French film-maker François Ozon is building a reputation as an enthusiastic director of women. He came to prominence on this side of the Channel last year with 8 Women, which featured, among others, the venerable Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart and Fanny Ardant. Previously, he had worked with Anglo-French movie legend Charlotte Rampling in Under the Sand (2000). Rampling also stars in his new film, the deeply erotic Swimming Pool.
Having established such an obvious affinity for working with more mature actresses, it is unsurprising that he should choose to discuss Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows, a gorgeously shot melodrama from the mid-1950s, made primarily for a female audience and featuring the story of a middle-aged widow's forbidden love for her rugged, bohemian gardener.
Hollywood these days is tough on actresses of a certain age: while Al Pacino or Arnold Schwarzenegger blunder arthritically through the latest blockbuster, where are the leading roles for actresses of comparable vintage and ability? Things weren't quite so bad in the 1950s, when Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, both born in the first decade of the century, were still big box-office. Nevertheless, the films of the era often undermined the status of older women: cobwebbed Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), living like Miss Havisham in Sunset Boulevard is only 50, while, in All About Eve, Davis's Margo Channing, whose acting career is threatened by perky ingenue Eve, is a mere 40.
The films of Douglas Sirk, at the height of his powers during this period, provided an honourable exception to this questionable attitude, and, in his run of unashamed weepies from the mid- to late 1950s, All That Heaven Allows stands as a monument to feminine maturity. At its heart is a fortysomething Jane Wyman as the troubled Cary Scott.
Ozon recalls seeing the film on late-night TV. "It was about 10 years ago, and it was completely by chance. I really loved it. I was very moved by the story, by the look of the film, by the mise en scène. It was the first film by Sirk that I had seen, and after that I saw all the others.
"I like the way Sirk is unafraid to use all the elements of filmmaking to expose the characters' feelings – the picture, the music, the sound. If Cary is sad, we see a snowy landscape. Everything is there to underline the emotions. When you do this sort of thing there is always the danger that you will go too far, and the film will become camp and kitsch. Sirk is always on the edge of that."
For Ozon, the film's most powerful scene is the one in which Cary's grown-up children buy her a television set. "They say it is because they don't want her to be bored, but the truth is that they can't stand the idea that she has a relationship. And she doesn't want the TV – she wants to live."
Wyman's performance drives the film, says Ozon. "She's not a great actress; she doesn't have the genius of Bette Davis or Lana Turner. And, although she was a star, she wasn't glamorous. But, because of the way Sirk shoots her – the beauty of the colours – and the empathy he has for her, you love her and want her to be happy.
"The film touched something in me very deeply. Maybe it was the fact that it was about a woman of 45 or 50 that helped me to do Under the Sand with Charlotte Rampling."
François Ozon, director/writer
Born: Paris, 1967
Selected films:
Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000)
Under the Sand (2001)
8 Women (2002)
Swimming Pool (2003)
In Swimming Pool, which could almost have been called "2 Women", Rampling plays a lady writer, who retreats to a remote villa in the south of France, where she encounters a sulky, wilful and extremely libidinous jeune fille (Ludivine Sagnier).
Why is working with women such a pleasure for Ozon? "I find it much easier because I have the distance to be lucid about them. And I find women easier to work with: they are very often cleverer than men, and they are more able to take risks."
Making 8 Women was a challenge for Ozon. "I always have to establish a relationship with each actress. I need desire; I need to have a strong connection. So 8 Women was a nightmare – I had to divide myself into eight!"
Surprisingly, Ozon has seen All That Heaven Allows only once. "Sometimes I am afraid to see a film I really love again," he says. "When you love a film, it's often because of your mood at the time. I saw it at the right moment. I'm afraid now that I have changed too much."
Is it possible he'll never see it again? "I think I will, but maybe not the whole film; maybe just one scene." One film he will almost certainly never see again is Far from Heaven, Todd Haynes's remake of All That Heaven Allows, released earlier this year. "It didn't work for me. What I like in Sirk's movies is that you were sure to cry at the end, and it had a social message without seeming to. In Far From Heaven, everything was on the surface, and all you could see were the intentions of the filmmaker. It's a beautiful aesthetic object, but it's a film that should be in a museum."
Ozon suddenly checks his candour. "Oh," he says hurriedly, "I hope Todd Haynes doesn't read this."
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