Tense, Mood, and Voice in Film (Notes after Genette)

Abstract

You have always been concerned with the couple. In that sense, this film continues a prior engagement. Probably. But in a developing way. Towards a view of today, a contemporary one. Couldn't one say, in effect, that the red line of your film making has been the documenting of this development in an ever more contemporary fashion ? Actually I am quite tired of it. I don't want to be telling the same stories or dealing with the same theme. In fact, my next film will be a very different venture. It will take place mostly at sea, it will be made in America again, and there will be sudden disappearances ... but it will not deal with a man-woman relationship. There will be interactions between men, but not on a sexual level. It is about the possibility of living together, about possessiveness, about envy, the envy a man can feel for other ways of life. Do you sometimes have such feelings? Yes. Also because often, even without admitting it or doing it consciously, a man thinks back upon his own life and makes his reckoning. These are natural examinations that one undertakes, and inevitably certain things in your past don't exactly please you totally. It doesn't necessarily happen oftento m it occurs very infrequently-but when it does, one gets the feeling of there having been other possibilities. On the other hand, the past is a cadaver. Experience is a limited tool only. Also, it can make you sterile or distract you. I really believe that one must annihilate experience. Get free of it. Otherwis it lures you, ties your hands, makes you a victim of false promises. It robs you of that instinctiveness which to me is the most beautiful thing in human behavior.