048: A Conversation with Durga Chew-Bose (Pt. II)
Delving deeper with the writer and director of Bonjour Tristesse
I have long found the motivations and inclinations of artists most fascinating, and delight in the slightest, elusive welcome into their inner sanctums. An artist’s work stands alone, but the artist’s humanness – what bothers them, what brings them joy – enriches the experience. This sensation is further heightened when regarding the works of women artists. How thrilling it is to read Maya Angelou’s work with the knowledge that she wrote lying across a hotel bed, propped up on one elbow, with a bottle of sherry, a dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, yellow pads, an ashtray, and a Bible by her side.1 Virgnia Woolf’s diaries were just as captivating works of prose as her novels. A 1931 entry from Woolf’s diary ended with “too much and not the mood”, inspiring the title for Durga Chew-Bose’s first book.
As my discussion with Durga progressed, it took a more personal tone. Art is, after all, very personal in nature. We spoke about the women who helped bring the director’s vision to life, the kind of T-shirt that makes her feel just so, and how grief and abundance, in turn, have honed her craft.
This is part two of our conversation; you can read part one here. New Yorkers: Bonjour Tristesse opens at IFC Center on May 2, with a special Q&A with Durga and Lily McInerny. A preview will be screened at L’Alliance New York on April 24.
Tasnim: For this film, you worked with two people who are really known for their style, Chloë Sevigny and Miyako Bellizzi. What was it like working with them, and were you consciously thinking about fashion and style when you were making this film?
Durga: It was definitely on my mind. Anne's character is a fashion designer. I wanted to build a world where she was established in Paris but was an American. That took form in her skirt lengths, her sporty style that's also classic. Where is she from? Was she messier when she was younger? Now her look is a bit more put together. And how does that reflect her personality? Fashion and dress and costume design was critical to that from a character development standpoint. There was only one costume designer I wanted to work with. I felt that Miyako was such an archivist when it came to costume design in film history that her ability to reference was so rich.
I love a dress moment in a movie, and for small independent films, those are just not priorities on a budget level. But I really wanted one.
T: Is there one particular dress moment that you've seen in a film that's stuck with you?
D: Certain body language elements of Lily reminded us of Audrey Hepburn. We talked about Sabrina, obviously, a lot. We were working with Cynthia Merhej from Renaissance Renaissance, and her designs are so dress moment-y. They're so romantic. She's so good at designing for a woman's body. She's very aware of hips and waist.
T: I know, I have a pair of her trousers.
D: My god, her trousers! There's an innate costume language to her design. I love that. The amount of women I know who are actually like that; they're not going to wear The Row on a night out. They're going to wear a moment dress. Working with Cynthia was an education in the woman's body.
We also pulled from many friends and designers. Sophie Buhai helped us a lot, and she was a source of inspiration for me, such as Anne's French twist. There's Miyako and Chloë. And then there's all these satellite women around me who really helped with the film and contributed their sensibilities, their way of being and their attitudes about dress and women. But to answer your question, I also just deferred a lot to Chloë and Miyako for their knowledge and instinct. With Chloë, it extended even to things like the flower arrangements. She had great ideas for so many elements.
I think that there's some surprising elements in the film of how a young woman might dress. And I was all for it because we're building a character. We're not building a reflection of young women today. Then there were practical things. There's a lot of sitting and talking in the film. So you really have to think about what a pant looks like or a short when you're sitting, which is really different than when you're standing.
Necklines came up too. I think the woman's sternum is so elegant and beautiful. An elegant woman like Anne would know to wear a square neck when she's tanned around her chest and shoulders and has freckles.There's such a reflection of her and how Cécile would see her, because that’s the sort of thing you remember about a woman you admire. That's just how our memory of women works, I think, between women. And with Miyako, sometimes it's always the simplest choice. We would try a million things, and then it was just like it was the white T-shirt that worked. That was something else I learned a lot from her: the power of simplicity and fit. She would ask questions like, are they walking and talking? What time of day is it? Are they going to lean against the wall? What color is the chair? She would test things at different times of day, which I learned a lot from, watching her kind of rigor.
T: I think what you're demonstrating is why it's so important to have women making those decisions. A woman's input, her insight, and her worldview is often largely ignored.
D: Or taken for granted, because thoughtfulness is easily dismissed because it becomes background to some people.
