La Presse at the 77th Cannes Film Festival | Xavier Dolan: “I never said that I would no longer make films”

(Cannes) Xavier Dolan receives me in his room at the chic Majestic hotel, on the Croisette, where most of the distinguished guests of the Cannes Film Festival are staying. The Quebec filmmaker chairs the jury of the Un certain regard section, where he himself was welcomed into the official selection thanks to the Imaginary loves (2010) and Laurence Anyways (2012).

This prestigious invitation from the Festival came at the right time, like a balm for “the darkest year” of his existence, explains the 35-year-old actor and director. Almost every day in Cannes, he is asked about this famous interview he gave to Spanish media last summer, in which he said he wanted to quit cinema. An interview in his opinion malicious, which was poorly translated and misinterpreted.

“I never said never,” he explains. I never said that I would no longer make films in my life. I said I was stopping making films, because it doesn’t make me happy anymore. »

Still burned months later, he wants to dot the i’s. “I never said that art is useless and that cinema is a waste of time. »

Dolan says he suffered not only from a psychological point of view, but professionally from the shock wave caused by this newspaper interview El Mundo (which he refrains from naming). “I’m also an actor. Do we want to hire an actor who tells other directors that their art is useless and that they are wasting their time? »

Find his place

Xavier Dolan is said to have been born in Cannes with I killed my mother, presented at the Directors’ Fortnight, 15 years ago. He was born there a second time when Mommy won the Jury Prize 10 years ago (tied with Goodbye to language by Jean-Luc Godard) and that it has attracted an international film-loving audience.

“Actually, I was born in Sainte-Justine! he says, laughing. But it is true that we have several births and that there are rebirths. This Festival is for me an event where I am reborn, where I remake myself, where I reestablish contact with people and a world that I had lost sight of. »

Is there a part of him that has reconciled with cinema over the last ten days? He doesn’t need this kind of reconciliation, he tells me straight away. “It’s certain that I perceive certain energies, and a lot of hope and vitality [dans les films]. Things which, it’s true, have perhaps faded a little for me in recent years, because I find it difficult to find my place in this industry, not being a “big guy” who can make films to several tens of millions, but also being incapable of being a “small” who can make films for four million. »

If he suggests that one day we could see him again accompanying a new film at Cannes, he has no illusions about the compromises, especially financial, that he will have to make to achieve this.

“Films like Mommy Or Just the end of the world, doing them today, I know it would be difficult. Everything costs infinitely more, and I will never need less time. I want to do this job to evolve, not to go back and become smaller. People keep telling me that I should make a little film that doesn’t cost too much and that would end up in competition at Cannes to be back in the game. Why would I do that ? I don’t want to be in or out of it. »

In short, Xavier Dolan believes that he no longer has the means to achieve his ambitions in the cinema. “It’s so taxing in terms of time and energy. Honestly, it’s not that I no longer have a desire for cinema or that I no longer have inspiration; it’s that I no longer have the means, personally, to make films, because I don’t have the means to reinvest my fees and not to earn a living. »

Today, says the director, in a changing world, between digital platforms, inflation, the post-Covid era and dying theatrical cinema, he sees his future more in TV series, which have large budgets.

“Is the future of cinema the death of the cinema and the predominance of platforms? Or is it not the breakup of the format and the fact that I can make a series of films that is broadcast on a platform? he asks, mentioning Small Ax by Steve McQueen. I think this is where I can reinvent myself and above all find a certain comfort, because I will know that people can have access to it. »

A bitter taste

Dolan regrets that his excellent series The night when Laurier Gaudreault has woken up did not have a greater influence and that its audience remained more confidential than if it had been presented during prime time on Radio-Canada.

Also, he has a new series project in the works, ambitious and in several languages, which he cannot talk about for the moment.

And the cinema? “I have some ideas that I would like to explore,” he admits. The question now is: can I afford it and is it worth devoting two or three years of my life to it? So that on a whim, at Cannes, an American critic who has always hated what I do decides that it’s a load of shit? That it never comes out in the United States and international sales drop dramatically? That the film never has a career and I say to myself: I did all that and no one saw it? »

The Cannes Film Festival was the site of some of its births, but also of lasting wounds. Even though, at only 30 years old, he had already been selected six times and received two prizes at Cannes – corresponding to the silver and bronze medals of the competition – Xavier Dolan retained a bitter taste of the presentation of Just the end of the world on the Croisette, where it was poorly received in 2016 by part of the American press.

The film starring Gaspard Ulliel, Léa Seydoux, Vincent Cassel, Marion Cotillard and Nathalie Baye won the Grand Jury Prize, had more than a million admissions in France and won three Césars, including best director…

In Cannes, where he is demanded by the crowd on the red carpet, Dolan no longer has to prove himself. It does not have the same status in the United States. “I have never eaten out of American hands,” he said. And it’s not for lack of proposals. It was close. There were projects that fell through. But each time, there was this idea of ​​doing at home, for even less money, what I do in Quebec. I had imagined the opposite. It somehow happened in my life, but not for the right project, not at the right time and not in the right way. »

Photographer Shayne Laverdière took 28,000 photos related to the filming and release of Dolan’s “American Film,” The Death and Life of John F. Donovan (2018). He ate thousands more during the filming of Mommy and its presentation at Cannes in 2014. During the pandemic, the filmmaker had the idea of ​​bringing them together in a book, which will be published in October. He showed me the prototype of this sumptuous 480-page object, entitled A friendship on filmon pre-sale since Wednesday.

“I think it’s a book that will allow people to relive the film and discover life behind and after the film, especially in Cannes. There are photos of writing the speech in tears, of the phone call we receive telling us that we have to go to the closing ceremony because we will have a prize, without knowing what it is. We are in suspense, in tension, in passion, in friendship too. »

In the happy and unforgettable memories of the Cannes Film Festival, place of births and rebirths.

The hosting costs for this report were paid by the Cannes Film Festival, which had no say over it.