Four years after Carne, Gaspar Noé directed the sequel, which can be watched independently. A disconcerting work, I Stand Alone, acclaimed by the Critics' Week Prize at the 1998 Cannes International Film Festival, is the story of a lonely man, battered by life, and his incestuous relationship with his mute daughter. 

Frank Speaking: Alone against everyone, is that a title that can also apply to you?

"Yes and no, because when it came to my debts, I was on my own against the bank. But I had a lot of friends who helped me, who encouraged me to make the film, who patted me on the shoulder and said things like, "Go for it, keep going." I felt quite valued even before making I Stand Alone because of the success of Carne. It's just that, sometimes when your script is rejected by the main funding sources, you develop a certain hatred for those people, and so, yes, maybe I was the only one ranting against them. And so openly. I started the fire, and then a lot of others followed." GN

Frankly speaking: Is being subversive something that has always been the case?

"No, no, I'm not subversive. You just either give in or you stand up for yourself, and I don't think standing up for yourself is a perfectly normal desire, and I don't think my film is abnormal. I find it rather abnormal to try to prevent these kinds of films from being made… That's it, it's just a desire to exist and to assert oneself. It's not subversion. Subversion, I think, is something more planned, more destructive. My film doesn't really destroy any social value whatsoever. Maybe it shakes things up a bit, like you get earthquakes and then small seismic tremors. Indeed, perhaps it's a good idea. If you know that one day there might be an earthquake in a society, it's good to test that same society with very small seismic tremors so that people know which buildings might crack and which won't. If you're talking about subjects that people rarely discuss in film, then even though I don't address them directly—there's no earthquake in my film—then there are people who say, "But that's…" GN

Frankly Speaking: So what test did you want to launch here?

"It's a test I wanted to do with myself. It's: Will I be able to make this film I wanted to see on screen, focusing more on my desire as a viewer and not too much on the realities of my daily life? Because I've distanced myself from quite a lot of things. I don't know, I've had a lot of fun all these years, but also, having debts to make a film, while all your friends are making films with fifteen times more money… And maybe they have other problems in the end with the critics, their producer, or their editor or sound mixer. But sometimes I thought to myself: "P., I'm still making films in subnormal situations while they, well, they're getting paid properly to do things that… why not me?" That's all." GN

Frankly speaking: Was it a choice from the outset, precisely, to work and produce alone?

"No, I would have preferred to find a producer I get along with, and I prefer to have a partner in the future in whom I have complete trust. You see, sometimes in a relationship, sometimes people get married, sometimes they don't. You have couples who cheat in the shadows in more or less twisted ways, or there are people who live a free sexuality where each partner can do what they want, and it doesn't affect the relationship. I don't know what kind of relationship I can have with a producer in the future, but I just want to have someone, perhaps someone who doesn't have an exclusive production relationship with you, or vice versa, just someone you make films with, who solves all those problems for you, who fights for financing just as you fight for it in the editing room and as part of a team. You often have relationships where the producer, right from the start, tries to take away all the future rights to the film from you. He tells you, "Look, this film is so hard to make that you'll only get two percent of the profits." You say, "Hey, hold on a minute!" Once the film has recouped its costs, it would be normal to get 30 or 20 percent, or 50-50 if your name carries more weight than the producer's. But there's always this very mercenary side to producers that makes them hog the limelight, and at some point, you're in such a selfish mindset that you no longer want to work with them. And even if they have good taste, even if they like the same films you like, you see that financially, they want to be the boss. Not just on set, but also in the long term, saying, "This is my baby, not yours." And so, there are a lot of people I started negotiating things with, and then I told them to get lost." GN

Frankly speaking: Morality is a word that is rarely used, and "everyone has their own morality"?

"Everyone has their own morality," we don't hear that much, actually. We hear much more: "Every man for himself" or "Every man for himself." When you start arguing with someone about a film, we often say: "Everyone has their own point of view," which is a way of saying "Everyone has their own vision." It's a kind of "If I keep asserting myself and if you keep asserting yourself, we're going to argue." "Everyone has their own morality" is a bit like "Everyone has their own point of view." But when people lack arguments to trash a film, often the dumbest thing they can say is: "This film isn't moral." You get the impression that we expect a director to be a priest who determines where the demons are and where the angels are, and in my life I've never met any demons, I've never met any angels. You just have people trying to survive. I never intended to make a moral film, I just wanted to make a film that would be useful to the whole, useful to the individual on a personal level, and that would allow you to enjoy life." GN

Frankly speaking: It's a rather unusual topic...

"Yes, but in literature, these kinds of subjects are much more common. It's just that in film, you see, you have to look for funding because cameras are expensive, film stock is expensive, the lab is expensive, and the actors have to be paid. There's a whole set of factors that make it an extremely expensive art form compared to literature or painting. And as a result, a whole industry has sprung up, where subsidies or pre-sales are given to certain types of films. And strangely enough, all these people who decide on these subsidies or pre-sales belong to a social class that isn't representative of the general population. They're upper-class people who, moreover, are afraid of losing their jobs and who operate according to a rather consensual logic. We say yes to comedies, we say yes to police films provided that they are very far removed from concrete social reality or any political message whatsoever." GN

August 2000

Interview by: Éric Priou

https://www.lesinrocks.com/cinema/gaspar-noe-la-bouche-de-gaspar-100789-17-02-1998/