INTERVIEW

JAN HŘEBEJK

In your movies you always participate also to the screenplay. What was the inspiration for you with Petr Jarchovský this time?

I’ve always wanted to do a movie, which would have the same story as Robert Graves‘ poem Beauty in Trouble. The story of a girl in a hard situation of life ended up being the foundation of the screenplay, though the main impulse were the personalities of the other parts, which we wanted to bring into life (the mother-in-law, the mother, the stepfather etc.).

You cast Aňa Geislerová in the leading role. Why?

I wanted to work with Aňa, because the character of the Beauty is the leading part, but it was for us the vaguest. I’ve known Aňa for a long time, I know she is a very intelligent woman, and I believed that together with her we would be able to put this part into shape.

What were the benefits of her being already a mother at that time, apart form the fact that she looks very sexy in the movie? Do you think that motherhood also changed her mentally?

I am sure it changed her, motherhood cannot not influence. And it certainly was a benefit for the movie. In the movie she actually plays a mother for the first time, after she became a real mother.

I have the feeling that you are slowly abandoning the retro-comedy genre and are turning to the present. But you don’t regard it with as much humor anymore. Is it because when one writes about the present, he doesn’t have the necessary over-view, which means those movies are more dramas from the real world?

I think that if we saw for example Cosy dens in 1971, we wouldn’t laugh as much. This serene view appears not only through our author’s position, but also because we look at it from the distance. And when you look at something with nostalgia, you of course have more reasons to laugh.

Humor can result from many things – from a situation, cranks, but also from a certain truth. For ex. in the movie Loves of a Blonde, the humor is quite sad. The probably funniest scene, which everyone recollects, is the bed scene, where Pucholt is with his parents. The whole audience is dead laughing to it, and then you see the Blonde who is following it all through the key hole and is weeping. This is the extent of humor.

Beauty in Trouble is full of humor, which results from the fact that we know it. That it is a bitter bite is given by the fact that we are seeking the truth. But on the other hand it has a certain purification in itself, a sort of catharsis.

Do you think that to be able to film about the present, you need to mature?

We never said: now we are going to write about the past and now we’ll do the present. This process was always natural. That about which we always talked about, matured in such a form that we were full of it, and we felt that we could write it now. I don’t know if it has any relation with our maturity, but maybe it is because we started talking more about the present, respectively about the characters. Personally I don’t make any difference between retro and present movies in our work. I think this difference is bigger in the audience’s perception. But for us the process is the same. We just talk about some characters, and when we feel that we have a story for them, we get to work. The time coulisse isn’t that important.

In each movie you draw the attention of the audience to an interesting musician. In Beauty in Trouble it is Radůza.

I put Radůza among the greatest Czech chansoniers, starting with Hana hegerová, through Zuzana Navarová and Zuzana Mnichová. I am a big fan of hers and I wished her songs to be in Beauty in Trouble. But the design I first had didn’t work out. I wanted her songs to be a counterpoint to the leading part. But it didn’t work out because the viewer’s impression on the trial projections was that I was trying to give the Beauty some intelligence by having Radůza play. That the songs and texts speak for her, and not in a contrast. And we figured that out later. So we didn’t use her songs as much as we wanted, as a commentary...

This role was taken by the music of Glen Hansard, which I also respect very much. He is an Irish chansonier, the leader of one of the best Irish bands The Frames, which plays in the Czech Republic about twice a year now. Glen has a girlfriend in the Czech Republic, so he comes here quite often. When we got to know each other, I wished his music to be in our movie. In the end, the last album he recorded with Markéta Irglová was made in the Czech Republic. We actually used 3 whole new songs from this album and one older in our movie. They work as that commentary. With a man’s voice and the English language, the feeling that he is talking for the female protagonist doesn’t appear.

Apart from Radůza and Glen Hansard, the movie has also its own music, whose author is again Aleš Březina, as it was in Divided we Fall or in Up and Down. I would say that this time, the music was a real contrast to Up and Down, in which thanks to Ondřej Trojan producer’s generosity and the theme, we used music from the Balkans, from the local scene, rock and other. Here Aleš had only 4 musicians and he wrote a beautiful simple music.

In which most unstandard and in which most agreeable place did you ever film? I am of course aiming to jail and Tuscany.

