After expressing his desire to leave the movie industry, actor and director Xavier Dolan speaks with his friend, actor Lucas Bravo (Emily in Paris). In an interview published in GQ France magazine, he talks about his love for his profession and the pitfalls that led him to this decision.
In the text, presented in the form of questions and answers, the 34-year-old filmmaker delves deeper into the core of the statements he made in July about his desire to stop making films. After making his first feature film I Killed My Mother (2009) at the age of just 20, Xavier Dolan does not withdraw from his surroundings because he believes he has said everything, on the contrary.
Although he explains that he is still inspired, the idea of having to deal with the post-production and promotion of a film causes him too much pain. Is that what makes you want to become the youngest pensioner in the cinema? replies Lucas Bravo. I didn’t expect this disgust, this tiredness. I have no bitterness, but I am detaching. “I don’t feel like it anymore,” his friend replies simply. Dolan says he is too passionate about his job to be confronted with other people’s lack of passion and rigor that later intervene in the film.
The filmmaker quotes, among others, Hayao Miyazaki, who said that making films only brings suffering. “It’s true in a way,” Dolan said during the interview. Aside from the extreme experience that making a film seems to mean to him, what is most important is the great discrepancy between the joy he feels in guiding the actors and actresses in the birth of an idea and the loneliness of the aftermath (of the cut). , the interviews, etc.) that provoked his election.
His love for the seventh art has faded, especially because of everything that is happening in the world. He feels a strong disinterest in cinema when he realizes that the earth is doing so badly.
“I think there is a connection between my turning away from cinema and my turning away from the world in general,” he explains in the French magazine. Current events without good news haunt him: the world is burning, our civilization is coming to an end. The planet will rebuild itself, but we humans are reaching the end of a chapter. We are facing a monumental change in our existence and many continue to deny it. This makes me lose a lot of hope in our humanity. The idea of making a film for the cinema suddenly becomes very ridiculous, explains the filmmaker. He also remembers that at the Cannes Film Festival ten years ago he answered, of course, dead to all the journalists who asked him where he saw himself in twenty years.
During the interview, the director of Mommy, Les amours Imaginaires, Laurence Anyways and Juste la fin du monde takes up the topic of farewell again and quotes the poem of the same name by Guillaume Apollinaire. Dolan talks about the many departures of the people around him who have shaped his life: The more time passes, the more my life and career advances, and the more I realize that certain fantasies are incompatible with my reality. It’s a constant sadness.
With information from GQ France