It's a French thing

>> Filmmaker Bertrand Bonello on his Eurosensation Le Pornographe

by MATTHEW HAYS

The title's enticing enough. But don't let covers fool you: while Le Pornographe, the second feature from Montreal-based director Bertrand Bonello features its share of entirely frank sex scenes, this is essentially a film about the strained relations between a father and son.

The film captured many minds at Cannes, where it won the Prix Fipresci, then arriving in Toronto to typically muted, Protestant-guilt-ridden reactions, landing down but one day before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Le Pornographe of the film's title is Jacques (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud), a man who left the porn biz in the early '80s, but now feels he must return out of financial desperation. In the meantime, he makes contact with his estranged son, who rejected him after learning pops wasn't a bona fide auteur but rather a purveyor of filth. Despite the fine performances and intelligent, elegant dialogue in Pornographe, Bonello, sitting down at the Café Melies to discuss the work, says reactions to the straight-ahead sex in the movie have often taken centre stage.

"The relationship between France and sex is very old, older than cinema," says Bonello, gazing at me with widened bedroom eyes. "It's been in the literature, the poetry, the visual art. It's very French. It's been in the cinema, too. First, a woman with a naked breast. Then a fully naked woman. Then fully naked man. The French always seem to be the first ones, because they have this facility with sex."

Surfing the sex wave

Bonello knows he's not alone. Le Pornographe, a France-Canada co-production, comes hot on the heels of a number of other French sex sensations, noted for their unapologetic raunchiness. Catherine Breillat cast Rocco Siffredi in her stormy Romance, and again finds herself in trouble with the censors with her recent A ma soeur! (Fat Girl), banned in the nation of Ontario. (Atom Egoyan was furious about that decision, though he may have had other motives beyond the defence of art and freedom of the cinema; his wife, Arsinée Khanjian, had a supporting role in the film.) Baise-moi, two women filmmakers' take on rape and the cinematic view of intercourse, also found itself yanked in Ontario. And, in what is perhaps the most startling recent bit of erotic evolution, French filmmaker Patrice Chéreau took Hanif Kureishi's book by the balls and came up with Intimacy, cited as the first English-language film ever to feature actors engaged in fellatio and intercourse without the use of body doubles.

"I don't think it's just a fad," says Bonello. "I think it's just a different attitude. The response is so different, depending on what country you're in. In Italy there was much discussion of the politics of the film. Scandinavia it was the porn. Toronto Film Festival: 'We want to know, but we're not really that interested.' In France they were obsessed by the father-and-son stuff."

Father-and-son reunion

But back to the essence of the movie (and away from all that sensational sex): what inspired Bonello's multi-tiered, complex plot? "I can't say it was any one thing," he says. "It grew out of the last eight or nine years. I was always writing things down, as they came to me. I think it has something to do with Pasolini. There's something about his work, his philosophy. He tried to answer the world's questions by exploring the relations between father and son. I'm sure the feminists will hate me for this, but I think many of the world's questions can be answered by exploring the relationship between father and son. But I wasn't thinking of any of Pasolini's films in particular, rather the man in general."

Now that the film has generated solid reviews and decent box-office in his native France, Bonello says his main worry is how Montrealers will respond to Le Pornographe. His first film, '98's Quelque chose d'organique, didn't fare so well on his stomping grounds. "That film went all over the world but in Montreal it was a disaster," he says. "The Montreal critics just hated it. I think the fact that it took place in Montreal threw them. So I'm very nervous about this release."

Le Pornographe opens Friday, Dec. 14