique Pinon has a solid resume but Audrey Dana is a newcomer, although she did star in Nos Amis les terriens by Bernard Weber, which you produced.

C. L.: This is how I discovered her. It took the most amazing detour to eventually choose this duo. It’s not a choice that just appears in front of your eyes. I started with more famous people and then I gradually realized that it didn’t work with the script, that stardom would kill this script. I knew that choosing less popular actors would have a negative impact on the box office, but I chose to serve the film first.

Your work often deals with the notions of real and fake, but ROMAN DE GARE is somewhat of a consecration. Fanny Ardant embodies a fake writer, Dominique Pinon a fake fiancé and also eventually a fake serial killer, etc. As in the George Brassens song, Histoire de faussaire (“story of a counterfeiter”) you realize that everything’s fake. This little game is a lot of fun but probably also quite painful…

C. L.: We live in a world based on lies. It’s like poker. Poker is a wonderful game because you can win a lot even with bad cards. Similarly, it’s possible to succeed in life even if you start off with only a few assets. Humans try to oversell themselves. When they try to seduce someone, men show the best side of themselves… This can be said about love but also about the business world. We have built a world that revolves around lies. For this reason, if someone comes off as sincere, he is immediately successful. This is what I tried to show in ROMAN DE GARE, whose characters only exist within lies. I was a great liar myself; I know what I am talking about. At times I had to make people believe I was able to make movies when I wasn’t sure about it myself!  Pure bluff. Then I succeeded in proving I was not too clumsy with a camera… Without lying, how would the most deprived do? Lying sometimes enables them to escape inextricable situations. You need to be very rich to be able to tell the truth. It’s a luxury.

When Dominique Pinon and Audrey Dana are arrested by a cop, Audrey tells him: ‘The driver is a serial killer.’ She says it as a joke, since it’s not true, although for us spectators it might actually seem believable at that particular moment, and we’ll only know at the end that it’s not. So many upsets!

C. L.: It’s a show! It’s fun! Everyone has different chunks of information. When Audrey says: ‘It’s him! ’, she doesn’t believe it at all. Then the viewer thinks: ‘but wait, it IS him! ’. Life is made up of misunderstandings. It’s light comedy theater. I love these kinds of situations.

At one point Pinon says: ‘Every novelist is a predator.’ One could say as well: ‘Every filmmaker, every creator is a predator. ’

C. L.: Of course.

You meet a girl who’s crying at 3 am in a gas station on the highway, you fall in love with her and you think: ‘I’m going to write a story about this.’ Is that really how ideas for screenplays are born?

C. L.: I have worked this way my whole life. I often follow people in the streets for five, ten minutes… If I witness any kind of incident, if two cars get into an accident, I stop and watch. I’m interested in everything: reactions, verbal exchanges. I’ve always behaved like a real gossip and I’ve always been curious about human interactions. When I was a cameraman for news shows, it was easy. Actually, it’s as if I had never stopped being a reporter, both for major events or next door gossip. Most of the dialogue and situations in my movies were inspired by characters I actually met. For example, I did see a woman dumped in a highway gas station. After a while, a man came back for her. If he hadn’t, I would probably have proposed to give her a lift. So here’s the premise of the sequence, straight from my own memories. I remember being fascinated by it. Most people would not have paid any attention, or would vaguely watch from afar. But these events always seem to happen in my line of sight, I seem to attract them…

If you hadn’t seen one day on a Deauville beach a woman walking her dog at dawn, you might never have made A Man and a Woman, and we would not be here talking today…

C. L.: Life is fascinating. It’s a spectacle I never get tired of. I pick the best seat to watch it, I get closer to its characters, I even talk to them sometimes. When I directed Les Uns et les autres, I used the story of a lot of people with whom I crossed paths. I am curious about people. And, I constantly use my five senses. There isn’t a moment in my life which couldn’t be used in a film. I always have a little recorder with me, which is my memory because I have a very bad memory!

ROMAN DE GARE shows this painful urge to create. When Fanny Ardant finds herself deprived of her aura as a writer, her only option is to disappear. Are there moments when this urge is so strong that you find yourself envying other people’s talent?

