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18.08.2007
The Troublesome Woman
-I'm mostly engaged by stories and not by film generally, says Petter Næss, the country's most productive director, whose two new films hit the Norwegian cinema theatres this autumn: The comedy Gone with the Woman and the children's film Leaps & Bounds. Publisert: 18.08.07 | Sist endret: 18.08.07
 | Foto/Copyright: Odd-Steinar Tøllefsen |
Gone with the Woman (Tatt av kvinnen), based on Erlend Loe's novel, is a kind of unromantic comedy about the difference between the words effete and efficient, in which Trond Fausa Aurvåg's character is constantly haunted by his girlfriend, played by Marian Saastad Ottesen. The Swedish children's film Leaps & Bounds (Hoppet) deals with two Kurdish brothers who end up in Sweden. The director of both films, Petter Næss, is not particularly taken with film – he is a storyteller.
– I tend to get absorbed by stories, and I'm not generally so interested in film. I don't watch a lot of films, and I'm not one of those film buffs who know the names of all the directors and actors. The people I work with have probably watched ten times as many films as I have. I like Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge, a formalistic cornucopia, but this is a kind of film I myself would have never dared to make. On the other hand, Babel is a type of film I hope to be able to make at some point.
During the last decade, Næss has made more feature films than any other Norwegian director. – I have made all of seven films in nine years, but I have never agreed to make anything I should not have. I believe I was right in making the American film Mozart and the Whale, and even with films like Elling, Just Bea (Bare Bea), or Gone with the Woman, you never know how they will fare. I have only made the films I really wanted to make. Films whose subject matter I find fascinating, and which I fully identify with. I have read scores of screenplays, and I have turned down a large number of them, especially American ones. I have to be true to myself, and in my opinion, it's not about making films for the purpose of making films. They have to relate stories I believe should be told.
Næss thinks film directors receive an undeserved amount of attention. – Presently there is a great focus on directors. But a director is a product of many factors. I often say I don't write, I don't act, I don't make music, I don't edit, etc, but I receive honours and flowers if the film is successful. I love what I'm doing, and it's a fantastic job. I love telling stories in collaboration with other people.
Which he learnt from the theatre. – I have a lot of practice from theatre plays, which of course also consist of images. And where you constantly direct the audience's attention to what you want them to focus on. The stage is a good training ground for testing out stylistic form, and for creating dramaturgy and rhythm. A theatre performance is also edited, just like a film. But in the theatre, you edit the performance in front of everyone. All of the involved, from technicians to musicians, actors etc, perform slightly differently every time, and it is an enormously strenuous and instructive process to gradually work out the rhythm and the pulse of the performance. This has been a valuable experience to bring into the editing room. But fortunately, in the editing room only you and the editor are present.
Næss' modus is the conflict between the dramatic and the comical. – Most people describing my films label them comedy, drama, or both. And often the balance between humour and seriousness is what I'm praised for. I believe things do not turn more serious just because you treat them in a serious way. So if there is a thread or a leitmotif in my films, it would be humour balanced with seriousness, a kind of humour which benefits the defendant. We laugh with, not at, as they say. Consequently, the audience laugh at themselves.
The USA and Sweden
Næss made two out of his three latest films abroad. And he has learnt a lot from the cultural differences. – It was fun to make Mozart and the Whale, even if others were responsible for the end result. You don't do final cut as a rookie, and the music was added after I had left. But the rest of the film, the acting and the directoral work, is all my doing. If you compare my debut with Bea's, I have no regrets. I will probably reconsider before I sign the next contract, but given my naivety and my constant hunt for interesting projects, I'm sure I will hit another wall again some time. But in my opinion, one has to make as many errors as possible in this life.
Næss also had to modify his own ambitions with Leaps & Bounds. – I wanted a more dramatic film, but then it would have been rated 15. Happy Zingo makes children's films, and I gradually understood that the premise to get a 7-years rating required certain alterations. I have no knowledge of what's too rough. In order to get across to the age group 9-13, we had to adjust the material I had filmed, especially the combat scenes with bombs at the beginning of the film. The film became less violent and unpleasant than I had envisaged, but we manage to convey what we intended to relate.