T: In Agnès Varda’s documentary The Young Girls Turn 25, based on her late husband Jacques Demy’s film The Young Girls of Rochefort, there's a scene Varda documented during the film shoot where Catherine Deneuve and Jacques Demy are discussing something as he puts on a sweater. Demy is totally absorbed in the conversation as he does this. In a voiceover, Varda concentrates on the act of Demy wearing his sweater and what it stirs in her; she says something to the effect of, “These are things about him that only see and know intimately.” This action is so significant to her, and in that moment time slows down for her while the world turns as usual.
D: That's so beautiful. What's interesting to add to that is you noticing it, too, and finding it so profound. This is what I was thinking about when we were talking about beauty: observations or details being dismissed. It's a very dismissive form of gaze. And your form of watching and seeing is so active and emotional and profound and comes from clearly a place of love and experience. I feel that a film only exists fifty percent. The other fifty percent is the audience.
The putting on of a sweater…it's so funny, the opening shot of our movie is just a young man taking his T-shirt off. We shot it several times in different locations, to get it right. I find that one of the most attractive things is how men take off their shirts reaching from behind. It's so masculine to me, and it's so a woman watching a man and noticing it. We would practice it with Aliocha, the actor in that scene. When we discussed it, he was like, you're right, I do do it like that. He didn't even know he did it that way. That scene was so important to me, not just because it was the opening shot, but because it's exactly what you're talking about. It asks, what does a young woman remember about the nape of his tanned neck? And how he takes off his T-shirt was such a form of sex at a very nascent age.
And those details in a landscape where not much of that exists anymore become so important that you kind of want to reassert them and show people, for example, this person's hand is so important because it has these beautiful fine lines and this is also a kind of beauty, or this person taking off their shirt is so alluring to a young woman in a way that young men might not ever imagine. I really believe in achieving your voice quietly, which isn't a popular way of being. It's about being loud. I think there's a lot of power in doing things quietly.
T: What's your favorite film? At this present moment.
D: Oh, god, I don't know. At this present moment? I've recently been obsessed with Argentinian filmmakers. I will always return to Lucretia Martel's films. I recently had to present La Cienega for a screening, and that film is very significant to me. It's Martel’s first film, which is shocking to me. I think about it often in those terms. Maybe this is the first and last film I'll ever make, but it's really put me in mind of thinking as a filmmaker now. When I see filmmakers achieve a masterpiece in filmmaking, I just want to study it. How did she get her actor to let her have the camera on her torso when she's sitting in a bathing suit? I'm thinking of elements like trust and confidence between humans making art.
When David Lynch died, I rewatched Mulholland Drive and thought, this is the greatest thing ever. How does this exist? I love any film about mirroring, women and mirroring. I think that will always endlessly be interesting to me. It’s so natural to how women are. And it's like my version – as a prudish person – of seduction.
T: And what's a book that's extremely important to you?
D: I'm reading Daybook, the Journal of an Artist by Anne Truitt. I'm forever jealous of visual artists who are great writers. I think Rachel Cusk said this thing about how she's jealous of visual artists because their work ages better. And it's true because they're not using words. I think partly why I'm enjoying it right now is that I'm very moved by people who are able to document their everyday, and do it with a level of consistency, but that doesn't deliberate between what is more important. I don't keep a journal or a diary.
In Truitt’s book, talking about a visit from her children and the meaning of her art can exist in the same entry. I think that's a place in my life where I am right now, where there isn’t a separation between the domestic and the art making.There's something that can be informed by both sides. I'm very excited by writers' journals, but Truitt’s in particular have been very important to me right now. Probably also because I'm getting older, and she's not talking about young things. She's talking about taking care of other people and watching people grow up, which I don't think people write about a lot.
T: Is there something that you do when you're out of your comfort zone that helps you feel a bit centered?
D: As I've gotten older, I've realized that I have to be comfortable. The way I dress is a huge part of it. I'm not very femme in my silhouette, and it took me many years to acknowledge that. I need to be very comfortable in what I'm wearing so that when I'm sitting or standing or listening to people, I’m not thinking about whether this thing is falling the way it's supposed to or cinching where it's supposed to, or is it making my waist look shorter? I can't be thinking about any of that. I think I've really figured that out. Sometimes that makes me feel a lot more casual than most people, but I've learned, I really don't care because nobody else cares, and nobody else is thinking of me in that way. That’s one thing I tell myself: nobody's thinking about you. And that helps open everything up.
