“The Artist,” last year’s Academy Award-winner for Best Picture, inspired and influenced many people, but perhaps no one more than Renée George.
Remembered locally for her band Big Lucy (regulars at Toes Tavern, The Hermosa Saloon, and The Pitcher House), and also as a member of the all-girl group Têtes Noires, the Redondo Beach resident traded the musical circuit for the electrical circuit. When she’d first moved West some 20 years ago, George ambitiously set out to be a film director. She had, after all, earned a BFA in Media Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, in addition to attending the prestigious graduate film program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
However, a bit of doubt crept in as those 20 years crept by.
“After seeing some of the stuff that was coming out of Hollywood,” George says, “the type of films and also the kinds of people around me, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to do it anymore.”
It’s now or never
“Then I got a phone call to work on this film, ‘The Artist,’” she adds. It was to be a black-and-white silent film set in 1920s Hollywood, with a largely French cast and crew. George immediately liked how that sounded – or rather how it felt, since “sound” (excluding music) won’t be making much of an appearance in this article.
“So I started working on this incredible film (in the lighting department as a Best Boy under Gaffer Jim Plannette), and it was such a wonderful moment in my life. It was so inspiring to watch them working and to see the old historic sets and costumes, and it inspired me to return to my original dream of directing.
“So I decided,” George says, “if they can come here from France and tell a story about love in Hollywood with a French crew and team, I can go to Paris and tell a story about love in Paris.”
At this point we’re talking about a very short film, one that would eventually span just eight minutes and be titled “Le Petit Nuage,” or “The Little Cloud.” Not to jump ahead a few reels, but eventually “Le Petit Nuage” would become the first installment of “7 Short Films About Love,” and therein lies our tale.
While working on “The Artist,” George became friends with Isabel Ribis, the French script supervisor. They talked about the ideas that George had for her project – her projected project.
“She invited me to come to Paris and stay in her apartment,” George says. “I wasn’t really considering making the film when I first went. I hadn’t written it down yet when I decided to buy a ticket to Paris… potentially to go to Cannes because there were rumors on the set that the film (“The Artist”) would go to the Cannes Film Festival. I felt like it was such a good film that it would go there, and I bought my ticket before the principal photography was completed.”
First stop, Paris, then Cannes, with the intention of remaining in France for only a couple of weeks.
“It seemed kind of crazy to think about making a film in that amount of time, especially in a foreign country,” George says. “But I went to Cannes and it was the big moment where ‘The Artist’ went from out-of-competition to in-competition. It was all very exciting, lots of parties and fun moments and 20-minute standing ovations, and I was just floored by that. For a silent film it was incredible.”
From Cannes, George phoned her friend Isabel in Paris and talked more about the idea for making her film.
“And she told me, Well, Renée, if you’re here now, when are you gonna come back?” George laughs. “It’s like, ‘Good point.’ I said, Maybe I’ll just try; it can’t hurt to try. So I made my trip one week longer and just started to make phone calls to kind of put it together.”
To Isabel in Paris she said: “Do you know anyone who might be interested in shooting the film, being the director of photography?” Let me think about it and I’ll call you right back, her friend told her. “So she called me back in about five minutes and she said, I have a friend named Stella Libert and she’s right there in Cannes. She can come and speak with you.
“Within 15 minutes she was sitting at the table with me and we were talking about the project,” George continues, “and really from that moment forward each person said yes that we asked to do something.”
The next person George met with was Sarah Demeestère, who became the leading actress, and soon after Joffrey Platel, the male lead, and a couple of days later Sébastien Pierre, who does a charming turn as a waiter. There is also, à la Uggie in “The Artist,” a cute little dog named Spiky.
Quiet on the set
Just like a film editor, a journalist can splice together different strands of his interview to make it more exciting and to keep the reader on the edge of his or her sofa at one o’clock in the morning. We’ll get to how Renée George found the perfect musician to play on her soundtrack, but let’s take a step back, or forward, to admire the whole structure from a distance.
“I’ve expanded the project into a feature film,” George says, “because I don’t want to be a short film director, I want to be a feature film director.” Financing being what it is, and more on this later, she decided to make her feature-length debut in increments (she’s currently on the third short). Necessity is the mother of invention as we all know.
“I decided that one of the best ways to do that is compartmentalize it into a film of short films and create a feature film from the short films. Hence the idea for ‘7 Short Films About Love,’ each shot in a different country, each telling a different story about love.”
Seven films, seven striking locations.
“Who doesn’t want to travel the world, right” George says with a soft laugh. “One of the interesting things is we are doing all black-and-white silent films, so it’s a global marketplace, too. Everyone, anywhere in the world, will be able to appreciate and enjoy these films. You don’t realize until you start to make them how much you really don’t need dialogue in a film. You read between the lines; it’s not what you say but what you do, and it’s really true for films as well.
“One of the things about silent film is that it draws you in more. It’s just the music [and] it gives your mind space to kind of wake up that part of your brain that’s creative, and [you] start to create the story as you’re watching. You’re projecting your own kind of ideas onto the characters, and it’s really a wonderful thing.
“I think the viewing experience has become a passive experience in a lot of ways; in films coming out of Hollywood they just push a lot of things at you – the soundtrack is pushed at you and the dialogue, and action, and even 3D is reaching out at you.”
Destiny rides again
“Le Petit Nuage” can be summed up in a few heartbeats. A young woman goes to a café in Paris and sits at one of the tables outside. A young man sits at a table across from her, reading his paper. A Chaplinesque waiter serves them both. Soon the man has joined the woman and – how we long for this later in life! – there is instant magic and they are literally floating on a cloud, caressing, and making love. They are high above Paris. There is the fall back to earth, but there is the rebound, too. They find one another and presumably there will be many more shared cups of coffee in the future.