C. L.: When a boxer is a world champion, he knocks out everybody. Then one day, he’s the one lying on the floor. But, when that day comes, he won’t regret to retire if he produced a good fight. What is terrible is to be knocked out by a poor move. As far as I’m concerned, I’m jealous of bad movies that do well because I resent injustice. When I see a beautiful movie, however, I bow down. It makes me feel happy because I know that this film will feed me, that when I’ve digested it, I can eventually make some progress…

If one takes it a step further, is it conceivable to kill for a work of art as showed in your film? With creation becoming so vital that you find yourself in the same state of mind as when you’re consumed by passion for someone and losing your mind?

C. L.: Artists can go very far for their art. I have been living an amazing love story with cinema, and when you love, you give everything. You can kill out of love. It may be the same thing for a work of art but I never reached such extremes. If I were an attorney, I could defend a murderer who killed for art. Perfection deserves all the sacrifices made in its name.

Is it the ultimate accomplishment of an artist?

C. L.: At least in the movie, Fanny Ardant’s character does sacrifice herself. There aren’t so many cases of artists who were murderers, but many of them committed suicide. Hemingway, Romain Gary… so many, it makes you dizzy.

In 1966, you made A Man and a Woman when you were at your most fragile, and it is still your greatest commercial success to this day…

C. L.: When I made A Man and a Woman, I was wondering if it would be my last film. I was broke and playing my last card, like in the Olympic Games when athletes have a few chances to jump before being eliminated - if they fail, they’re out.  Oftentimes, it’s not until their last attempt that they beat records, because they put all their energy into it. A Man and a Woman was my sixth feature and I knew I wouldn’t be given a seventh chance.

When the detective questions Judith Ralitzer, he finds in her novels evidence that she’s guilty: he compares what she writes to who she really is. This can seem absurd, but is it really so silly? Don’t we get to know authors intimately when reading their books? Don’t characters guide us into the depth of a movie?

C. L.: Absolutely. Creating art is like confessing in a way. Sacha Guitry explained that no dialogue he wrote was ever random: the lines he gave his characters had strong roots, originating in personal scars.

He also said that the worst thing that can happen to an artist was to become famous.

C. L.: He was right. Artists should never be placed too quickly on a pedestal. Many were praised too early and ceased to be inspired. Look at Orson Welles! I think that nothing he made after Citizen Kane was as good as that film! If he hadn’t been called a genius, his potential would have been limitless. If he had been criticized, he would have struggled to convince us…. To a certain extent this can be said of Godard too.

ROMAN DE GARE also focuses a great deal on disappearance, which is another mirror of reality, since you disappeared behind Hervé Picard. It’s the same for your characters: Dominique Pinon disappears somehow before joining his boss on her boat; Michèle Bernier’s husband leaves her and his students for a few days, etc. One wonders if this is not your ultimate fantasy. It was there in 1988 at the heart of Itinéraire d’un enfant gâté.

C. L.: It’s an obsession of mine: when I’m really down, I play with the idea of disappearing. I’m not talking about suicide, the difference being that you give yourself the possibility of a last chance. I sometimes wish I could start all over again, and using an alias to direct this film comes from this desire. Like making your first movie again… I sometimes consider staging my death like Dominique Pinon here or Belmondo in Itinéraire d’un enfant gâté.

Perhaps with the possibility to watch people’s reaction from a distance…?

C. L.: Isn’t it everybody’s fantasy? We always dream of attending our own funeral and listening to what people say when they drive back from it.

You want to make sure people would miss you a little…

C. L.: I hope they would! But, by the end of a funeral you don’t talk about the defunct anymore. It’s over. You forget them fast, with the help of a glass of wine and a sandwich. It often starts with wet eyes and ends in laughter.

Two scenes are particularly funny in this regard. When Dominique Pinon arrives at the farm and they look at him with skepticism, and when he comes aboard Fanny Ardant’s boat when nobody expects him anymore.. You wonder each time if he belongs there.

C. L.: This is indeed one of the film’s subjects. I often wondered if I was in the right place. And, I often imagined being someone else. For example, I use to flirt with certain ladies at a time when I was not known, pretending that I was someone else. As a newcomer, I was ashamed to say I was a film director thinking they wouldn’t believe me. So, I invented other professions for myself… and, I loved when they discovered the truth. It showed curiosity, sharpness and a lovely sense of humor… It’s a delightful game to start a relationship with a lady by messing with her a little like that. It’s a way to test her and to learn a lot of things about her. People don’t play this kind of games enough.