I am a bit of a phone person. There are times I’ll be looking at it, but I try not to, because I've seen what it looks like; you can tell someone's nervous and looking at their phone. I've tried to find comfort in standing and looking a little lost.
T: Do you have a particular piece of clothing or a shoe or something that makes you feel that you put on and it makes you feel very in yourself?
D: I do. An in-between season jacket. I have a lot of those. Those are very helpful. I have a couple boots where the heel is just extraordinary. All my pant legs fall exactly right when I wear them. There's a very specific type of vintage faded black cotton T-shirt and I have five of them. I put them on and I feel like myself. The sleeve cuts exactly a little bit above the shoulder. The neck isn't too high. They're a bit sporty and confident, and I put them on, and I swear it's like a shield.
The older I get, the more I think, you just need those things to get you out of the house. Stuff like that I find really helpful, because no matter what, then you're yourself, and it doesn't matter if everyone's seen you in it forever.
T: I wanted to ask you about your knees. When I was a teenager I suddenly realized one day, I don't like my knees. It became the site of my anxieties regarding beauty. Then I read in your book that when you were young, you didn’t like your knees either. It’s so specific and I was intrigued. How did you experience beauty when you were younger and how do you understand it now?
D: I think I didn't experience it and I doubled down on playing sports and being in leadership roles. I tried to find myself by the things I wanted to do and make as opposed to what I look like. I figured out very early that I wasn't going to be the beauty that at the time was being presented to the world in the nineties and early aughts. Instead of trying to be it, I just went another way. This meant not dealing with what I didn't want to face.
Going to Sarah Lawrence, living in New York, coming into myself, discovering what my version of beauty is, realizing that maybe I'm not super femme in some ways really helped because things like my knees or like not having extraordinary metabolism, having a mustache or a unibrow that I do not deal with…I would just like wear like a uniform as opposed to like try to fix them, because I was learning through other ways what you need to be alive: connection, friendship, mentors, a voice as a writer. I think finding your style can help solve a lot of these sticky ideas or ways of comparing, because style is so personal and should exist outside of what everyone else is doing.
There's so many elements of getting older and things that my body has done that I have to just be like everything is so silly. Because my body can do amazing things and I can't think about all the other things that it's not going to rise to the occasion to. And then I have these very private moments in my head where I'll see a really beautiful woman on the street, and a lot of that beauty comes from how she's wearing the sweater on her shoulders, and I'll look at her ankles and they're not extremely thin. I once used to associate elegance with thin ankles. But here she is, more striking and elegant than anyone I've ever seen in my life.
T: In the process of writing a script for several years, of making this movie in the midst of loss, of kind of finding a new community in making that movie, is there something that's remained with you that you think about or that you try to honor in your daily life, or the way that you approach your work?
D: That's such a good question. I think, and I mean that. I know people use it to buy time when they answer, but I really mean that. I'm trying to have gratitude. I'm not someone who wakes up every day and writes three things I'm grateful for. But it was extremely hard to make a film under some of the circumstances that I was faced with. The fact that it exists at all, and that it has been received and played at festivals and had people respond to it and love it and hate it, that it exists is a new caliber of gratitude I have.
I have to remind myself of that, because every day can feel kind of hard. I think of things like, how am I going to make the next one? How am I going to get through today? I have to hold on to that, to remind myself I can do it. I know I can do it. You can get caught up in the cycle of watching people around you produce and have deals and announce next projects. And it can make you feel like, oh, this will take me another decade. It's okay. In between that, a million other miraculous things are going to happen.
I don't always want to make it about motherhood either, because I feel like sometimes you see those quotes like, I get all these moments with my kid, and those are so much more important than the art I make. No, the art you make is a huge part of who you are. But I do have moments where we're all gathered at my stepmom's, and my brother's kids are running around with my son, and someone's doing something in the kitchen, and someone's irritated. And I think, thank God these moments are happening. I'm very grateful.
T: And what was it like, making this film with your son there with you?
D: I just had to embrace that it's not easy, but it's better with him there. In some ways, I'm really lucky that I hadn't made a movie prior, so I wasn’t worried about how it was going to work. My first experience was abundant in some ways, even though that word goes against what I was saying about absence, the loss of my father.
I was texting my cinematographer recently and he said he will always remember how on our set there were children everywhere, and how that meant a lot to him. And I think it does: it diffuses the ego and some of the self-seriousness that comes with the job.
Loved every last bit of this and truly didn’t want it to end. Thank you both!
What an incredible conversation! Thank you for sharing this.