En Tu Ausencia

Louis Malle, as many european filmmakers back in a less morally regressive era, I don’t think attempted to portray anything specifically ‘pedophile’. Or if he did it was in the real original greek sense of the word. It’s only that doing honest films with youngsters in them, …how could you escape such themes? It simply wouldn’t be honest anymore, or not real. In those days,you were entitled to be at one with the truth of these various situations (‘Souffle au Coeur’ where the growing boy does naughty with his mother, etc.).
These days truth or at least those truths are savagely repressed. The truer a film is, the more virulent poeple get, as it becomes dangerous for their morals.
It is a very difficult balancing act as a film director to tell certain truths about youngsters and not end up in court for doing so.

You know that my film is hardly very ‘polemical’, and certainly nothing of the ilke of ‘1900′ etc., but it still had poeple walking out of the theatre in England. One wanted to call police about the film. We had that ‘vomiting woman’ I mentioned …which is of course very funny, because that is what i set out to do in the first place – provoke reactions where, in actual fact, where there is strictly nothing there! They are expressing their own thoughts, not mine!

I saw and have the Indian film by Malle. Quite a marathon! You maybe dont know his experimental early films, where pigs and naked children play in a bizarre garden? …not my cup of tea, but he certainly was an interesting filmmaker. The sort that can no longer exist.

Now let’s see what Heneke has in store for us with his new Cannes winner ‘the white ribbon’. Heneke is the only ‘Malle’ left.

Hi Freebird,

Nothing amazing about posting on a site where different viewpoints are made! You should see the comment I get from the 50 to 70 year-old women’s group! :-)
About the music: the feat was not so much I wrote/played the music (which I’ve been doing for years), but that the lead kid actor played all the 2nd guitar tracks (about 60% of the music) after only 4 months guitar lessons.

Regarding your comments: let me play devil’s advocate again:
1. There are not only boys but girls on the way into town, and …if you were stared at like that, you might well stare back!
2. It is not unusual that I stare, totally fascinated, at some baby’s/kids eyes. I remember only recently being entranced by a baby with translucent almost watery blue eyes that seemed like a portal into another world. Personally I find it easy to stare at some special esthetic quality in kids that doing it with adults. I see the same with Paco in this scene: the kid comes out of nowhere with this intense, focused gaze, the way kids do unashamedly sometimes. Again, enough to lose track of a conversation about engines…
Another point is that Paco is wearing sunglasses… who knows if he not looking at a bug in the kid’s left shoulder.
3. Paco just found out his car’s not ready, has nothing to do, nowhere to go. Had it been the boy’s sister there he would have spoken to her. We don’t see that Paco WENT to the boy, probably the opposite.
4. The reason is simple: Pablo puts his head down ashamed when they pass, and the others stare at him/them: Paco’s gaze back is almost a ‘what’s-all-this-about’ look.

Either that, or…Paco, as the French say, ‘works both with steam and sails’ :-)

Thank you William for your comments about the film.
But… Can I suggest you are maybe a little naive, ..out of touch perhaps?
You would like to see a BL version of Gone With The Wind? …It’ll be be for another era in another country, or 2000 years ago in Greece. Neither in our society nor in our time.
I’m sure you’re aware of the current climate. It is one in which, for instance, the English have just (yet another) new law this week in which ALL persons who ferry children and adolescents to scout groups must previously have police clearance to prove they are not a child-rapists.
Things have gone very far. Children are now confused, I know some are deepy affected as they have grown up. Another example? I was giving French classes to an International group of primary 9 year-old kids. At the end of the course we relaxed and watched a French kids film. I thought ‘My Father’s Glory’ was a good choice. They really enjoyed the film, …until they got to the scene where the two small brother shower nude with a hose outside. The classroom went COMPLETELY INSANE. Amongst other insults, shrieks of horror, the most frequent comment was ‘He’s a peadophile!’ talking about the child actor…. (?!) Confused indeed, and guinea-pigs to a group of unstable adults venting their badly disguised desires through the medias.
I don’t know if we have gotten used to these things, but they are extremely serious, deep rooted instabilities in our society. It is beyond medieval, and extraordinarily dangerous as this creates generations of neurosis, wrecked relationships, the end of volunteer work, police state and constant suspicion etc.
Your demand is akin to asking a german filmmaker in 1938 in Berlin to shoot a love story between two jews, one of whose father is a money-lender called Shylock.
I can assure you the ‘love’ message would NOT be understood, however good the film. Even the jews themselves would have found something …odd about it all. Oddly out of touch.

I am seeking a certain reality in my films. There is no doubting that there probably are, somewhere in this society, a few that live with a quiet secretive illicit relationship, but the REALITY of the situation in this day and age is that it is all perverse, even legal it is illegal in poeple’s mind, everything is distorted, shrouded with intense fear, relationships (and I mean even parental ones) have become strained, false, risky. We are in a world where everything has become mixed and confused in a mass of hysterical nonesense. How on earth do you expect a filmmaker to shoot a BL love story in those circumstances? You are truly naive. I am all FOR making films on taboo themes, I have quite a few stories up my sleeve that cover a large gamut of the ‘unacceptable’ (like consenting incest, a truly difficult one), but am not prepared, as a first time film director to go to prison for my Art. Not yet anyhow.

Just another post to admit that I am also a little out of touch, out of touch with these posts in this site.
I’d like to answer a couple of the most recurring comments, some dating back a long time.
1) Re the length of the film. As far as I am aware, there is NO other version other than the 99min one. I do believe the 134min version was a printing mistake. The directors cut IS 134mins long, but has never been released, to my knowledge.
2) Was the film censored? Censorship takes place from the moment the film is written. One cannot write all of reality in a script because child actors live in our western society. I used to masturbate on trees. I guess that was both odd and interesting. But. can I tell that?
Censorship also happens naturally during a shoot. Editors and other responsible people will choose certain shots according to what they feel is ‘acceptable’. True to this film like many others.
Then there is the censorship at the distribution level. Yes the film did have more daring scenes in its first cut, but ones that were almost automatically manipulated to avoid ‘problems’.
There was nudity, but, finally, the decision not to include it was taken by myself on the basis that what this nudity MEANT in the script, the use it had in the storyline, would simply get completely lost to other ways of seeing the scene which are specific to out society and time (anything from disgust, shock, outrage, to calling the cops). It was narratively just not worth wrecking the natural rhythm of the film for this. In the 70’s in France this would have fitted in well into the story, not nowadays …But even with the ‘gentle’ version, people in England STILL walked out on it!
3) Piracy: someone above asked me to explain how much money we indie directors/producers/writers make from a film, in order to make people understand the bad of pirating a movie. The fact is, I did sell my house and belongings to make this film, and I have not earned ANYTHING back on it at all yet.
The facts are simple: my film can be downloadable even viewable anywhere for no money at all. I have lost all I had in the belief it was a good idea making this film. Piracy totally destroys such projects.
I am sickened, absolutely appalled by those so-called ‘defensors’ of freedom who claim it is a good idea to ’share’ files online. They are despicable, ignorant people. Sure these big companies need to be woken up to their abuses, but I am a perfect example of one whose Art has been wrecked by pirates from the start, before my career could even start properly. I am VERY grateful to those who actually purchased the DVD, and for their support, but there are 4 google pages where one can buy or rent my film, and about 40 pages where one can downlaod it without paying a thing.
The sort of honest, independent, risqué movie that some people above would like to see, and me to make, simply wont happen because of piracy.
My only hope is that even more people will support such films as I make, when my 2nd feature ‘Brecha’ comes out soon.