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It's official. I am now wealthy. You see, I figured if I had a nickel for every person French or otherwise who told me, "I never go to French movies; they're so pretentious and depressing," I'd soon be a millionaire. Sure enough, the seven figures kicked in after Jean-Pierre and Marie-Claude told me they'd sworn off le cinéma français forever after wasting money on "Sombre," a February release so inexcusably unrewarding that it should never have darkened the door of any cinema. One hundred and 16 French films were released here in 1998 and the vast majority made it a cinch to fill my warehouse of piggy banks. Now that I'm rich, I have the leisure to interview only those filmmakers whose movies I like and admire. First stop, Denis Dercourt, who happens to be French and whose movie "Les Cachetonneurs" ("The Freelancers") hit screens March 24. Perhaps because Dercourt is a trained classical musician who teaches at the Strasbourg Music Conservatory, and his instrument, the viola, nestles under the chin, he has decided to buck tradition by not documenting his own navel. Instead he has written and directed that "say Hallelujah!" rarity: a contemporary French film for which one is happy to purchase a ticket and from which one exits smiling. It's Christmas and Roberto, who plays bass and specializes in assembling the musicians needed to play background music at gatherings and receptions, is counting on four longtime colleagues and a local clarinetist to play Viennese waltzes and chamber music on New Year's Eve at a château under the direction of his former teacher, the great Austrian conductor, Svarowski. The pregnant flautist's due date is less than two weeks away, the slightly kleptomaniac and flagrantly mercenary cellist practices kvetching as diligently as he practices his scales, sensitive viola player Martial has a generous nature except when it comes to the cellist's superior airs and the clarinetist has an offbeat secret. Arriving at the château on December 26, the players settle in for rehearsal, disparate personalities and all. Their interlocking adventures give new meaning to the expression "face the music." "Les Cachetonneurs" isn't a masterpiece, but it's touching, funny and satisfying. And if you've sworn off French movies, it will give you hope. "It's so much easier to make a film than it is to nail your scales," says Dercourt, who laces his conversation with musical analogies. "It's entirely possible to get a film made in one year, but nobody has ever mastered their scales in so short a time. After 15 years of constant practice, a violinist or viola player might render that sequence of notes perfectly and with feeling." For doubting Thomases, Dercourt points out that the auditory upshot would be unbearable if you were subjected to a year's worth of first concerts, but a year's worth of films by first-time directors probably wouldn't be all that bad to sit through. The film's title evokes a world to which most of us give little thought. Consider: an awful lot of people train to be professional musicians, but there are only so many positions with orchestras to be had. If you've ever been to a cocktail reception or a snazzy wedding or an extravaganza at Bercy, chances are the live music was provided by cachetonneurs musicians for hire who play for a gig-to-gig fee or cachet. "You can 'cachetonner' just to make ends meet while you're a student or you can make a career of it," says Dercourt of the music world's equivalent of temp work. "Some excellent musicians end up freelancing their whole lives. Everybody knows everybody else on the circuit everybody's slept with everybody else," he adds. Although Dercourt is a musician one who fretted and bowed through his first cacheton at age 15 he comes from a long line of film and television professionals. "My dad took me to cine-clubs as a child and explained to me how movies were made," says Dercourt, 34. He learned the grammar of filmmaking on his own, shooting short films in Super-8 from the age of 12. Two years ago, his 61-minute debut, "Le Déménagement," played theaters briefly before becoming a hit in FNAC's bargain-priced "Coups de coeur" videocassette series. "I think it's essential for a cinematographer or a sound man to study his craft, because there are technical considerations you have to be on top of. But it's not essential that a director attend film school, for the simple reason that he's nourished by and relies so much on the talents of others," Dercourt says. Orson Welles, he recalls, never studied film per se, but managed to pull off "Citizen Kane" at age 26 by surrounding himself with outstanding performers and technicians. "Not that I'm in his league, or anywhere near it," Dercourt adds with a laugh. Then again, Dercourt did enlist some actors every bit as fine as the members of Welles' Mercury Theater. These include Marc Citti (Lionel the kleptomaniac cellist), Philippe Clay (the half-deaf owner of the château) and Henri Garcin (the conductor). Dercourt's younger brother Tom produced the film a project that Denis Dercourt "pitched" from notes he'd made on the back of an envelope. "The entire story has to fit on one sheet of paper that's very important to me," he says. "Every scene is worked out in my head, but I don't pencil in the dialogue until I've chosen the actors. Only then do I write out their lines, in keeping with their particular quirks and strengths." Citti says, "We each spent a few preliminary days with a coach learning how to hold our instrument properly. I panicked at first. In fact, I remained skeptical to the very end as to whether I was handling it right, but I figured, 'Denis is a real musician and he keeps assuring me it's convincing, ergo it must be pretty close.'" Pretty close, indeed. One comment that preview audiences have made over and over is: "These people are incredibly good actors considering they're really musicians." The only genuine musician in the central cast is violinist Clémentine Benoît, seen taking a merciless lesson from classical great Ivry Gitlis, who gives master classes the world over and who made his screen debut in Truffaut's "Story of Adèle H." Dercourt cast Citti because he'd heard him in a radio play, before they ever met face to face. "When I cast, I'm on the lookout for actors with excellent memories, who can 'sightread' a text," he said. "I'm always writing and I need performers who can incorporate changes on short notice." "Sometimes he'd hand us new lines 15 minutes before we shot the scene," says Citti, who was a student of Patrice Chereau's as a teenager. "Everything is written down," says Dercourt. "However, if an actor ends up replacing one of my words with another, I defer to their choice, because it's the one that came more naturally." Dercourt also favors a single take of each scene whenever possible. "You use less film, which is cheaper," he admits, "but the real reason I like to work that way is because it's so close to the way good recordings are made, and nothing carries you away quite as much as a piece of music that was captured on the first take. Jazz musicians, especially, will tell you that if they don't get it down on tape the first time, they may as well go home." "Knowing you're only going to do it once creates a pretty delicious tension, based on fear and excitement," Citti concurs. Dercourt adds, "Good musicians and good actors tend to thrive on the sensation of danger, of putting the essence of their craft on the line every time the conductor lifts his baton or each time the camera rolls." He also shoots in chronological order as much as possible. Rai singing sensation Faudel plays a small part in "The Freelancers." "We shot the film a year ago February," says Dercourt, "before Faudel really broke out as a performer. When we screened the movie for inner city kids this past October at the Chicago Film Festival, they all cracked up when Faudel started singing because they'd never heard a sound like that come out of a guy's mouth before. It was so unearthly and foreign that their immediate response was to laugh. But older, more sophisticated viewers recognized an extraordinary vocalist and asked if they could buy a recording." The Dercourt brothers called their production company Les Films à un dollar, after Godard's comment, "If you've got a dollar, make one-dollar films." Which reminds me, if I had a dollar for every filmgoer who will waltz out in a good mood after seeing "Les Cachetonneurs," I'd be rich... |
