Director Gaspar Noé HFP/Lagardere Photo Archive

THE DIRECTORS: THE SHOCKER
Gaspar Noé

Cannes
It was no accident that director Gaspar Noé underscored the first half-hour of his rape vengeance extravaganza Irreversible with a low frequency drone designed to make the audience sick to their stomachs. Never one to shy away from shocking and disgusting the viewer, Noé has continually pushed the boundaries of what is considered acceptable in a commercial film, from a father having sex with his retarded daughter in I Stand Alone to his infamous marathon 9 minute single-take rape scene in Irreversible. Ever the pot-stirrer, Noé discusses how Monica Bellucci laughed her way through the filming of her rape scene and why the end product seems to turn women on.

The Sexessentials: Carne, I Stand Alone, Sodomites, Irreversible, We Fuck Alone (a segment in Destricted)

You have said sex is funny. What do you mean?
It can be sad. But you can make it funny. In all of my movies, just shooting the movie — even Irreversible — is really funny. The result on the screen may be depressing or shocking or scary. Even during the rape scene, Monica [Bellucci] was laughing all the time. I was surprised by a documentary on Pasolini when he was shooting Salò [or The 120 Days of Sodom]: during those scenes at the end when they are torturing people and burning their breasts, you can see that they are all laughing too. The mood on the set has nothing to do with the result on the screen. Sometimes [comedies] have the worst moods on set. You have these comedians who are supposed to be funny and they are so full of shit on the set.

Would you agree that the raison d'être of Destricted is to explore the line between art and pornography?
There is no line between art and pornography. You can make art of anything. You can make an experimental movie with that candle or with this tape recorder. You can make a piece of art with a cat drinking milk. You can make a piece of art with people having sex. There is no line. Anything that is shot or reproduced in an unusual way is considered artistic or experimental. I would say that everybody is obsessed with sex. Those who say they are not: either they are lying or they are denying their own reptilian side of their sex lives. The only people I know who are really not obsessed with sex are heroin junkies.

Do you like to shock people with the graphic material in your movies?
In We Fuck Alone, I don't think there is anything shocking. It is funny to add that baby screaming to the soundtrack because it is very anguishing and very suffocating because you don't expect it in this kind of movie. It is weird and I like seeing what it creates in people.

Monica Belluci in Irreversible HFP/Lagardere Photo Archive

People always say that porn is male orientated. Do you agree?
I would say that is weird, because in We Fuck Alone, the main character in the movie is a man who shows his dick to an inflatable doll. I don't know any man who got aroused by the movie but I have already heard many girls saying that the boy is sexy. I didn't think I would get that [reaction]. And some girls, believe it or not, came to me after Irreversible, telling me that they were aroused by the rape scene. I didn't get any man coming to me saying that he got aroused... but I got a few women, even very bourgeois women, [saying] that scene was so sexy. I think that some girls have a rape fantasy. Some. Most don't. Hopefully most don't. I think that most women have thought about when they were girls. Like when you are 9, 10, 11 you are always afraid of being raped — because it has happened to someone you know. I had many close and not-so-close friends who at a certain point during their childhood had been raped in the street or at school. But once you start your sexual life, you stop being afraid of that.

You like your cinematic style to be very rough, very raw. Not very stylized.
It's colorful. Maybe even too colorful. Everybody sees so many images everyday that you get bored by them. After a while, you just want to reinvent this small part of the language to enjoy using it. So whatever you can do that is a little bit off-track [helps] not getting bored.

Is there any reason why you chose to depict the woman masturbating in a very passive, child-like state — pigtails and teddy bears on what looks like a cot in We Fuck Alone?
I have a lot of teddy bears at home. At the beginning, I thought the porn movie on the TV would be very hardcore. But in the end it was kind of lovely and soft. There was no counterpoint. But at the end, we added a third character that brings the dirt in — otherwise it would have been too clean.

Is it easy to organize an orgy for the camera?
Yeah. I cast some girls who were in erotic photos and I said: "We are going to do this orgy. If you enjoy the idea of having sex, you can come and if not you can just dance naked on the table." And then many of girls who said, "We don't do porn, we'll just dance or kiss or fuck other girls," once we were there — even before I started shooting — they were already getting fucked by two guys at the same time. But I could not control it. There were boxes and boxes of condoms everywhere but at the end of the party, I checked and not many of them were used. Maybe two or three. But everybody had to bring a very fresh HIV test. This happens with people who do the HIV test. When they get the result, they get aroused and immediately go and take that risk instead of calming down. So they all came with their very fresh negative HIV test. And they were all celebrating.

Do you like to watch porn?
I used to, from time to time. But I don't like all this Californian porn. I am more attracted to amateurish movies.

MORE SEX ON FILM...
The Virgin: Daniel Waters
The Old Hand: Brian De Palma
The Dirty Dutchman: Paul Verhoeven
The Crossover: John Cameron Mitchell
The Punk Rebel: Larry Clark
The Big Buffalo: Vincent Gallo
The Buttoned-Up Brit: Richard Eyre
The Sophisticate: David Cronenberg
The Motherfucker: Christophe Honoré