Artist Spotlight: Alain Guiraudie

French director Alain Guiraudie recently won best director in the Un Certain Regard category at the Cannes Film Festival for his work “Stranger By the Lake,” a thriller centered on an affair between two gay men at a clothing-optional beach. Guiraudie, who for the last 15 years has been writing and directing provocative films concerning French sexual mores and expectations, has been on a tour of the U.S. promoting his newest work, which also received an ecstatic response at Sundance and Lincoln Center. Although initially “afraid” of the Harvard Film Archive’s offer to host a retrospective and master class series, Guiraudie eventually agreed to attend, and the series ran from Jan. 31 to Feb. 8. Crimson Arts sat down with the auteur to discuss his career and artistic vision.

This interview was facilitated by translation from David W. Pendleton, programmer at the HFA.

THC: What directors and artists have been most influential in your development?

AG: “The Adventures of Tintin,” and the larger world of Hergé was one of the first things I spent a lot of time with; Luis Buñuel, Jean Renoir, American Westerns by John Ford, “Tarzan.” Almodóvar and Nanni Moretti are contemporary influences. Foundational writers like Shakespeare and Sophocles are also very important to me.

THC: More recently, your films have incorporated more elements of realism. Do you see this continuing?

AG: I have gone towards a more realistic style, but it has been to transform the real. What I really like is the idea of a naturalism that changes the world and makes people see things differently. Cinema is taking elements from the real world and giving them a dimension of dream and fantasy, even within the confines of realism.

THC: Is your raw exploration of eroticism purely artistic or also political?

AG: The way I approach sexuality is political because I put sex at the center of relationships…. Sex is at the same emotional level as passion and love in my work. The idea is to remove explicit sex from being inherently pornographic, which poses many aesthetic questions: how do you frame and film the sex act? But, yes, it is ultimately a political project.

THC: “Stranger By the Lake” focuses entirely on the intrigue of the beach. Was the shoot extremely short as a result of how contained the work is, or was your filming more deliberate?

AG: The shooting wasn’t very long…. It was six weeks of shooting, so I didn’t have all of the time I wanted. Initially, I was going to shoot the film in sequence, but it was easier to film all of the scenes of the nudists together, all of the scenes in the water at once. So that’s what we did.

THC: You often write and direct your films. Do you visualize your films while writing their screenplays?

AG: Yes, when I write it’s usually extremely visual. I modeled the environment of  “Stranger By the Lake” on a location I knew, but we ultimately filmed somewhere else. Additionally, the actors who played the parts did not look at all like those I had initially visualized. Once the shoot comes around everything usually changes...

THC: Do you have a close relationship with your actors, or are you more strict and distant?

AG: I work very closely with my actors. When shooting I don’t look through the viewfinder or the monitor; I’m watching the actors. With those shots where the framing and movement is very exact, I talk extensively to the camera operator and still watch the actors.

THC: There’s a shot that re-occurs 10 times throughout the film of a parking lot. What was its genesis?

AG: It didn’t emerge until after the writing process…. the concept was to film all the times where the main character arrives. I’d shoot for a very long time before the car drove in. There was a hill that allowed for a repeated high-angle shot without a crane. Now I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to change the positioning of the camera…

THC: Why do you think that “Stranger By the Lake” has transcended French borders and been so popular in America?

AG: Only 35,000 people in France saw my last film, “The King of Escape,” so “Stranger By the Lake” was a big change there too. Some people have been saying it’s my best work…. I think its microcosmic nature makes it applicable.

THC: Successful foreign films are often remade in America. Would you be okay with an American “Stranger By the Lake”?

AG: So far nobody’s asked…. I’m not sure how I would react. It would be very flattering, but also worrisome. Would they ruin it? Ideally, they would do a remake in 10 years. I wouldn’t want to be too involved. Michael Haneke did [a remake] with the American [version of his Austrian film] “Funny Games.” I don’t want to rework a film I already think I did well…besides the parking lot shot, that is!

-Staff writer David J. Kurlander can be reached at davidkurlander@college.harvard.edu.