In DAY FOR NIGHT, Jean-Pierre Léaud wonders if women are magical. In ROMAN DE GARE, you say that children are magical. Yet, they aren’t so present in your movies, even though we are moved by how the girl looks at her mother, sometimes with cruelty…

C.L.: Indeed, I asked my own daughter Shaya to play the part… and I did have occasional fights with my children. But, we also have extraordinary moments of love. I see fights as exercises for love. A child is in constant need of testing you and giving you ultimatums. Since I’m an impatient man, it didn’t always go well… The relationship between the characters of the teenage girl and her mother does resemble the one I had at times with some of my children…

All of your children had their go at acting thanks to you. Shaya stands out in the role you gave her in ROMAN DE GARE… and we can even catch a glimpse of your younger daughter, Stella, as a baby in Une pour toutes.

C.L.: This is my victory over amateur cinema. I started as an amateur filmmaker… Now that I’m a professional, I find it amusing to put my children in all of my movies. But, these are just nods to the viewer, for fun, the way Hitchock did.

And sometimes a little more than that…

C.L.: If I have specific needs for child actors. My children are happy today to see themselves when my movies are on TV. Salomé recently saw There were days… and moons again and was very touched… if I had screened an amateur film for her, she wouldn’t have been so moved. Amateur films all look the same: people walking toward the camera and waving hello!

Is Audrey Dana a future femme fatale?

C.L.: Absolutely, and you can tell at the end of the movie: she already behaves like one. Pinon doesn’t fall in love with the silly girl, he falls in love with the femme fatale.

Your characters say that ‘marriage is the perfect crime of love.’ It’s a cruel description of how love is worn away by time. Quite tragic even… You hate Fanny Ardant’s character at first but she becomes more and more touching by the end, because she’s burnt out.

C.L.: She is completely burnt out which makes her touching. She’s one who does things to the full extent. She doesn’t believe in love anymore. When she invites Dominique Pinon in her bedroom, it’s not because she’s in love. She’s up against the wall and trying to find a way to negotiate with her ghost writer…

The film also tells us that ‘happiness is everything we do for the first time.’

C.L.: First times are more and more rare with age, I can testify of that. But, I have the rare luck of having no memory. I’m like a goldfish in its bowl: whenever I turn around inside I think ‘how beautiful this apartment is! How beautiful! ‘. I am amazed every time. I was always 18 years old, I think you’re always the same age in your head. My body aged, but I’m still 18. If I had memory, I would be angry at the entire planet.

In ROMAN DE GARE, as in many of your other movies, you enjoy introducing the characters briefly and move to something else before we have had time to figure them out. The movie starts with a flash-forward of Judith being questioned by the police, then a few images of the TV literary show that also belongs to the end of the film. And, you add yet another few shots of more supporting roles, before the two main characters even appear for the first time… Why do you break up the narration this way?

C. L.: I see life as a puzzle. You need an entire life to discover all of its pieces. A film is also a puzzle, with a beginning, a middle and an end, but I like to start at the end sometimes… Think about a dictionary: if you read it from A to Z without skipping a page you’re going to be bored to death… But, if you go straight to the word you’re interested in, it makes a big difference. In a movie, I start with sequences that stimulate the viewer’s intelligence and emotions. It is necessary to find each time the way to catch the viewers’ attention, because they come to the theater carrying their own baggage, their own worries. You can take them along into new fictional worries that have no real consequences. They’re better off with those: two hours later everything will be back in order and our spectators will go back to their own worries. You have to strike hard from the beginning and create in their mind a depressurizing room between their own life and the one presented on screen. A movie is like an alternate life proposed to someone who’s already busy with their own, so these introductory sequences must make them forget their former life.  I need disturbing sequences to alert their intelligence, sensitiveness and emotions. This is why opening credits are key and should contain strong scenes. The creators of James Bond got it right: the best scene of each James Bond movie is the very first one, even before the opening credits… It catches the viewer’s attention.

