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Patrick Bauchau: Film Comment Pg. 3

Secrets at Play - Patrick Bauchau

From Film Comment -- July/August, 1998
by Beverly Walker (continued from Page 2)

"During the Sixties, Patrick cut a dashing swath through the film world of Paris and the Chelsea of 'Swinging London,'" says arts journalist Paul Gardner, who was living in Europe, collaborating on screenplays with Eugene Archer. "He was urbane, stylish, handsome. But it was his intellect, coupled with grace, that gave him access to film and literary circles, if he wanted, and social circles, too - though he moved without an agenda. He and Mijanou were like Fitzgerald characters ... cool, chic. Late-night dinners ... afternoons at movies ... Chez Castel after midnight ... seeing friends in the cafes at twilight. He was the envy of many. All the young men wanted to be Patrick."

A marvelous description - but not how Patrick Bauchau experienced his own life. "The way I presented myself gave me a very difficult time professionally, though some of that could be blamed on my excessive education and the arrogance that goes with it. It took me years to unlearn all that - not seeing what was offered, only what I wanted. I wanted to be a filmmaker but didn't quite know how to go about doing it. I fell into acting just by being around ... carrying film cans ... talking into Rohmer's Nagra."

Eric Rohmer, circa 1965, was a teacher, a maker of educational films shown on television, and an enormously respected editor of Cahiers du Cinéma. He had ambitions to make features, and was fascinated by the Sixties scene and its generation, from which he was separated by a quarter-century. Aside from age, there were other striking differences between Rohmer and the Young Turks of the French film scene: Rohmer was deeply Catholic, politically conservative, married with children. Nonetheless, his juniors respected him enormously and accorded him a kind of guru status. When Rohmer invited them to talk about themselves into his tape recorder, they complied, congregating in the flat of Mme. Schroeder, Barbet's mother.

Rohmer made two hour-long films, La Carrière de Suzanne and Caractères de La Bruyère - which Bauchau also appeared in - but it was the third, La Collectionneuse, that caused a stir. Shot by Nestor Almendros, its genesis was similar to that of many other delectable European movies of the Sixties, and reminds one anew of what a unique, magical time it was.

Bauchau: "Barbet selected a house in St. Tropez near an abandoned torpedo factory. We lived there while we were making the film, wearing our own clothes, paid nothing ... without expectations. We shot only at dawn and dusk because it was the same light; we had no electricity."

Schroeder: "We were supposed to cook for ourselves, but it didn't work out too well. One day I saw an Italian woman picking vegetables. I asked her how much she was making an hour, and if she'd like to make a little more by cooking for us. She said yes. Every day she made minestrone. She made it so often it affected our budget. Swiss cheese was expensive in those days and we had to cut down. For a change, and a treat, I bought a leg of lamb. When a couple of days passed and she didn't serve the lamb, I asked her about it. 'Oh,' she said, 'didn't you notice the little pieces of lamb in the minestrone?'" Schroeder was aghast. Boiling lamb was a sacrilege - worse by far than working for nothing!

La Collectionneuse was made for $12,000. Almendros's shooting ratio was 1:1 - not a single frame of "coverage," because Rohmer had the entire film in his head. Eugene Archer took the small part of a wealthy art dealer who motors down to St. Tropez looking for good deals in a fancy car lent the production by photographer Helmut Newton. "Archer," recalls Bauchau, "was the only person who sensed a real movie evolving - and he hated it!" (A year later, according to Sarris, Archer lobbied him and others on the New York Film Festival selection committee to reject the film because he was humiliated by his "performance." Whatever the reason, it wasn't selected.)

Despite hostile reviews - one critic said it was about "long-haired cretins with short ideas" - La Collectionneuse ran for two years in one small theater and launched Rohmer's filmmaking career. He would work variations on its structure and internal character dynamics numerous times over the next twenty years. Seen today, the film remains absolutely delicious, charming in its own right but a must-see for anyone interested in the period. Though the players were accorded a dialogue screen credit for their Nagra-talk, they were ambivalent about its depiction of them. Bauchau: "I felt he had taken our material and turned it into a Rohmer thing. Daniel [Pommereulle], too, felt he made fun of us. But I was arrogant. It was a movie in which I didn't have to bow down to anyone else's standards. I should've been more pleased."

Though Bauchau was well compensated for the next film, Tuset Street, money didn't make up for a bad experience in the heart of Caudillo-land, followed by a medical diagnosis of hepatitis. It was the major turning point of his life. "I disconnected with everyone and went through a healing of two years with a woman healer. I stopped reading and attempted to become competent in various manual fields, looking for the connection between hand and brain." He and Mijanou lived in Louveciennes, south of Paris, where he built furniture and made gigantic pillows for Salvador Dali. He also learned to cook and garden; he became involved in the ecological movement. He had virtually no contact with the film world.

That changed in 1979. On a day trip to Paris to deliver a bed he'd built, he ran into Edith Cottrell, wife of Rohmer's line producer, Pierre Cottrell, now working as an agent. She told him about a casting call for a TV-movie starring Delphine Seyrig. He went, got the part, appreciated the paycheck. In 1981 he appeared in Robert Kramer's Guns and the following year was introduced to Wim Wenders by the Cottrells. The shy director - whose work he didn't know - "mostly looked at his shoes" during their brief encounter. Bauchau thought nothing more of the project until, several months later, a plane ticket to Lisbon suddenly arrived in the mail. The Cottrells confirmed the sender: Wenders. He was hired.

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Photo of Patrick Bauchau and Allen Garfield in The State of Things. Gray City/V.O. Filmes [pt]/et al, © 1982. Do not use photo without prior, written permission.