Sebastien Lifshitz - Director/Co-Writer

After studying art and history at the University of Paris, Sébastien Lifshitz worked on exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou and as an assistant photographer. He made his directorial debut in 1995 with the short film You Gotta Love It, followed by the documentary Claire Denis, The Vagabond (1996), and the hour- long film Open Bodies (1997), which was screened at numerous festivals all over the world, and won, among others, the Jean Vigo short film award for 1998. Lifshitz also directed The Cold Lands, which was an official selection at the Venice International Film Festival. About his newest film, Come Undone, Lifshitz states, I didn't want to chronicle a relationship so much as paint the portrait of a person at a particular moment when his life is still under construction, and to follow him for a while. Mathieu is in a period of instability; he must establish himself apart from his family and leave adolescence even as he discovers his own homosexuality and love.

Interview with Sébastien Lifshitz

Come Undone is quite different from your two former movies.
I wanted to make something new. Above all, I did not want to repeat myself, rather I wanted to move on. And produce a milder, subtler picture on feelings.

Your movie is structured by three seasons (winter, summer and autumn) that continually intermingle. Was this formal choice intended from the beginning?
Certainly. Once again, I wanted to make a discontinued narrative, but different from Corps Ouverts. (Lifshitz' previous film, English Title: Open Bodies). This time, the ellipses are emphasized. Integral parts of the story of Mathieu, the main character, are voluntarily missing. The spectators thus have to rearrange the narrative and imagine what could have happened. I find this form interesting as it enables me to rely on other elements besides the plot. If you show breaks with substantial ellipses, as these are, where the continuity of the plot is not necessarily crucial, the character steals a lead over the narrative. It is the character that guides the film and no longer the plot that lays down the law. Consequently I feel much freer, and in a certain way, everything is allowed. My work centers essentially on the idea of the portrait, that is to pick an individual and try to picture his or hers inner landscape - one could almost call it the inner space. And the discontinued narrative helps me to approach it.

These time breaks also introduce a kind of mystery. The ellipses produce missing links in the characters and give them opacity. It seems to me that these twilight zones are necessary in a picture, in order to let the spectator identify with himself, find his place in it and pursue explanations creating an empathic move towards the characters.

Has the alternation between the different temporal levels been adjusted in the editing phase?
Not really. The editing work mainly concerned the rhythm of the film. Initially, the sequences were longer. We removed some and shortened almost all of the rest. This gives the movie its "cut" and sometimes almost rough quality. We have aimed at never dwelling on anything, even the climactic moments. We have systematically tried to break lines that appear too emotional. I prefer this sort of reserve even if it means making a "harder" movie. It is a kind of modesty. I need to keep some distance whilst blaming myself for doing this. I still have great difficulties accepting the emotionality generated by a certain type of scenes. I often find it hackneyed and tend to censure myself. Presumably I am a bit like the main character: I find it hard to give way to my affects, I am afraid this becomes too overwhelming for both me and the picture.

Some of the shots are very blunt. Is that a way of offsetting your reserve, your modesty in regard to feelings?
It may be a counterpoint. But it can also be explained by the fact that I have no modesty as to sexuality. My attitude to sex is playful and free. In this film, I wanted to show the discovery of sex in a happy and radiant manner. I wished to stand up to what I was filming and I did not want to asepticise the image. A medium shot of two people making love in a dune is very beautiful, regardless if it is a man and a woman or two men. It is the same thing. I am not contemplating on homosexuality. To me, they are two individuals desiring one another and experiencing this desire quite freely.

Yet, the close-up in the beginning of the picture of Mathieu's genitals while he is masturbating could seem gratuitous.
That shot marks a break from the preceding ones. And it is all the more shocking because masturbation is often taboo in the collective consciousness. The shot refers to the sexual solitude of each of us. But I wanted to mark that from the start of the film in order to indicate that sex would be shown frontally, without beating about the bush. And besides, this plot, this situation places the main character within the framework of adolescence. To me, this image is not given freely but will sustain other images afterwards. I like it when scenes stand out from the rest and disturb the spectator a bit. It is like the dancing scene on the beach. You may wonder why it is there!

Still this scene of eccentric dancing remains in obscurity, it is quite short. You may even think that it is not entirely accepted...
I cut it for the sake of rhythm, not modesty. And it continues in the following scene, when they are in the street. I consider it as a moment of fun; the scene was not based on any choreography and it was totally improvised. I did not want it to be a moment of dancing existing as such. The movie does not work on imagery. I dislike the kind of so- called homosexual folklore represented by certain films, the ³show-time² side of it considered as entertainment and travesty art which is completely disconnected from reality.

