firewithfiredeux:

willwondersevercease:

Since the Sundance Film Festival in January 2017, CMBYN became a critically and publicly acclaimed phenomenon. Same thing for Lady Bird, how do you explain these unexpected successes?
Those are to generous movies, open to everyone. For CMBYN, it’s a melodrama, a gay romance, a movie about bisexuality, about a first love, family, desire … I feel like it resonates to everyone. With CMBYN and Lady Bird, the intimate and the universality become one. That’s what hit me when I read them. These are stories, characters, even if they’re very different from me and what I’m living, turned out to look like me and tell me things very personal. This is what, I believe, made these movies so welcomed.

When one’s a young actor and gets offered a role as touching as Elio (CMBYN), do they ask themselves if it’s not too soon? Do they think about the impact it could have in their career?
I think that as an actor, I shouldn’t ask myself this question. It’s more up to my agent or my family to warn me or push me to do this or that movie. I feel like as an actor, we should only be driven by desire. Working with Luca Guadagnino was a real opportunity. Have you seen Amore? How can you not want to work with him? And about this topic! I never told myself “I will have to play a bisexual hero. What will people think of me?” I don’t care. And Elio is so much more than that! He’s such a complex character, with so many levels of reading … You know when you’re young yo get offered  very stereotyped pars. We’re either an assert or a caricature. It’s rare when a movie talks about youth so seriously. I have the chance to arrive in a moment where writers want to change things and where cinema is open to more diversity. We should take advantage of it.

Do you feel close to Elio?
We’re not the same age. Luca has a very physical approach to his characters. I understood that I had to be in the same excitement and permanent energy as when I was 16. Elio is constantly moving and this is how I remembered how I was at this age. When you’re 16, everything happens really fast, you want to move all the time. Oddly, I feel like when you cross the twenties, you touch the ground a little more. Something happens that changes you. The movie takes place in the 80s, s it obviously put some distance. I don’t think Elio would have been the same today. It’s sad to think that the beauty of the story would have been ruined with social medias. Elio and Oliver would be on Instagram and their exchanges would only be passive/aggressive. There was a sense of innocence and naivety in the 80s that misses to my generation. I trusted Luca and his vision of the time to build my part. The attitudes, the moves, the tones … they couldn’t be so modern. I had to find the right tone of an era that I didn’t know. I watched 80s movies such as Body Double or Aliens, to feel the taste of this time. Luca also showed me Maurice (1987), by James Ivory, to get familiar with his writing. And during the filming, I had to dive in, trust myself and trust that what I was doing was right. I’m still young, I know, but I feel like any actor is never satisfied with themselves. There’s no perfect recipe.

There’s a very erotic dimension in Elio’s character development in CMBYN. How do you approach this side of the part?
It’s very important that you associate the physical aspects with the emotional aspects in Elio’s character development. I feel like this is what the movie is about: how do these sensations make us grow? The sex scenes are right between the deepest sensibility and the strongest force. They’re almost action scenes, because of how they too portray something vital  for the characters. With Armie Hammer, we blindly trusted Luca. Those were very pragmatic scenes to shoot. We do what we have to do. We knew that Luca’s eye would knew how to catch exactly what he wanted. As an actor, you have to give yourself to the aesthetic of somebody. When we saw Amore or A Bigger Splash, we kne that he didn’t see the world like the rest of the world. We wanted to be seen by him, to be a part of his universe. I watched his movies, paying attention to the way he directed his actors. During the filming I found this very musicality, the way the lines just flowed in … But despite all the preparation, the books you’ve read and the movies you’ve wathed, when youre on the set, you just dive into the water.

The question may seem absurd, but do you think the fact that you’re french and american arouses the curiosity of directors really impacted by the european cinema, such as Greta and Luca?
It’s not absurd at all! I think that too! Well, no one clearly told me huh … I spent some time in France when I was little and took with me some french gestures and attitudes. So eventually, I might remind these directors something on the cinema they love. And that’s good! Talking french also helped for Luca’s pick: some scenes being in french, it was one less thing to learn! Thanks dad!

Your on-screen couple with Armie Hammer also works as the meeting between an “american body” and an “European body”
Exactly. Even if I’m american, in the movie, Luca really pushed my “European” side, very sophisticated. The chemistry with Armie is miraculous. We really found each other. But that’s thanks to Luca. We rehearsed on set, took time to know each other …. So on screen the timidity and distance were gone. We had already lived these scenes together. During 3 weeks, we really learned about the other and became friends. It’s very rare to say this sincerely. The intimacy you see on screen is real, our complicity changes everything. Retrospectively, I would say that the movie, the experience, wouldn’t have been the same if our match wasn’t so outstanding.

Just like Kristen Stewart with Olivier Assayas, could we imagine a collaboration with a french director?
I’m dying to. Thanks to the promotion of the film, I can spend some days in France. Although I’m a New-Yorker, my french roots are very important to me. I’m really proud that Lady Bird and CMBYN are released in François Truffaut’s country. You know, I am fond of Louis Garrel and Louis de Funès. I would like to be a mix of them both. Actually, there are 3 french directors that I dream about working with, but I don’t want to say their names in case I make a fool out of myself or I jinx it. I hope it’ll happen. We’ll do another interview but this time, I promise, in french!

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Your on-screen couple with Armie Hammer also works as the meeting between an “american body” and an “European body”
Exactly.
Even if I’m american, in the movie, Luca really pushed my “European”
side, very sophisticated. The chemistry with Armie is miraculous. We
really found each other. But that’s thanks to Luca. We rehearsed on set,
took time to know each other …. So on screen the timidity and distance
were gone. We had already lived these scenes together. During 3 weeks,
we really learned about the other and became friends. It’s very rare to
say this sincerely. The intimacy you see on screen is real, our
complicity changes everything. Retrospectively, I would say that the
movie, the experience, wouldn’t have been the same if our match wasn’t
so outstanding.