Eric Rochant: “I didn’t film Möbius the way I filmed Les Patriotes”

The director considers that “it would have been has-been”. However, his film released in 1994 with Yvan Attal received a positive critical reception at the time, even if it was a flop at the box office. It can be seen again this evening on Arte.

Praised for A world without pity (César for best first film in 1990), weakened in 1994 by the public failure of his ambitious spy film The Patriotsthen went through the gangster film (Total Western2000) the social comedy (School for all2006) or the TV series (seasons 2 and 3 of Mafiosa in 2008 and 2010), Eric Rochant returned to the cinema at the beginning of 2013 with Möbius.

This spy thriller features Jean Dujardin and Cécile de France against a backdrop of international secret services, financial manipulation and love at first sight. Its release ten years ago marked the opportunity to meet the whole team. Here is the interview with the French director, on the occasion of the rebroadcast of Patriots on Arte. Note that he has not made a film since Möbiusbut who enjoyed great success thanks to his series The Legends Office.

Interview initially published on February 26, 2023: Although he is far from convincing all critics today, Eric Rochant continues to maintain a passionate relationship with his profession. Author during the making of Möbius of a hectic filming diary on the web, where he shared the small joys and the great pains of the creative process, the director has a lot to say about the way in which cinema – his own and that of others – has evolved in 25 years.

First: Möbius distinguishes itself from Patriots by the central place occupied by the love story.
Eric Rochant: When my producers told me they wanted me to remake an ambitious film like The Patriots, I replied that I didn’t want to make a second spy film. On the other hand, I was interested in making a love film using this environment. With Möbius, my directing challenge lies in the love scenes and the scenes where the two heroes are present, but not so much in the plot and the information. Let’s say that the spying is in the script and the love is in the staging.

Precisely, the first sex sequence, very important in your eyes, divides those who have already seen the film. Alice (Cécile de France) seems bewitched, even vampirized…
Möbius is a story of mutual desire, but what plays out in the carnal relationship between Moïse (Jean Dujardin) and Alice is not. In this first love scene, the gift is not the same: he offers her his gaze of wonder and she gives him the pleasure of being looked at in this way. When she tells him that he is “a gift”, it is not only that he made her come, it is also that he is totally fascinated by her enjoyment. Faced with this sequence, we are perhaps caught by the tremors of Cécile de France, but above all we see several times the way Moses looks at Alice.

The references in your first films came from American cinema of the 1970s (Coppola, Lumet, Cimino, De Palma). Now you cite more the influence of a TV series like The Wire. How did this shift occur?
It’s true that the series nourished me. Before I had extremely specific references like American cinema from the 1970s or the films of Sergio Leone, but I have been particularly struck over the last ten years by certain American series. I no longer see audacity in cinema today. Visual invention certainly still exists, but for ten years the real narrative creation has clearly been found in the series. No film tells stories like it does in Mad Menno film dares not to have a main character like the The Wireand no film manages to deal with tenuous issues in the way that Boss. The rehabilitation of the notion of authorship takes place in the series, not in the cinema and this is also why a filmmaker like Gus Van Sant went through the series (Boss). It’s extraordinary to see the extent to which Americans, who are supposed not to make arthouse cinema, are making arthouse television. Because through the role of the showrunner, the notion of author is total: it is he who decides, who drives, who supervises the production and editing. The different teams of screenwriters work entirely in the service of this absolute leader who is the showrunner.

Sandrine Kiberlain and Yvan Attal in Les Patriotes (1994).

Since we’re talking about the notion of author, let’s remember that you wrote Möbius alone, thus occupying the sacrosanct position of author-director. You notably declared that you did not need to do new research on the world of espionage after that carried out 20 years ago for The Patriots. Why not add the services of co-writers?
I had already written The Patriots all alone and I had done all the documentation work myself by reading spy books. I didn’t need to do it again Möbius. On the other hand, I did very in-depth research into the world of finance; I’ve been interested in this subject for six or seven years, as well as in contemporary Russian history – I’m pretty unassailable on the subject. And all of this is reflected in my film, where I deal with the return of Russia. Möbius starts from a situation where Russians spy on other Russians, and where the new oligarchs represent a potential internal enemy for the Kremlin. It’s a bit of a complicated world.

On Twitter and then on your blog, you described the design of Möbius with very warlike vocabulary. You spoke of a “struggle”, you sometimes attacked your producers and you described the painful “moment of dispossession” when your film ceased to belong to you…
I hadn’t expressed myself as much on my other films, but if I had done so we would have found similar moments of nervousness. When I imposed Sandrine Kiberlain on the production of Patriots, for a long time it created terrible tension with my producer Alain Rocca, to whom I was very close. This notion of combat has always existed, but before we were together against others: on A world without pity, it was really the fight of Alain Rocca, Hippolyte Girardot and me against the rest of the world. While on MöbiusI was alone on the front line facing the pressure.

Has French cinema become merciless?
Let’s say that cinema follows developments in society and is suffering the effects of the economic crisis and the need for profitability. For example, we no longer deal with technicians or even human beings, but with somewhat anonymous companies, particularly for post-production, which puts you in contact with opaque entities, such as laboratories and FX companies. (special effects). We are moving further and further away from the craftsmanship that previously existed in the film industry. Through the game of co-productions, we are thus obliged to work with transnational organizations and collaborators who we do not choose and who do not allow us to have stable interlocutors. There is a sort of influence of the financial structure on the way of making films which dehumanizes them, even if it makes them more efficient and profitable in terms of production.

Is it from this lack of human relationships that the desire to submit yourself on the Internet came from?
The willingness to talk about it on the Internet was linked to being sincere. When I got angry with my producers, or with life in general, I said it and when I was happy, I said it too. I wanted to do this exercise almost to the end (because we can’t say everything either) in order to convey the moods of a filmmaker who, at one point, screams about his inability to be sure from him. My story on Twitter should be received like this.

In Anna Oz (film by Eric Rochant released in 1996), Gérard Lanvin affirmed that“We are responsible for what we see. » Can this sentence apply to today’s spectators?
Yes, of course, I think we are always responsible for what we see. But this question also concerns those who offer images and who produce programs. When you make a film, you have to take into account how the audience has evolved. For example, I didn’t film Möbius as I filmed The Patriots, because the evolution of cinematographic grammar means that I could not film in long sequence shots, it would have been has-been. And we must not forget the role of professional critics, whose job it is to report on what they see. They do not always show responsibility when they praise a certain number of films without asking the question of the aesthetic policy behind them. For example, why is no one talking about this new academicism which consists of systematically putting your camera on your shoulder? There are no more plans and we film exactly how people used to film their vacations. Ultimately, the nature of the images that arrive on screens is a direct result of the lack of reaction to what we see.

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