I could explain a basic paradox about this. When we were shooting in the jail on Pankrác, outside it was about 40 °C and inside it was cool. The environment is depressing, but that’s where I understood why there are so many prison movies. The whole area is very photogenic. We could aim our camera to any spot, it always worked. I enjoyed shooting in jail. We were in a cool place and everything worked out. While the little idyll we filmed in Tuscany, it was a real horror. There we really got to what Fellini says, that to direct a movie means to command Christopher Columbus’ company which wants to go home.

The shooting took place in such a way, that in the morning we would start at 8am, at 10am the sky would becloud and would stay so the whole day long. The first day we weren’t nervous yet, because we were shooting interior scenes and we used lamps. But the next days, it was a kind of mental agony! We would wait for an hour if per chance the sun wouldn’t appear behind a cloud. We would do one shot every three hours. And this is the situation when you are in movie’s paradise and you can’t film and you just wait. So the worst filming was in Tuscany and the best in jail.

In jail you used extras or actual prisoners?

They were extras. But they were real credible. Even Roman Luknár, who didn’t know that, thought the man with whom he played a scene in a cell was a real prisoner, and he started asking him what he is doing there, how he spends his weekends etc. Only the wardens are authentic.

For the first time in your movies there is an erotic scene seriously meant. How was it shooting it?

It’s the same as with Tuscany. Shooting an erotic scene isn’t something me or the actors crave for. But in this movie it is well-founded. I have to thank both actors, Aňa and Roman, that it ended up as it did.

With sex it is such, that it is a subjective experience. The majority of existing movies have copulation as a theme. All the visitors of internet servers and owners of satellite erotic programs know that there are thousands and thousands of filmed sex scenes, and you could hardly make up something new. But you can’t film it as a porno movie. First of all the actors wouldn’t do it, and secondly that’s not the aim. The purpose of this scene isn’t for it to be an erotic instrument, but for people to clear out an important aspect the couple’s life together. For ex. that their marriage doesn’t work anymore in anything except for that. Just as plenty of marriages work in everything, except for that, so this is the case, when everything has degenerated, where even respect for each other has gone, but there is some kind of animal attraction. And this is very important for the good understanding of the whole story and for its experience, so we couldn’t avoid shooting such a scene.

Back to the casting. The fact that Ms. Vášáryová flourishes under your direction, we already know. But how was it to direct the other stars of the Czech film and theater sky?

With Josef Abrhám I already made my first feature movie. So I already knew him, I always admired him and nothing has changed about it. So it was a sort of meeting after years. I must say I like very much the character played by Mr. Abrhám. It is a charismatic, amiable person, but also very firm inside. Josef Abrhám plays a character who, through his personality and energy, isn’t that far from who he actually is. By that I am not saying it was easy. It usually is even more difficult for the actors.

For the first time I didn’t work with Jiří Schmitzer. I met him in FAMU, where I shot my second after-school movie according to Zelenka’s screenplay L.P. 1948. In it the marital pair was played by Jiří Schmitzer and Hana Brejchová.

I worked for the first time with Jana Brejchová, and I must say it was great. Also because she is not reduced and absorbed in all those errands, series, dubbings. It was also a good encounter because the part she plays belongs to the best written ones.

I would also mention Roman Luknár. I am glad that after The Garden he is coming back to Czechoslovak cinematography. I would like to continue working with him, because he is an absolutely incredible personality. Also the fact that he’s been living in Spain for more than fifteen years is visible on his good shape.

We were also successful with the casting of children, which have a big role in the movie.

Beauty in Trouble will be in the competition for feature movies on the Karlovy Vary festival. Why did you apply the movie to Karlovy Vary?

There were two reasons. First, we like the festival, and what’s more I think the premiere in the large room of the hotel Thermal would fit to the Beauty. But also because we will finish the movie in the second half of June, so it is the first opportunity of presenting it. So we were happy it was chosen in the competition.

Since I already was a member of the main jury of the Karlovy Vary festival, I don’t have such an immoderate respect for any jury’s award. It would be nice, if there was an award, but to tell the truth it wasn’t a reason. We would rather apply to an American festival, because there, understandable plots are taken with bigger thanks than on any other European festival.