Bringing Da Funk to GFF: Mia Hansen-Løve on Eden

Eden, the new film from French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve, tells the story of Paul, a DJ, and follows his turbulent 20-year career on the French Touch scene, juxtaposed with the meteoric rise of his fellow DJs Daft Punk. Hansen-Løve based Paul’s story on that of her older brother Sven, who co-wrote the script. We spoke to Hansen-Løve ahead of the film’s Scottish premier at Glasgow Film Festival.

On basing a film on her older brother
“I had done three films that were kind of autobiographical [All is Forgiven, The Father of My Children, Goodbye First Love], especially the last one, and I had the feeling I was at the end of some way of telling stories. Making this film was a way for me to really explore something new, even though there is a melancholy in the film and other things that connect with my previous work. For many reasons it was really a challenge for me to make this film, but it made sense for me because I know this world quite well – not as well as my brother but I still knew it, I had experienced it for years. I felt I had things to say about it. So it happened very naturally – there was no censorship from him, he kind of just gave me the keys to the story.”

On the life of a DJ
“It’s strange, people who spend their lives in nightclubs, don’t sleep at night, take drugs and alcohol, some of them die, but some of them seem to stay as if they were 25 forever. My brother is 41 now, but we regularly, just for fun, ask people, especially girls, how old they think he is and they all say around 28, it’s weird. This energy of youth: it’s very powerful and strong and beautiful, but ultimately that can become self-destructive when it tends to become an inability to really move on and change and become an adult.”

“We looked for the music at the same time as we were writing the script: the music or the synth totally influence the mood and the atmosphere of the scene” – Mia Hansen-Løve

On her preference to let emotion drive her films
“I think it’s probably both my strength and my weakness. What I mean is that my scripts are not very dramatic; it always brings me problems when I try to finance the script because people tell me there’s not enough drama, there’s not enough plot, not enough violence. The thing is, my own emotion works this way. I can’t help but trust it. Look at all of my stories: they are all told over like twenty years, you have a big span, so you’d think in twenty years you’d have lots of big events and dramatic moments, but, partly unconsciously, I avoid them and instead look at the aftermath or the moments that people don’t care about, but they're crucial to me.”

On the music
“We looked for the music at the same time as we were writing the script: the music or the synth totally influence the mood and the atmosphere of the scene. We knew the music very intimately when we started shooting and it really helped to do exactly what we wanted to do on the set. We didn't want to do what most people do: they film the scene without any music and then just put it on the top, like it was a bottle of perfume. We worked on it in a way that was totally integrated into the scene; it was part of the story, part of the reality.”

On capturing Daft Punk on film
“I actually gave a lot of attention to the Daft Punk characters. I don’t know if you noticed, but in their first scene, even although they are kind of getting famous, and they are already Daft Punk, they’re very ill at ease, they don’t know what to do with their hands. That was something they told us about themselves at that age, the fact that they were not at all like how they appear to be now. Actually, if you meet them for real now, you don’t have the feeling they are so self-assured – well, they kind of are – but I mean they have this thing about their body: they are not like actors, they have some shyness, and that’s something I really wanted to have in the film because I thought it was actually moving and interesting, this contrast between their fame and how they really are, how they appear physically.”