Let It Rain : Interview with Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri


LET’S TALK ABOUT THE RAIN is your third feature film. Did you approach it differently to the first two?
Agnès Jaoui: Yes and no. I was perhaps more relaxed. With experience, you realize that nothing is definitive, that you can redo things – differently – and that each decision is less important than you thought. And I was surrounded by people I’ve already worked with; a top-notch crew that I trusted. I think I’ve also made progress in the way I get what I want from the actors. They come from very different backgrounds, some are very experienced, others less so, or not at all, but we were all on the same wavelength, we were all making the same film, and that was a real pleasure.

Are you still as attached to sequence shots?
A.J.:
I have a complex when it comes to cutting, same as I do with math! I do as many sequence shots as possible because I’m not very keen on over-edited films, in any case to tell our kind of stories with the excellent actors involved. I like to see everyone in the same shot, like in the theatre. Rather than showing emotion in close-ups, I prefer to make it well up within a sequence shot, so you’re not aware of the camera’s presence, but at the same it’s still cinematographic. That’s why we chose Scope, which is a format I love, and one that I can’t move away from because for me it represents the symbol of cinema itself.

With this film, it feels like you’re widening your register: you are at once overtly funnier and more sentimental in your way of dealing with love between the characters.
A.J.:
From the writing stage we wanted something funnier. LOOK AT ME was a fairly somber film and we wanted to get back to comedy. As for the more sentimental side, that is no doubt less in our control, perhaps because it comes a great deal from the actors.
J-P B.: Perhaps it’s the overall theme we chose which led us to concentrate more on the intimate relationships between people than on their social position, what they do in life, and situations of power. In LET’S TALK ABOUT THE RAIN, the bonds between the characters are essentially those of friendship or family, of proximity. That said, every group situation implies power relationships.

Would you say that the central thread of the film, to pick up on a line from Karim, is “everyday humiliation”?
A.J.:
Everyone feels humiliated, or more exactly a victim of injustice or discrimination: Agathe from sexism, Karim from racism, Florence for not being loved as much as her sister, Michel for not having custody of his son. It seemed to us that today, lots of people experience life as victims and shut themselves in this position, because their suffering is not fully acknowledged. As long as victims have not had their status as victim recognized and that they have in fact suffered some wrong, they cannot move on. The problem is that everyone thinks they’re more of a victim than the next person.
J-P B.: A minority position can very quickly become comfortable for the individual. The status of victim can blind us and make us not face up to our responsibilities. Hence the idea to focus on characters with a tendency to brandish their status as victim before considering the responsibility they have in their exchanges with others. But we will have more sympathy for the weak, even if their complaint is unjustified, rather than for the strong who put them in the situation to complain.

At the end of the film, all the characters seem to have moved forward on this question. Except Florence, the eternal victim who decides to sacrifice her love for Michel so she can stay with her husband, supposedly weaker than her lover...
A.J.:
In fact, Florence is one of those people – and there are many – who are too accustomed to their role as victim to change it. The more this attitude is adopted early in childhood, anchored in the family structure, the harder it is to get out of. Florence has too much to gain from staying as that woman who can’t really do what she wants to do but whose husband needs her. She’d like to be free, she espouses feminist discourse about freedom and independence but she doesn’t have the means to actually apply it to her life.
J-P B.: A game has been established between her husband and her: he is like an abandoned little boy who can’t do without her and she is very happy to play that role.

Why did you want to portray a woman politician?
A.J.:
At the start, it wasn’t necessarily going to be a woman – at one point, Jean-Pierre was going to play a mayor. But yes, we definitely wanted to tackle politics. I’m afraid that no one will want to go into politics, it’s so discredited, and we’ll end up with just crazies representing us. Luckily there are still some politicians; otherwise it would be the Wild West. I’m against the generally received idea that all politicians are crooks.
J-P B.: We like political life and we wanted to say so, and to show it. I hope that comes across. Agathe Villanova goes into politics because she’s a feminist. And then she realizes that there is a major contradiction between her politics and who she is: a woman of theory wrapped up in that world. She realizes she doesn’t understand ‘concern’, neither in her vocabulary – the word escapes her – nor in her behavior. She learns on the hustings that people need to be liked and seen, that it’s not just words.

What about your choice of Jamel Debbouze to play Karim?
J-P B.:
The film came out of a wish to work with Jamel. He’s a great guy who I adore, both personally and professionally. He is talented and incredibly funny. We were really looking for a way to work with him. I’ve known him for almost 10 years.
A.J.: They tried to write a screenplay together and when I saw them both, I said to myself we have to get that on film! There’s an alchemy between them, like a natural magnetism. They transmit this pleasure of being together, a very strong human, artistic and even cultural complicity.

Your filmmaking is based on a sort of dialogue that is all your own. Were you wary about Jamel’s style, which is also singular?
J-P B.:
Given that the role was written a certain way and we have faith in his acting ability, we said to ourselves he’ll leave his personal style in the dressing room and he’ll play in ours with the same talent because he’s smart. Not only does he have talent but also he’s always looking for the talent in others. That’s what makes him so lively. He’s not only about performance, but he’s also listening, waiting to be surprised.
A.J.: Exactly. In the test screenings, there were a lot of good actresses, then all of a sudden Florence Loiret-Caille arrived and he opened up. It was physical; you could see his interest. When Jamel detects talent, his senses are in overdrive, he soaks it up, it’s a joy to watch, and therefore to work with. When I saw them together, I didn’t have the slightest doubt. The sequence during tests was already nearly as magical as the one in the film.

Mimouna is the only non-professional actress...
A.J.:
Part of her story inspired the character in the film. I couldn’t imagine that she’d be played by someone else. I love that woman. She came from Algeria aged 17 with her husband and we met her because she was housekeeper of a place we rented. She’s a very surprising woman and exceptionally endearing. After three days, she was taking the set decorators by the hand and was adored by the whole crew.

Did you have any reticence about throwing her in with so many professionals?
A.J.:
On the contrary, it’s stimulating to work with non-professional actors, a bit like working with children. They don’t have the same codes, there’s a sort of truth, sometimes clumsy, but I quite like that mix, both as an actor and as a director. I did a few tests and lots of rehearsals with Mimouna but she made such good progress that very quickly I was confident. In the film she is magnificent and very moving. I’m moved when she says to my character: “I’ll be happy when you have someone, someone who is there to give you some medicine when you’re not feeling well”. To my mind, the scene was a critique of that attitude. Of course I don’t think we have to necessarily be in a couple, but Mimouna says it in such a way that you want to agree with her.

Why did you choose the title “Parlez-moi de la pluie” which translates literally as “Talk to Me About the Rain”?
A.J.:
At the start, this title came from the Georges Brassens song lyric: “Talk to me about the rain and not about the fine weather. Fine weather drives me mad and makes me grind my teeth.” A guy who writes that, I like him right off. It’s unconformist. “The land of imbeciles where it never rains”, that says a lot. The myth of California or the French Riviera, we know what there is behind it. I heard that song by chance. For me, it went perfectly with a scene in which Agathe, Michel and Karim are in a lorry, after being caught out in a storm. It stayed in the edit for a while, but in fact it didn’t really work. So we cut it, but the title remains.
J-P B.: For me, this title has an echo of Kierkegaard’s phrase quoted by Florence’s husband at the beginning of the film, which basically says that anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. And then we wanted some rain well before this title. Well, Agnès wanted some rain.
A.J.: Unlike Jean-Pierre, I’m very sensitive to bad weather, it depresses me. Fifty percent of people are chemically sensitive to it, and of them, 80% are women. And so it depresses me. But in the cinema, rain is pretty.