Filmmaker finds “˜Father’ in art
The 2009 film, “The Father of My Children,” won the Special Jury Prize during last year’s Cannes Film Festival and will screen at James Bridges Theater on Thursday.
By Rebecca Jung
May 18, 2010 9:01 p.m.
Directors have a very complex and intriguing relationship with the films they create.
“They have a very passionate and personal relationship to the subject matter and to sharing their voice through the medium of film,” said Professor Myrl Schreibman of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
A director who communicates this personal relationship through film is Mia Hansen-Løve, a young French film director and writer who has already made two full-length films and is on her way to completing a third. Her second full-length film, “Le pére de mes enfants” or “The Father of My Children,” could be seen as an example of this personal relationship. “The Father of My Children” will be screened at the James Bridges Theater in Melnitz Hall on May 20 and will be released in Los Angeles on May 21.
The film was inspired by the life of the man who Hansen-Løve calls her spiritual father, Humbert Balsan. Balsan was a French film producer who Hansen-Løve had previously worked with.
“He was somebody who was really a kind of spiritual father to me. He was a friend. He was an ally. And the sense that I have of him as being a spiritual father was also something that linked him with me because he himself had a spiritual father. … And it was this linkage that we had with this sense of a spiritual father for us, that brought me closer to with him,” Hansen-Løve said through a French translator.
Hansen-Løve chose to make a film about Balsan because she said she views films as something essential to her life.
“Making a film has a kind of salvation quality to it for me. It is something that is very vital,” Hansen-Løve said.
Hansen-Løve said she adds in a special ingredient to all of her films.
“I have this sense of emotion that I put in, a very intimate kind of emotion, and I have a lot of confidence in that sense of emotion. I didn’t go to film school. I am more of an intuitive filmmaker and a writer, but this is something that I really try to convey in each of my films,” Hansen-Løve said.
This ingredient was noticed by the Melnitz Movie director, Andrew Hall, who had previously seen the film at last year’s Toronto Film Festival. Hall said he was excited when he saw that the film was picked up by IFC Films, which meant that it was available for a Melnitz screening.
“This type of story has a tendency, in the hands of a lot of directors, to become really sentimental. I think one thing that’s really amazing about what Mia does in this film is that she tells this really emotionally involving, almost heartbreaking kind of story. … It’s very touching, but never verges into sentimentality, and that I thought was really impressive, the way she handled that.”
The film follows the life of Gregoire Canvel, who is based on Balsan. He, like Balsan, is a French film producer who enjoys taking on challenging projects that also happen to be very expensive. As he continues to take on more and more projects, he loses more and more money, until there are only debts left. Gregoire is forced to stop carrying out these projects and makes a life-changing decision. The film continues with Gregoire’s family picking up after him, and while they do this, they unravel secrets about Gregoire and even begin to develop an interest in films.
Besides mirroring the life of Balsan, Gregoire also emits the interesting personality that sparked the relationship between Balsan and Hansen-Løve.
“What drew me to him as a person to show in the film is a real paradox that I felt within him. … He had this very outgoing energy and this radiance, but really deep inside he was quite melancholy,” Hansen-Løve said.
