The French director talks about the teenage love affair that led her to make films, and the thrill of discovering a new star actress
Your forthcoming film, Goodbye First Love, is about teenage romance. What were you like as a teenager?
Love was everything to me. My parents were both philosophy teachers, so I was brought up to value it more than money or possessions. It was all about beauty, truth, freedom and love. I did have a big, very real, very powerful relationship with someone from when I was 15 till 19. I thought he would be the only one I could ever love, and when it was gone it left a void in me. I think I've tried to turn that void into some kind of creativity ever since, using the sadness to do something poetic.
Love is universal as a topic for a film. I mean, everyone has a first love that stays with them, don't they?
It may be universal, but that wasn't the point of making the film. You hope that people connect to your subjects, but actually I was just thinking, maybe selfishly, to make it as personal as possible. I'm not hiding the fact that it's autobiographical, but I felt the urge to make this film. It was some feeling inside of me I had to get rid of, to give a frame to a chaotic emotion inside of me. Life is chaos, and I wanted to use art to get some order on it.
There are some lovely tunes in this film – music is clearly very important to your work.
And to my life, I would say. Yes, the Spanish songs are actually by a Chilean folk artist called Violeta Parra, who committed suicide. Her music is beautiful. I'm also really happy to use British folk artist Johnny Flynn's "The Water" in this film. We got so into him that actually he's now going to act in the next film of my husband, Olivier Assayas.
Now you mention Assayas [as a teenager, Hansen-Løve acted in his early film Late August, Early September], this was your first film as a mother, wasn't it? Your daughter, Vicky, must be two now.
I was pregnant with her when I wrote Goodbye First Love. She is two and half now. That must have influenced it in some way, but I don't know how. Maybe I was more caring to all the characters, like I was mothering them along. I certainly felt less vulnerable becoming a mother. It made me stronger, and gave me a confidence I'd never experienced before.
Did that help you deal with opening up such a well of emotions as you clearly felt here, confessing your teenage self on screen, almost?
An autobiographical film isn't easy – you're in all the characters, so close to them. In a way, you want to deflect this, so originally the lead character in this was the boy, but I discovered while writing it that I don't know boys so well as far as love is concerned, and that actually is the point of the film, the key to it. I wanted this boy to remain unexplained, his behaviour a mystery, so I had to be brave and honest and tell it from the girl's view, and yes, that's me.
How has being a mother changed you?
I'm happier now than I was before.
You chose Lola Créton as the actress to represent yourself. Tell me about her – this film could make the next French star.
She was 16 when we began shooting, and I wanted to do something unusual. I'm always annoyed when films have actresses who are 27 playing teenagers. It always breaks the spell for me. So I wanted a real teenager here, even though this film does then span another 10 years. I thought it'd be a nice change to see someone playing older, even if they did look a bit young in the later stages. But Lola is so delicate and shy.
Like all French actresses, she seems very happy to get her clothes off.
Aha. You English always love that. I can say that for her it was actually a big deal. But what's amazing is that, when the cameras rolled, she was free and sensuous like a cat. It was as if she was discovering her own sexuality before our eyes, but, as soon as the filming stopped, she'd retreat behind sheets, clothes immediately.
She has a little craziness about her, like a young Adjani, but she's so shy with press, with me, with her mum. She's not at ease with words. I think she truly can only express herself through acting. It's her vocation.
If I may say, 15 is very young to be having sex and a full-blown love affair. But, then again, one might term you a precocious talent. Your last film, The Father of My Children, was a very mature exploration of grief, and many were surprised that a 27-year-old could be the author of such a sensitive work. Was this film a riposte to accusations of precocity?
It's certainly something I wanted to explore. You know, I became a film-maker very young because I was very unhappy, basically. I had a broken heart because I loved this impossible man, and I spent my teenage years mostly crying. But I also loved being in love – at least I wasn't bored and just hanging around a shopping mall.
But how did you know that making films was the thing for you?
I poured all that emotion into some very terrible poetry at first, but I hated the solitariness of writing and it all felt false to me. It was only when I made a short film that it all clicked and I felt this was the right outlet for me.
What are you doing next? You once mentioned something about a house music movie?
Yes, I'm doing it, I hope. It's a massive project, though, sort of a two-part movie called Eden. My brother was quite a successful DJ in the 1990s, Sven Løve. He was part of a group who did residencies at the Queen club in Paris and out of that came Daft Punk and that whole French house movement. It was a huge chunk of my life. So I'm trying to use that era to tell a big love story, but the music rights alone are costing half a million euros, and I need lots of crowd scenes and to hire big nightclubs, so it's getting very expensive.
Will all those French house stars be in it?
I think so. It's a very important moment in French culture. That's what we all think, anyway. I might not call it Eden in English. you see, I'm already thinking of the English title. It might be Lost in Music, after the Sister Sledge song.
Good idea. In honour of the Larry Levan remix of it, I hope.
Ah, I see you are in the right spirit for this film already. OK, let's call it that. This seems a good omen for it.
Goodbye First Love is out on 4 May
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/apr/29/mia-hansen-love-french-director
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