Like each of your films, Flamenco is the fruit of your discovery of a place and your presence in this place. What’s the story this time?
The place is Cadiz. I went there to look at Zurbarán’s paintings, having seen the ones hanging in the museum in Seville. That was the reason for my trip to Andalusia.
But all the rooms of painting upstairs in the Cadiz Museum were closed for renovation, and I didn’t see any of the pictures I’d come to look at.
On returning to the hotel, my frustration was compensated by the sight of the room’s white wall, as bright as the albs of the Carthusian monks painted by Zurbarán.
Like many of your films, it’s made in a hotel room with a very peculiar design, which inspired the unique setting of your film. Can you explain how this space was converted into a shot?
In this hotel room, I saw the image. It was striking because of the precision of the frame, with, at its centre, the whiteness of the wall like a deep opening into space, bordered on the right by frosted glass and on the left, set back, by the bedroom door. The shot had to be taken, and once again, as I didn’t have my camera, I had to use my smartphone.
Already I could see how I was going to occupy the image, and via my presence behind the almost opaque glass, I very quickly had the inkling of a film that would turn this image into a shot.
In this unique setting, divided into three vertical surfaces of different widths, you take the opportunity to radically renew your editing practices using double exposure which lets you edit within the shot. Can you explain?
In a single axis, with a single frontality, several shots are taken. They’re adjusted using double exposure which causes erasing, which sees a disappearance followed by a return into the image.
Erasing the subject, leaving the image, leaving the room, returning to it, within the permanence of the white wall.
Onto the white wall is imprinted the vertical image of a headless woman dancing the flamenco. How did you take this shot and why did you frame it in this way?
It was obvious that the white wall should become a screen! A screen like an abyss (I’m thinking of the abyss in La Vallée Close), from which could emerge a flamenco dancer. She’s filmed in portrait format that can be inserted into the middle of the landscape format.
This shot of the dancer was taken in Seville before my trip to Cadiz, without an idea of a film in mind, on the steps of Plaza de España, while I happened to be passing by.
What’s behind the shot of the slow-motion waltz that almost opens and closes the film, in such marked contrast with the liveliness of the flamenco? Why the contrast?
I remember filming in a museum in Riga, projected onto a wall and in slow-motion, several sequences of a Viennese waltz. The shot that introduces Flamenco was chosen because we see the dancer there, led by her partner, raising her arms.
Nothing could be more different from the convulsive flamenco dance than the Viennese waltz. With its languid rhythm, slow-motion effect and formulaic steps, the waltz frames and accentuates the impropriety of Flamenco.
We find the same contrast between the rapid rhythm of the dancer’s movements (and the music) and, almost in slow motion, the movements of the body behind the frosted glass. Slow-motion flamenco or a cry for help from a drowning man or a torture victim?
The movements of my arms behind the frosted glass are not in slow motion even if it looks that way compared with the frenzy of the flamenco dancer.
Nonetheless, I am her partner, and this plaintive gesture, pressed against the glass like the shadow of a damned soul, responds to her passion.
Are we right to think of El Greco when we see this slowly contorting body like a flame in a hotel room in Cadiz?
When you mention El Greco, you’re probably thinking of the painting representing the Vision of Saint John, the Opening of the Fifth Seal from The Book of Revelation.
It shows the tormented figure of Saint John, arms raised, and face turned towards heaven. And behind him, other imploring figures are also reaching towards the sky, from which two cherubs are descending, wearing a white cloth to cover their nakedness. However, I wasn’t thinking of the Toledo painter when I made Flamenco.
I need to return to Cadiz and, at last, stand in the middle of the room where Zurbarán’s Carthusian monks hang in their white albs.
Interviewed by Cyril Neyrat
