French Lessons
Director Zoe Cassavetes on 'Broken English,' romance in Paris, and 'Cassavetes sandwich'
The latest Parker Posey movie - and you're not alone in thinking that there seems be a new one every week - finds the most gorgeous and talented comedienne since Kay Kendall in a more serious mood. In Broken English, she plays a New York Ms. who has hit the dating wall when she suddenly discovers what looks like the Man She's Been Waiting For - a visiting Frenchman played by the ultra-charmant Melvil Poupaud. Just one problem: He's going back to Paris the next day. Should she follow him? And what will happen when she does? Writer-director Zoe Cassavetes has the answers. And on the phone from Paris she talks about how she found them.
CityBeat: Did you have Parker in mind when you wrote this script?
Zoe Cassavetes: I actually didn't. I hate writing for someone specific for fear that they're going to say no. But Parker is certainly one of my favorite actresses ever, especially for a role like this. She couldn't have been more personable and fun and great. When she read it, she was right away, "Oh yeah, I'd love to do it."
And it was so nice to have your mother [Gena Rowlands] play her mother.
It was. Like Parker, she's one of the hardest working women in show business. It was an honor to have her.
And you also have Bernadette Lafont in it. She was the Parker Posey of her day back at the start of the French New Wave in films like Le Beau Serge and Les Bonnes Femmes - so sexy and funny.
And so beautiful. She still is so beautiful with all that white hair. I'm in Paris right now, and every time I talk to anyone about the movie and I mention that she's in it they always say, "Good choice!"
That's the other thing I liked in the movie was the fact that the men she meets in Paris are really nice. You expect a good-looking woman alone in a big city to be hit on and treated badly.
Well, Frenchmen can be really nice. And I wanted to kind of counterbalance the experiences she was having in the first part of the movie. It became a way to show her realizing that in spite of everything she's gone through, she was going to be OK.
One thing that connects with the films of your father [John Cassavetes] is the way that, during her whole long, complicated first date with him, we see her going through so much. She's charming, and then she's confused, and then she's unhappy. So we're getting this sense of somebody as a whole - which is something that he was very involved in, with creating characters in films like A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night.
Well, it's nice to be compared to him.
You made your debut in Minnie and Moskowitz.
I did. I was one, so I didn't really know what I was doing. But I hope some things rubbed off on me.
Your father always tried to operate in this context where he was working with friends, with the projects developing out of the talents and personalities of particular people ... Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara and Seymour Cassell and your mother. I was very lucky to have seen his play A Woman of Mystery. It was the last thing he did, and the night I went I was seated between Lelia Goldoni and Seymour Cassell.
You were in a John Cassavetes sandwich! He was so creative and positive and intense. And he was so lucky because all the people around him wanted to work on the same things in the same way. That totally gave me the feeling I wanted to do this - to make movies. It was very funny as a kid running around the house and hiding to watch while something was being filmed. So many things were shot at the house I grew up in. I shared a bedroom with the miniature Shetland ponies that were in Love Streams.
And what's next for you?
I'm getting married. In Paris. That's the next big project.
Published: 05/24/2007
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