Filming High and Loe
The absurd comedy Gone with the Woman is a far cry from Leaps & Bounds. – Gone with the Woman is a comedy with absurd, tragic features, in a nonrealistic universe. It's a story about two people trying to make a relationship work, in a tale about how funny it all is when everything goes to hell. A film with tragicomic observations on a kind of relationship which lots of people will recognize – and maybe quarrel about when leaving the cinema theatre.
Næss lived with Loe's material for a long time. – The reason why I made the theatre play and the film is that I recognize myself in Erlend's book. I became curious as to how communication may fail between two people who share the same objective, but do not achieve their goal. It all started when I read the book and then adapted it for the stage in 2001. Producer Olav Øen thought we should make something out of it, and we needed someone who could transform the narrative into a film. So together with John Bogaeus, who also wrote Just Bea, I developed the screenplay further. We have kept much of the dialogue from my theatre version. Both Erlend Loe and Ingvar Ambjørnsen indicate good dialogue, and we have made extensive use of Loe's kind of peculiar, nerdy and naive, but extensive vocabulary and word order.
Næss cooperates with actors he is familiar with from earlier joint projects. – Trond took over from Gard Eidsvold, and worked as a stage actor for a long time, so he knew the part well. I did not want an everyday humdrum kitchen sink realism, but a bizarre universe. Both Marian and Trond have faces suitable for these roles. The couple are not a classically beautiful woman and a classically handsome man, but a rather unusual woman and a special man who fit into the absurd universe I have tried to create. Trond has a characteristic appearance and expressive eyes. He may not do much, but by subtle means he is able to relate a whole lot.
A Man and a Woman
His dream of love becomes the main character's nightmare. – Our need for love and approval is always with us, and always has been. And in the film, this is an expressed goal for the main character: I decided to fall head over heels in love. He reaches his goal, and unfortunately this becomes his downfall.
But he thinks the main character is far from irresolute. – The film deals with his subjective impression of her, not with The Truth about Man and Woman. I find him an honest person, only that he says no too late. The instant one partner in a relationship wants to control the other, the relationship is declining. He cuts her too much slack, and is caught in the trap. They have great sex, and he is fascinated by her, he gets a Frank Zappa record, and she does good things for him. I would call it a conflict with a positive prefix. They discuss who is the most infatuated, but none of them faces the consequences of the fact that they do not really have a relationship. I can relate to the main character in the way he fails. But his failure does not mean that he is incompetent. It seems that for men not to be effete, they have to win. Even Jesus had to give up in the end. Was he indecisive? If the main character in the film had been a woman, she would have been subdued. But he is regarded as irresolute. That's food for thought.
He always adjusts his style in accordance with the specific story. – We shot the film in Cinemascope and used wide angle optics, between 18 and 28 mm, in order to cultivate the broad format and provide large images with a lot of content. Consequently, in all close-up images, the actors play against a red piece of tape in their compendium. The choice of these optics suits the broad format we have chosen.
Gone with the Woman is a colourful film, more related to Just Bea than to Elling. A yellow chest of drawers is the subject of quarrels between the couple, who cannot agree whether the chest of drawers or the walls are in the wrong colour. – There's a bit of red, green and blue in every picture. My father teaches colour theory and colour psychology. The point is to gather the images and distribute the colours in such a way that they harmonize with each other. All the colours harmonize except the yellow colour of the chest and the symbolic painting he buys, which is in blue and orange. The chest of drawers has probably been with her since childhood, and in her opinion, the colour of the walls is all wrong. It's an unfounded allegation that for some reason he's not able to lift it, but this becomes a symbol of the superior force.
The choice of exteriors is also based on a narrative element. – You have to find a colour range which suits the film and provides it with what I believe the plot needs. In Elling, there is a lot of faded colours; beige and shades of blue illustrating the characters. In Gone with the Woman, there are no hip milieus or modern glass and steel buildings. The film contains an old-fashioned, romantic conception of a town, with old, patinated stores on street corners. All the exteriors are actually street corners, which both thematically indicate choices of direction, and stylistically provide more nuances than even walls, which I used in Elling. The street corners provide visuality and perspective. And the whole film deals with choices: go with her or quit her?
This interview by Jon Inge Faldalen has formerly been published in a differently edited form in the Norwegian film magazine Rush Print.
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