Lux Prize - Panel session with directors Valeria Golino, Clio Barnard and Felix van Groeningen
The Lux Prize is a prize awarded by the European Parliament to a film produced or co-produced in Europe. As its name suggests, it aims to ‘illuminate’ the public debate on European integration and promote the image of the European Union through the European language of cinema. It was set up in 2007 and its previous winners include the Belgian Lorna’s Silence by the Dardenne Brothers and last year’s Italian Shun Li and the Poet by Andrea Segre. After a careful selection process, three finalist films are chosen to be screened in front of members of the European Parliament who pick the winner. The winning film does not get money, but assistance in the form of subtitling in all the languages of the European Union as well as other help regarding its distribution and exhibition.
Despite its noble aim and cause, there has been some opposition to the existence of this prize and members of the European parliament such as Silvia Costa, from Italy, and the current chair of the EU Committee on Culture and Education Doris Pack, from Germany, have had to fight hard to ensure its preservation. Yet, at least for now, the Lux Prize lives on.
The screenings of the three finalist films from this edition of the Lux Prize took place in Venice during the final days of the Film Festival. They come from Italy, the UK and Belgium. They are Valeria Golino’s Honey, Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant and Felix van Groeningen’s The Broken Circle Breakdown. All three directors took time to have a chat about their films in front of the boys and girls of the 28 Times Cinema programme, a programme which aims to give the opportunity of a lifetime in bringing a young cinephile from each country of the European Union to the Venice Film Festival. The meeting took place at the Villa Degli Autori, the official ‘home ground’ of the Venice Days section of the Venetian festival.
Valeria Golino is one of the most renowned Italian actresses of recent times. Known to a worldwide audience for her roles in Rain Man, the Hot Shots! films and Leaving Las Vegas she has won numerous awards for her performances including a Coppa Volpi for Best Actress in 1986 with A Tale of Love.
Given her long and illustrious career, it might only have been a matter of time before she would have chosen to step behind the camera. However, instead of easing herself comfortably in her newfound role as a filmmaker, she bravely decided to take on an issue as controversial and as current as assisted suicide in her directorial debut. In Honey, she does this through the story of a young girl Irene, played wonderfully by Jasmine Trinca, who has decided to dedicate her life to assisting the suicide of terminally ill people.
“It’s a movie about a type of death that has to be discussed,” Golino said. “That is also why I didn’t want to take an ideological position. The moment when someone decides to take his or her own life is the most drastic and painful decision that anyone could possibly have. In some countries, these people end up being marginalised or made to feel ashamed of themselves simply because it is against the law.”
Yet, despite her passion for the subject and her wish to raise awareness of it with her film, Golino also tastefully underplays strict judgement and avoids taking side. By doing so, Honey may still be thematically uncomfortable and intense – indeed too intense for some – but never patronizing. “I didn’t want to force or trick the audience into being moved. It would have been obscene. During the whole production, I was constantly asking myself how far I could go. That is why, for instance, I do not make use a musical score. I wanted to make a film without moral judgement.”
Perhaps the most surprising fact about this film, a notoriously conservative country particularly in its dealing with the theme of euthanasia. Yet, Golino maintained that, while it was difficult to raise funds for the making of Honey, it didn’t take much time. The reason for that was not only the fact that the film was partially funded by producer and Golino’s partner Riccardo Scamarcio, but also because of their tactics to ask for small sums to more financiers instead of bigger contributions from fewer people. The smaller budget, she insists, allowed her to be making this film with more freedom.
“I think films that talk about these issues should be made with less money, so that you can be freer to like or dislike what goes on in them. In the film, it is my own doubts and my own ethical concerns that come into play. Also, it was my first feature. The idea of getting a lot of money for it would have added anxiety and responsibility. Therefore, making the film with less money was better.”
While Honey, is a film that will inevitably morally split audiences in half, it is also a touching and intense character study. Though it may seem harsh and crude on the outside, it has an underlying sweetness in its core particularly with the relationship, which develops between Irene and an older man who tricks her into giving him the substance to kill himself despite the fact that he is not sick. Through him, she finally experiences the relief of being able to talk about her second life where she encounters tragedy on a daily basis, which she is forced for numerous reasons to keep secret. Honey is an impressively brave film as well as a successful and more than convincing cinematic transition for Valeria Golino from actress to filmmaker.