“After I’d completed the filming,” Renée George says, “I was so incredibly happy and ecstatic about the whole process, and how the path had just opened up for me as I walked along with everyone saying yes. I was standing in the Charles de Gaulle airport, ready to come back. I saw someone with an instrument case on their back – it looked like a bass or something, some kind of large instrument.
“Being a musician, formerly in bands, I said, ‘I must know this person; he looks sort of familiar.’ I was wracking my brain trying to figure out who it was, and I looked in my phone at my iTunes. Because I listen to music I thought maybe it would help me remember who it was. And then I realized it was Gautier Capuçon, the classical cellist and concert soloist, who I had been listening to on my iTunes as I’d been writing a script. The previous year, I was listening to his music, and there he was standing. And I thought, ‘Oh my God, I have to ask him if he’ll play on my soundtrack.’ It was like the first thing that popped into my head.”
Because it was destined to happen, says this knowing journalist.
“It just seemed like synchronicity,” George replies, “that I would see him and that I should seize the moment – carpe diem, and all that. So I decided to write a little note in my broken French and ask him if he would consider playing on my soundtrack. I was naïve enough to think he might not speak English, but he actually speaks fluent English.
“I thought I’d hand it to a stewardess who’d take it to the front of the plane,” she explains, even though she herself was now seated in business class. “And when he came on the plane he sat literally right behind me. So I put his picture on the phone and stood up and I said, ‘C’est vous?’ And he of course smiled and laughed, and I handed him the note, and put my hands like ‘I’m not gonna bother you, I’m not some kind of freak celebrity stalker,’ and I sat back down.
“Five minutes later,” George says, “he tapped me on the shoulder to say yes, that he was interested to actually do that, and I said, ‘Well, the film’s not even complete yet, so it’s easy to say [yes] now, but let’s wait until you see it, and if you still want to do it then that would be wonderful.”
Later, when the film was cut, George sent Capuçon a link to it, and he in turn replied with a one-word subject line: Bravo.
They have since become friends, and she just recently recorded him for the soundtrack to “Lago di Seta” (“Silk Lake”), the second of the seven films. Capuçon, it appears, will be playing across the global spectrum of the soundtrack.
You and your composer will be writing the music for the entire film?
“Yes we are,” George replies. “His name is Robert Casal and he’s an incredibly talented young composer. He came onto the project during the first film and we enjoyed working together. He’s got classical training, he knows orchestration, he knows how to conduct. I’m just the one with the ear from years of playing. I can hum a tune and help him with melody lines and harmonies and things like that.”
The unfolding story
The seven films will vary in length, with “Le Petit Nuage” likely to be the shortest.
“The first one’s eight and the rest will be about 15 minutes long,” George says. “The second one came in right around 15, 14 and some change.”
She then sums up the visual vignette that is “Lago di Seta.”
“It’s a story of a working mother who takes her child in the morning to the mother-in-law’s home, and her mother-in-law gives her a package of laundry and off she goes to work at a silk factory in Lake Como. At work during the day she becomes sort of lulled into a daydream by the weaving machines, and she has this incredible fantasy of her perfect man. And when she awakes from the fantasy she’s kind of by herself and a little melancholy because you think she’s never gonna have that perfect man, and then she goes to pick up her child and pick up her husband and it’s revealed what she really has in her life – which is everything that she needs.”
“Like a Sakura” (think cherry blossoms in spring), the third place setting at our table for seven, is being shot over the next few days in Kyoto and Osaka. George says it’s about “a Japanese schoolgirl and an older man. Basically, the man’s mourning the loss of his wife. They come together in an unexpected way and help each other with the different stages of life that they’re in – the girl becoming a woman and him letting go of his deceased wife.”
As for the remaining four films, taking place in India, Russia, Germany, and Argentina…
“They’re still sort of forming,” George says. “One of the things that I want to do and have done with each film is find someone in that country to collaborate with in terms of the script, because I can’t pretend to understand other cultures in every country but I can speak from a way of trying to make all the films cohesive by being the person central to the project. So the collaborator in that country helps me bring a genuine feel for that country, for the culture, to the script.”
This writer thinks it could be a nice touch if a few of the characters from the earlier films made cameos in the later films – and, ideally, some of those whose stories bloom later could be seen wandering through the earlier works. But moving them all around is rather cost-prohibitive, of course, although it might be a nice tie-in if the couple from “Le Petit Nuage” somehow shows up at the end. We’ll see what Renée George pulls out of her hat.
Her immediate and ongoing concern is not only to sustain the viewer’s interest through three or four films, but all the way through the seventh. It’s a challenge.
“It is,” George replies. “But I think we’re gonna do well with it ‘cause so far so good; I really feel like they’re wonderful films so far that have come out of this whole collaborative process of working across cultures and across boundaries to make a creative project happen. I think that’s important, even for the world, to be able to communicate with people in other countries in a civil fashion.”
As an independent filmmaker, though, Renée George has to hold a viewfinder in one hand and checkbook in the other, and she notes, “So far I’ve been self-financing all of the films.” She can use donations, and will need donations, if “7 Short Films About Love” is to successfully cross the finish line. “Who wouldn’t want to fund ‘love’?” she says with her characteristically big smile. Yes, indeed, let’s keep love alive.
Information about the project is at 02films.com/7ShortFilms (where you’ll see what film festivals “Le Petit Nuage” has been in), and as for financial contributions please visit 02films.com/filmstarter.
