16/08/2023 - The Austrian filmmaker of Hungarian and Lebanese descent tells us about his free and very original adaptation of Henry James’ novel

(© Elsa Okazaki)

Unveiled this year in the Panorama section of the Berlinale and released today in French cinemas by Les Films du Losange, The Beast in the Jungle [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Patric Chiha
film profile] is the 5th feature film from Patric Chiha after the fiction titles Domaine [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (Venice Critics’ Week in 2009) and Boys Like Us [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2014), and two documentaries that also played in Berlinale Panorama in 2016 and 2020 respectively: Brothers of the Night [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and If It Were Love [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Patric Chiha
film profile].

Cineuropa: What made you want to freely adapt librement The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James?
Patric Chiha: This idea was inside me for a long time. Its great simplicity and its mystery appealed to me because it really talks about all of us, about a feeling and an existential question we all know: what we dream of living and what we’re really living,  the struggle between our fantasies and our daily lives, what we aspire to and the compromises of reality. It’s a great novel about love and about time, like all the films I adore. But I couldn’t find the key to adapt it, until one day I got the idea to shoot inside a nightclub, one of the places from our real lives where we experiment with this desire to live above life, to escape from time, to live an even more intense life, to escape from reality even as it catches up with us.

How did you decide on having the film take place from 1979 to 2004?
The writing of the script took a very long time because this isn’t a very narrative novel. The idea of the 80s and 90s imposed itself very quickly because these were times of upheavals that were really big, as were the differences between the different types of music and the different ways of going out: we moved from disco to electronic music, from something very hot to something colder. The gap between the different atmospheres was huge and allowed to sketch out a feeling of time. But this wasn’t about creating an exact reproduction of each era: it’s the nighttime, an organic and slightly blurry universe.

What about your pick of actors for the two main characters?
I had long loved Anaïs Demoustier, particularly for her work in the films by Guédiguian. She read the script very quickly and I could sense from her a great desire to be in the film. Tom Mercier I met later, but I had of course discovered him in Synonyms [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Nadav Lapid
film profile]. They are both, in their own way, a bit out of time. But they’re also very different from one another, which is also the story of the film.

What were your main intentions in terms of director? A gradual change?
The big question of the film for the entire team was how things evolve, or rather how everything changes all the time and is always in movement, in a story that is much more static, and with two people who wait for an event. And of course, dancing is emotion through movement, which has been at the heart of cinema since the Lumière brothers. The other essential question for the direction was about doing and being, and watching other people do and be, meaning how we are simultaneously actors and spectators of our own lives. Hence the importance of the club’s balcony, and the things we project on others, because at parties, we love to dance but also to watch other people dance.

How far did you want to push the strangeness of the film?
For me, this film is as naturalistic as any other, probably because this is how I see the world. I never told myself that I would make a strange film. I hear people talk about a radical style and it’s true that I like to work on a certain kind of artificiality, to show how I am directing, with tracking shots, and a great attention paid to the light. Cinema is one of the most artificial arts, we cut up time and space, but I hope that by accepting this artificiality, we can reach the truth of emotions. The characters and situations may be a little strange, but the emotions are alive, relatable and real. Personally, I like things that are both very artificial and very deep, and this is what we see at night when we go out, things that are simultaneously nothing and the very essence of life. And I really believe in surfaces, skins, walls, dresses, hair, etc., in the hope that they reflect the world. Besides, I don’t really distinguish between directing and being a spectator of the film: I hope to be moved so that these emotions can be shared with the audience. In nightclubs, we’re kind of in a telenovela in terms of emotions, everything is a little overdone, excessive: we’re very happy, very jealous, very sad. And I was also looking for something very specific for the image: we’re in a nightclub, so always under artificial lights, everything is a little "too much", but the two main characters are a bit naked: we film them in a very simple way. The world around them is very loud, very colourful and flamboyant, but they are in a much simpler film.

(Translated from French)