Clio Barnard’s film The Selfish Giant, the story of the friendship between two teenage boys who are excluded from school and get mixed up in the dangerous world of metal scrappage. The film is based loosely on the famous Oscar Wilde story and she said that in the first adaptation, the two boys actually met a giant. The director said “I wanted to make a deceptively simple story, which is actually very difficult to do because once you start unpicking it, it becomes more complex.”
Yet, despite the fairy-tale connections, this is quote a harrowing and powerful drama, which seems a direct descendant of classics like Ken Loach’s Kes, with the same use of gritty realism, and recalls the rebellious feel of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. “One of my starting points for making [The Selfish Giant] was watching films with my own children. I wanted them to see other films from multiplex ones. I showed them Kes, The Bicycle Thieves, The Kid With a Bike."
The Selfish Giant is an intense and effective portrayal of the reality of the British poorer class as well as a protest on the passivity of the British educational system. Its story is deeply rooted in the harshness of real life and, as Barnard said, her two leading characters were based on two real boys she met while she was making her previous feature The Harbour. “I got to know this boy called Mattie and spent a lot of time with him and his friend. They worked for an illegal moneylender and a scrap man and I was very interested in the moral ambiguity of the character. I asked myself whether he was giving them opportunity or exploiting them.”
At the heart of the film, however, also lies a profoundly touching friendship between the two boys Arbor and Swifty. This friendship is made even more moving by the honest performances of the two young leads who, despite their age and inexperience, bring a genuineness to the film that adds to its emotional depth. “Neither of them had acted before and they both had big personalities. The big kid, Swifty [Shaun Thomas], is very open so I could talk to him about what the character was feeling. Conner [Chapman] on the other hand is very quiet. He finds it hard to make eye contact so I’d give him notes and I never knew whether he was responding to them until I watched his performance and realised he was.”
Despite it dealing with a delicate subject, Film Four instantly green-lit Barnard’s film after watching her previous work The Harbour, which had been funded by an arts organisation. Barnard repaid them by delivering a film that feels like a powerful experience. Yet, regardless of the maturity and intensity of the film, Barnard maintains that a younger audience as well as an older one could see The Selfish Giant. “I wanted children to be able to engage with it,” she said. “Some people may choose not to show it to their children, but I think children have a huge capacity to see films that are regarded as difficult and intense.”
With the values of film production in Belgium always on the rise, money being invested in the industry, people taking risks, private finding and TV station involvement it seems like Belgium in the last few years has entered its very own golden age. And Felix van Groeningen is certainly one of its most impressive directors. Having already garnered publicity and praise for his previous films With Friends Like These and The Misfortunates, with The Broken Circle Breakdown he seems all set to leave an even greater mark in cinema.
With its mixture of love story, domestic drama, political meditations and bluegrass music this film is as sweet as it is a painfully disturbing portrait of family tragedy. It is the story of Didier and Elise, who fall in love, play in a bluegrass band and have a wonderful little daughter. However, their idyllic and peaceful like is placed under serious threat when their daughter is diagnosed with cancer. “70 per cent of the couples that go through something like that will separate. That’s because you can share happiness and joy but you cannot share grief,” said Van Groeningen.
Van Groeningen’s film was based on a John Heldenberg’s theatre play. Heldenberg himself plays the part of Didier. While it wasn’t something he had lived through, he wrote the play after he was inspired by the fact that he discovered bluegrass and became outraged about George W. Bush stopping the stem cells funding at around the same time. The irony of this juxtaposition really comes through in the film. “[Heldenberg] is very atheist, but the music is very religious.”
Another interesting aspect of the film is Didier’s relationship with America. At first, he falls in love with it and then, after he experiences his domestic tragedy, he becomes disenchanted with it. “America is represented more as a dream and not necessarily as it is in real life. When things are good, he keeps idealising it, but through this personal tragedy he uses it to make him angry. On the other hand, he does say some things that are true.”
The play, he explained, was more like a powerful monologue interrupted by performances of bluegrass songs. In the film, the narrative is a little more complex and carefully constructed. Despite the fact that it messes with time and setting, it flows powerfully and flawlessly. “One of the things that attracted me the most in the theatre play was this hour long rant where [Heldenberg] shouts in anger. In the movie, I obviously couldn’t do that, except in the end.”
Van Groeningen also referred to the loss of his father as a personal connection, which ultimately led him to make the film. “I realised that life all of a sudden seemed very fragile.” This heartfelt personal connection to his story shows in the film and is perhaps The Broken Circle Breakdown’s key to its genuine intimacy.