Juliette Binoche has taken over Karlovy Vary.
“An icon is here,” said the festival’s artistic director Karel Och, welcoming her to the stage.
In town to pick up the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema, Binoche also presented her directorial debut “In-I in Motion.”
In the documentary, she reveals everything that went into the making of dance-theater stage production of “In-I in Motion,” focusing on her intense collaboration with British dancer-choreographer Akram Khan.
“Once upon a time, I was in London and I was lying face down, being massaged by Su-Man Hsu. She asked me: ‘Do you want to dance?’ And I said yes,” she recalled. She ended up going to Khan’s show.
“He was dancing like a genius, going around like crazy. At the end, he asked me: ‘Do you want to spend two days in the studio and see if we could do something together?’ We didn’t know each other and we didn’t have a theme, we didn’t decide what we were going to do, but we wanted to learn the other person’s art form. He wanted to act and I wanted to move.”
They created a show and went on tour, performing it 120 times. One time, Robert Redford was in the audience.
“Towards the end of the tour, Robert Redford saw the show and he said: ‘You have to do a film out of the show.’ What you will see [today] is what Robert Redford wanted,” she said.
She didn’t want to explain too much in the film.
“I wanted the spectators to have their own feelings and be in a position of a creator,” she noted.
In his review for Variety, Guy Lodge agreed: “Assembled wholly from ample studio rehearsal footage and vivid live recording of the finished stage production, ‘In-I In Motion’ is free of voiceover, interviews or any kind of framing commentary to establish how Binoche and Khan, this far out from their unlikely experiment, now perceive the outcome and what they learned from it,” he wrote.
“Rather, the documentary affords viewers raw access to the creation process, and the rare fascination of watching two leading artists at times out of their depth, figuring out new dimensions to their craft on the hoof, so to speak.”
Binoche added: “Sometimes, as you’re going through creation, you’re discovering what you’re doing. The idea of this film is that at the end of it, we’re all creators. And you want to do something you’ve never done before.”
During a masterclass moderated by Variety, Binoche reflected on her career, from her first international role in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” – based on the novel by Czech writer Milan Kundera – to “Three Colors: Blue” by Kieślowski.
But it was “The English Patient” that won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and her acceptance speech was one for the ages: “I thought Lauren [Bacall] would get it. She deserved it,” she said in 1997.
“At the end of the day, all these awards… The dangerous part is starting to believe that they are important and that you deserve them. But you won’t put all your awards in your coffin [when you die]. You’ll have to leave them behind,” she said.
She never wanted to stay in Hollywood, she said – a champion of European cinema, Binoche is the president of the European Film Academy – but learning how to say “no” took her some time.
“When I was young, I thought that if I said no, they wouldn’t love me anymore. But then you realize that it’s important to say no. And I don’t want to repeat myself because I don’t want to get bored. Repeating myself is like death to me.”
What does she expect from directors these days?
“I’m expecting space. I want them to give me space to explore and reveal something in me that I hadn’t thought of before. It comes with the trust. If the director trusts me, I can trust myself more easily.”
Recalling the making of “In-I in Motion,” she added: “When you choose an artistic path, you cannot be frightened. You have to go into your fear. That’s the challenge, but it’s also the joy of it because in the fear, you know there’s a possibility.”
It’s important to try the new, she stressed.
“What is the new to me? Is there something different I can explore in my life as an artist? Those are essential questions.”
Next, Binoche will shoot “Thank You Charlotte” with Turkish filmmaker Berkun Oya, but she’s also willing to try something completely different.
“I really want to go on vacation. I think I’m gonna try that one.”