You also like to tell right away how the film will end so that spectators will wonder during the whole time how you will manage to piece it together…

C.L.: I tell the story of ordinary people to whom extraordinary things happen. And, since you wouldn’t immediately be interested in an ordinary character, I have to reveal the stakes. If viewers know that the character’s life will undergo a complete shift, they are hooked. If I show you a man and tell you that he will die tomorrow, you won’t look at him the same way…

In this story you manipulate the spectator more than usual with the possibly false lead of the serial killer. Here again, you must have estimated how long you could sustain it: you give us clues that designate him as a killer, and others that contradict this, until about halfway through the movie when you solve this problem and move on to something else.

C.L.: It’s a turning point of the film. I think that there are actually three movies in ROMAN DE GARE. I wanted the viewer to think as a detective. When a detective begins an investigation, he does some research, questions a suspect, moves forward and then backward too. I played with that. The fact that my viewer is in a detective’s position is the exact opposite of something like Columbo in which you know right away who the criminal is and what matters is how Columbo will corner them.

You love to insert metafictional elements. When Dominique Pinon exposes the premise of the novel he wants to write, he is in fact telling the movie’s story…

C.L.: Naturally.

ROMAN DE GARE is also a road-movie: its characters keep moving, and they spend quite some time in cars, which is not unusual in your movies.

C.L.: No it isn’t.

It makes me think of Un homme qui me plait and A nous deux: not only does travel allow adventure but the road also has a real photographic beauty.

C.L.: I’m a great car lover, which I demonstrated in a few movies since A Man and a Woman. It’s an enclosed space where you can be by yourself and watch others. It’s a privileged place in constant motion that involves playing with light, speed, danger… it’s not peaceful. There’s a permanent risk that an unexpected encounter could put an end to your trip. Cars are objects of tremendous freedom. I wrote most of my scripts in a car. When I need to focus on my work, I don’t go sit in an office, I need to be in motion. I’m a fast driver and when I’m driving, my brain is racing - - it’s in the right state to create. Whereas in an office, I tend to fall asleep… And, none of my dreams ever inspired a good story because they are not reliable. Hitchcock thought he had wonderful ideas during the night and wrote them down half asleep. But, in the morning he would discover how horribly common they were.   Cars are important in my life. I took women in cars, seduced them in cars, been broken up with in cars: it’s a perfect place to talk. You can tell your passenger the truth without looking at them in the eyes. It’s ideal for cowards.

We remember this high-speed race through the streets of Paris in C’était un rendez-vous… Cars speed up again in ROMAN DE GARE.

C.L.: ROMAN DE GARE is full of references. Since I was using an alias, I enjoyed placing clues for those who might fear I was betraying them. I certainly didn’t want to betray Claude Lelouch. It’s a very “lelouchian” movie. I don’t like this term too much but I know some people use it…  

As a contrast to the fresh air and freedom one feels throughout the movie, you have created rather terrifying scenes behind closed doors: on board of the yacht and inside the police department we feel like trapped inside an aquarium.

C.L.: The film is also subjective: when viewers are rid of all hypotheses the only one left is that of a perfect crime. Dominique Pinon imagines twice a perfect crime, first when he stages his own disappearance, and later by pushing Judith Ralitzer to commit suicide. ‘The only thing that’s more beautiful than a perfect crime is… two perfect crimes ‘.

This morale of the story would have pleased Boileau and Narcejac.

C.L.: What’s wonderful and I like so much in this script is that Pinon knows he’s going to be murdered, which pushes him to stage his own death because it gives him a better chance to get away. At the same time, it’s a way to tell Fanny Ardant that he loves her. He makes it easier for her. He knows she’s planning to kill him.

Characters are repeatedly shot through windows, of the highway restaurant, the windshield etc. This enables you to play with light reflection and isolate characters by placing a screen between them and us.

C.L.: These reflections are intended. While a scene between two characters is told, life around them goes on. At the end of the movie, when Audrey Dana and Dominique Pinon meet again, I showed the reflections on their faces to remind us that other stories are taking place at the same time. Backgrounds are ignored too often. At the very moment we’re talking there are wars going on, people living their lives, dying, billions of stories. I’m not the only one who considers these reflections. Claude Sautet revealed their power too.

[Interview by Yves Alion, provided by Samuel Goldwyn Films]