Is it a way of claiming a totally intimist movie-making?
I make intimist movies almost unintentionally. What I would really like is to have access to the surrounding reality and film it. But so far, I have felt incapable of doing so. I believe that I will have to go through my own "inscription" for a start, say "I" in sum, before being able to move on. I sometimes get the impression of still being a newborn child who cannot yet speak or walk but simply observe the world within its reach. My view at ground level is inevitably limited. This, the only thing that I am able to describe is my closest environment, that is my own body. Unfortunately, my pictures are still quite narcissistic, introspective, a place where I attempt comprehend the nature of my body and affectsƒ Mathieu, the main character of the movie is trying to find himself, to fit in, and leave something to go elsewhere. Come Undone describes very simple things. What I have filmed is not much: an individual under construction, hence the title.

The relationship between Mathieu and Cédric ends without us really knowing why...
The subject of the movie was not the creation of a couple followed by its evolution. I did not want to trace the background history of a relationship with all the psychology implied. I really wanted to present a person at a time of his life when he is still in working progress and follow him for a while. Mathieu is in an unbalanced period: he has got to free himself from his family and leave adolescence while he discovers his homosexuality and being in love. It is all mixed up and confusing to him, all the more because his family background seems rather heavy: an absent father, a depressive mother, a dead brotherƒ and himself having a quite strong propensity for melancholy and depression.

Maybe Mathieu's fragility also comes from being confronted with his emotions for the first time of his life?
Until Cédric arrives, Mathieu held back his feelings. The episode with the bird that he finds illustrates this. The cadaver of the bird does not touch him, death is abstract to him, probably like his brother's death was. But encountering Cédric speeds everything up, resuscitates a certain amount of memories and fragility, because feelings emerge, decisions have to be made and he is being observed.

Mathieu's mother is a very touching character.
We could have swelled more on the emotionality likely to be induced by this kind of character. While writing the script, I was actually tempted to go toward something more melodramatic but Stéphane Bouquet, my co-scriptwriter, warned me against it. The character might have turned into a sinkhole sucking up the whole picture and making it topple over to something different. I think he was right. After this, we have been careful not to change the course of the movie: Mathieu's character. His mother's depression had to remain of secondary importance, existing somewhat throughout that of her son.

The time construction of the movie makes it possible to express the depression without having to use explicit schemas. The feeling is there and you do not centre on it.
Depression is a mystery in itself. In this respect, the psychiatrist's character is revealing. He could have taken us off towards discourse or an explanation for Mathieu's attempted suicide. But nothing is said, only the silences sometimes allow us to make a guessƒ In my opinion, a depression or an attempted suicide are too complex events to be reduced to a few psychological explanations. I rather preferred to trace tracks and beginnings of answers all through the film without ever reaching a conclusion...

The meeting of Cédric and Mathieu is quite romantic.
Almost sentimental, and I wanted it that way. I showed a tougher sexuality in Les Corps Ouverts. But I do not wish to confine myself to one way of filming and to me, homosexuality is not necessarily equivalent to saunas, brothels and erratic sexuality. The stake in this movie was not to pose the question of homosexuality. It is simply about first love. When Mathieu tells his mother that he is in love with a boy, it is no drama, it is accepted. I did not seek to turn his homosexuality into a problem or dramatize it. Reducing a character to his sexuality does not seem interesting to me.

Cédric appears much more sturdy than Mathieu.
He is more down-to-earth, he tackles life head on, and he has decided to enjoy it. He is endowed with that kind of strength. Cédric and Mathieu are quite unlike each other. You can feel that Mathieu has got a score to settle with a social environment in which he suffocates. It is not a coincidence that he is seduced by Cédric, whose more violent personality gives society the finger. His insolence is sound. I believe that deep inside, Mathieu is aspiring to the same thing, even though he does not completely succeed in expressing it.

How did you choose the actors?
As to the two young men, I was looking for their physical disparity from the start: one of them slender, almost feminine in contrast to the other one robust, powerful and down-to- earth. I had seen Stéphane Rideau in several movies, namely Les Roseaux Sauvages (Wild Reeds), and it seemed obvious to me that he could play Cédric. As far as Jérémie Elkaïm is concerned, we already knew each other a bit. I had seen some short films that he has played in. These films always imputed him a certain exuberant behaviour, and even though he fitted the part physically, it was a challenge for me to make him exist and be seen differently. Jérémie is very active and expansive in real life, but I wanted to boil down the character to an almost self-sufficient appearance. We therefore had to work on a purification of his acting by creating a vacuum rather than filling the void. Two wonderful pictures, L'Enfant de l'Hiver (The Child of Winter) and Y Aura-t-il de la Neige à Noël? (Will There Be Snow At Christmas?), made me want to work with Marie Matheron and Dominique. In this film, Marie and Dominique actually represent two sides of one sole character, a kind of two-headed mother. One is a mother withdrawn into herself, plunged into painful mourning, the other one is a woman with somewhat unrestrained authority.

The end of the movie is very beautiful: the return to the scene of past events in order to continue living.

That act of mourning is the passage to a new life. Almost the same thing happens in the wintertime when Mathieu comes back to the empty villa, a place full of memories, almost a grave, but where he may be able to mourn his family past. Mathieu's story is evolving, he is still in the winter of love.

Interviewed by Claire Vassé