“We need to talk about what we know”

A Conversation with Anne-Marie Miéville

She could collect rocks and lace. She could be a harpist or a horsewoman. Lots of elegance, of calm blonde hair. Her first feature film, Mon cher sujet, is a film that talks of women without preciousness or complacency, a musical and essential film. Anne-Marie Miéville often answers questions with a hermetic gracious smile, as if everything we need to know about her is in her film. She’s right, of course.

For the last twenty years, Anne-Marie Miéville has been present in Jean-Luc Godard’s work and life. Who is she? Accomplice? Assistant? Associate? Companion, more simply. They mostly live and work in Switzerland, by the lake, in a small house with its back towards the water, rue du Nord... She welcomes me in her apartment in Paris, only a pied-à-terre, white as a white page, empty. With many bookshelves still without books. Nonetheless, on a table, there are fresh flowers.

Danièle Heymann: We don’t know anything about you ...

Anne-Marie Miéville: About my life story? I am of Swiss origin, which is something I have in common with Jean-Luc. All petty watchmaking bourgeoisie. My childhood was completely without literature. There was no television at the time, and cinema had extremely strict age regulations. You needed to be seven before you could watch Mickey [Mouse], ten for Crin blanc, fourteen for a western, and sixteen or eighteen for everything I wanted to watch. My first thrills – by cheating – were Jeff Chandler, Susan Hayward,... I came to France at a pretty young age, and did some songs. I didn’t write them, they cut them in relation to my looks at the time. I was “a porcelain one”, as they said...

And the meeting with Jean-Luc Godard?

That was after 1968. We were both militants... The Palestinian cause. We worked every day for one and a half years on the edit of Ici et ailleurs. The film was delayed because of Jean- Luc’s accident, but we decided to return together to all the footage he had filmed in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. It was pretty painful to open those boxes, full of people who had died in the meantime... They talked about their homeland, their motherland. They were mostly farmers, very far from what was said over here... That’s why the film was later called Ici et ailleurs.

How was your work organized afterwards? You always pop up, but in different capacities.

Yes, and that was wonderful for me. I started out by doing set photography and development. Then some sessions as scriptwriter, as editor. We also made video work together. I never had any problems when it came to getting recognition, I never suffered from being in the shadow... There were some less exciting moments for me, because it was his work, his evolution. But each time I told myself, if you feel like doing something else, do it! So, one day there was a first short film, a second one, Le livre de Marie, a third one and then the feature film. I needed this evolution to be slow and natural. Moreover, isn’t cinema one of these rare professions where we speak of a young director when he is already forty? Tomorrow I could return to something else. For me, the feature film is not a way of taking power.

Why did you choose this title, Mon cher sujet?

It’s not a great film title. There is already a pronunciation problem. At first, when you start to work, you talk about your project. But a project never gets finished. So it becomes a subject. Around me, as a joke, they started to say: “So how is your dear subject?” The subject, after all, is the theme and the person... The title, which isn’t really a title, just stuck. At the moment of delivering the film, we tried to change it. But all the titles that included the word “woman” or the adjective “feminine” were so dangerous...

What was the first idea? The idea of the three women?

The idea of kinship. Then followed the writing of a short script. I very quickly had a chain of seventeen sequences. I found them names, for example Agnès’s World, or Agnès and Men or Duo. But at the same time, I felt that I needed to get away from the ritual of writing the big script, that I shouldn’t set the dialogues of still unknown actors a year, or a year and a half in advance. So I produced a ten-minute video that presented the theme with photographs and music. And also with some first ideas of faces. Danielle Darrieux in the role of the grandmother, Aurore Clément possibly for the forty-year-old character...

I presented that material – the script of about thirty pages and the videotape – to different institutions. The French Avance sur recettes and France 5 immediately responded favourably. In Switzerland, on the other hand, the equivalent of the Centre du cinéma didn’t: no, no, no! They thought it wasn’t developed enough. I added drawings. It was the first time I used that medium in order to find money. That didn’t seduce them either. [laughs] I didn’t know what I could add to it... As a bonus, I offered them the short film Faire la fête, which I had shot while trying to secure my budget. This time, it worked!

What kind of budget were you able to raise?

About five and a half million francs. I shot in chronological order, leaving some time to breathe.

How did you find Gaële Le Roi, the twenty-year-old extraordinary coloratura soprano?

By skimming all conservatories of France and Navarre. She was attending the school of the Opéra de Lyon. During the shoot, Gaële proved to be the most professional of all. Of course, the role was very close to who she was. But she has a far-ranging voice, a real talent. She recorded everything live obviously.

Without looking for the autobiographical part of Mon cher sujet, we can of course see that you are a woman, that you have a mother...

I also have a daughter. In the film, you can see her sing a song she has written; she’s twenty-four. And some months ago, when the film was already finished, my daughter in her turn had a little girl... I start from the principle that we need to talk about what we know. And if in Mon cher sujet there are some common elements with my own history, I think that there are too as many shared elements with the downstairs and the upstairs neighbours.

But I didn’t want to settle any score, didn’t want to reproduce any situation, didn’t want to eliminate any conflict. I tried to expand it, this dear subject. By saying for example that abortion, although it is reimbursed by social security, remains a tragedy...

The singing lesson by Gaële/Agnès is a particularly moving, sensual scene.

I remember; I was behind the camera. By shooting certain shots, I saw looks of love between the teacher and her pupil, as can be seen between an infant and her mother, or between two lovers; it’s the same.

You are very close to music. You need it.

If I had to draw up a list of regrets, it would be short. I only have one, the one of not having become a musician. All I can do is give music a place in my work.

In Mon cher sujet we find images, atmospheres, noises, sounds of life, of the streets that have already touched us in Godard. Especially in Sauve qui peut (la vie). Do these faces, these sounds, come from you? Or are they his?

I have never really worried about that. I never bothered to “do as” or “not to do as”. There is certainly a family resemblance, except that other things are said and that I say them in my own way.