Stephen Frears on CHERI's meanings and influences
Have I done alright? asks Stephen Frears at the end of a ten minute-long interview with Obsessed With Film in a PR companys Soho offices, Tuesday May 5th 2009, around 2pm ish. The modesty of the question, spoken in an Oxbridge baritone drawl, is highly representative of the mans public persona. Despite the two Oscar nominations for Best Director under his belt (for The Grifters in 1991 and The Queen in 2007) and his position as one of the most powerful figures in British culture, Frears likes to present himself as a humble shepherd of talents who has made it to the top through sheer luck. 
There is clearly more to his success than that, but he certainly does have a knack for attracting top-notch collaborators to his projects. His new film, Chéri, sees him team up with Oscar-winning writer Christopher Hampton (Atonement) and the always fascinating Michelle Pfeiffer, both of whom put in some prodigious work on Dangerous Liaisons, Frears first Hollywood hit. Twenty-one years down the line they have joined him again for another romantic drama/period piece set in France. This time the story is set in the tight-knit world of courtesans (aka classy prostitutes) of the Belle poque, the French age of innocence which preceded the carnage of the First World War. In essence it is a tale of impossible love between the young and flippant titular character (played by Rupert Friend) and the ageing courtesan Lea de Lonval (Pfeiffer). 
Despite a very obvious degree of exhaustion at the whole promotion process, Frears offered thoughtful answers to OWFs questions on the films meaning and influences. So yeah, he definitely did alright. OWF: Chéri blends the frivolous with the tragic. How did you fine-tune the material in order to get the balance between both elements right? Frears:
Its almost impossible to explain how one goes about the task, somehow its in your stomach. You know a scene has to be silly but it also has to have a sombre tone and you work on both those levels all the time. The script helps in that it gradually peels the frivolous away and replaces it with the tragic, but aside from that you have to use everything youve got at your disposal to express that duality. I cant tell you how I did it, I just knew thats what I had to do.OWF: Do you think there is anything especially relevant about the Belle Epoque for contemporary audiences?
SF: Well, its about the rich and theyre going through a bad time at the moment. In a way its similar to Dangerous Liaisons, which is set just before the French Revolution, whereas Chéri takes place in France in the period leading up to the First World War. In that respect both stories are easy to relate to for current audiences because clearly whatever society is going to emerge from the present circumstances will be very different from what weve experienced for the last thirty years. And from my point of view it will be a change for the better.OWF: Was the choice of this project intentional in that respect?
SF: No, in fact the credit crunch hadnt even started when we made the film, but the foolishness of the world and its extremes of wealth were always apparent.
OWF: The films title character is a young man who has everything he wants but is still not happy. And as Michelle Pfeiffers Lea puts it, he lacks any discernible personality. These are criticisms that are often levelled against young people today. Do you see Chéri as a reflection on current youth? SF: I dont know enough about young people to answer a question like that but it is certainly an opinion you come across quite a lot. And theres the idea that money doesnt bring happiness, which is of course an eternal question.OWF: So theres no wider criticism implicit in the character?
SF: Chéri is a spoilt brat, the wealthy child of a wealthy woman. Hes lived his whole life in a sort of bubble and living in bubbles is never a good thing. But I dont think he is representative of young people today. In fact, in my view young people today have it really rough, certainly much rougher than when I was young, because then we had full employment.OWF: Your director of photography, Darius Khondji, has stated that his cinematic references for the visual style of Chéri were the films of Max Ophuls, Jean Renoir and Bernardo Bertolucci. Were there any specific movies that you looked at when you were preparing for Chéri?
SF: The Bertolucci influence is there because we were supposed to shoot Chéris honeymoon in Italy and we hadnt got the money to do it. Then I watched Bertoluccis The Conformist and theres a scene in a railway carriage there, so we used that idea to portray the honeymoon and thats what came from Bernardo. Ophuls and Renoir are always hovering around my films, but the only specific movie I can think of that had an influence was Vincente Minnellis Gigi, which like Chéri is based on a book by French writer Colette. Theres a fantastic shot in Gigi where Louis Jourdans character changes his mind and goes back to Gigi after he left her. People changing their minds in films is always very interesting and Minnelli manages it entirely with movement and choreography and the wonderful music of Fred Loewe. The challenge of Chéri was similar: a lot of what goes on is interior, we had to dramatise things that were happening inside peoples heads.
OWF: Music clearly plays an important role in the way that you achieve that dramatisation of inner feelings in Chéri. Do you give precise instructions on the kind of score you want for your films? SF: Im not clever enough for that. After shooting I had to wait for my composer, Alexandre Desplat, which was torture. As soon as he started to write the score the interior life started to come out. We had already done the work and planted it there, but with the music it started to come to the surface and then I had to re-cut the film again so that audiences could understand the feelings that were involved.OWF: The film seems to imply that Parisian courtesans of the Belle poque and Hollywood actresses of the modern era share a very similar predicament when it comes to ageing. Does the same sort of predicament apply in some way to male directors?
SF: Ageing is ghastly for everybody. Women say it is a different process for them than for men, but the women I know all seem to end up much happier than men. Men age much worse because theyre so childish.OWF: In most of your films the women tend to be stronger than the men.
SF: This is the experience of life that I have had. Of course there are strong men and strong women but my personal experience is of a stream of strong women: my mother, my wives. My daughters a killer.
OWF: Youve made several movies which portray the past. Do you think there are any particular dramatic advantages to recreating a moment from history? SF: Thats an interesting question but I dont think Ive ever thought about it before. I think that when you make films like these what you discover are the truths of the present. In Chéri its oh, that is how women behave. You set the film in a specific period but then you discover that underneath it all feelings are universal and timeless.OWF: Do we try to read back into the past things which belong exclusively to the present?
SF: I think you need to know your history in order to avoid repeating its mistakes. Its quite apparent that when Tony Blair invaded Iraq he didnt have any sense of history or he wouldnt have gone there in the first place. He would have known to keep out of it.OWF: Finally, what five DVDs would you take with you to a dessert island?
SF: I cant answer that. Id change my mind five minutes later. As soon as I opened my mouth Id contradict myself.Cheri is out now in the U.K and will have a limited U.S. run from June 26th.
