Camera Lucida: Most of the films you directed - with Pascal Arnold – deal with, in different ways, styles, and narrative denouments, with love stories that begin as close, spontaneous, almost hazardous, erotically charged encounters, then evolve into something else, not infrequently with tragic endings. Ultimately, love with too much eros becomes impossible?

Jean-Marc Barr: We started to do trilogy on freedom and we wanted to ask at the beginning of the century three questions: 1) are we free to love who we want, where we want, 2) are we free to pursue our sexual pleasures as we wish, 3) are we really free to think the way we want to think and believe in what we want to believe. And they were three cruel tales that, in the end, were about impossible love.

Absolute love is impossible. We shot it with a little camera, we had complete freedom to do what we wanted, it was a wonderful event for us, because that is not possible today. This was the time when new technologies were coming out, Dogma and Festen was a huge hit, so we could throw ourselves into the cinemas around the world… the films were done on the level that’s hard to find today.

Camera Lucida: Lovers, your first film, is about Paris days of painter Dušan Gerzić Gera, played by Sergej Trifunović. Why did you choose the life story of this Yugoslav painter?

Jean-Marc Barr: It’s my first film and I was privileged because I was in a position to direct it, to hold the camera, work with one of the best actresses of the moment, Elodie Bouzhez. I wanted to write my first film about something I knew about - Yugoslav war was a big subject. The only subject I knew was the love story Irina and I had, when we met in England, the war and the Yugoslavs we met during that difficult period. And Gera was a true representation of an artist at that time, he was living on nothing in his artistic studio up in Belleville, sometimes he’d sell his paintings, sometimes he’d get drunk and get his money stolen, and he also had some police problems and he was illegal. These were the things I knew about him and I started writing it. The film was done in a three month period with Pascal. The film was, also, supposed to be an ode to the love story of me & Irina and when I finished writing the film, I broke down crying realising that it was also the end of our relationship.

It took me time to realise that, but all of a sudden that film became a human adventure, done with complete emotion, with complete freedom. That was how Pascal and I started doing our filmmaking and it became contagious and we tried to continue in that same vein. It was an emotional experience, but I think that all films should have that creative quest. Not all films can be like that of course, but with Dogma film, I had a chance to make something close to my heart and, in the end, to make it like a painting when you discover about yourself. Those are the gifts, those are the 10 million dollars that you get when you play independently. When you go play 10 million and get a salary like that, you become a slave, because you can only work with five directors and it becomes the same kind of stuff. And when you turn off spiritually is it impossible to come back, I don’t know?

Camera Lucida: Love stories become tales of discovery and self-discovery…

Jean-Marc Barr: By 30’s and 40’s sexuality became the only space where it was provocative to go into something that was more real than fakeness that was sex in most of the films before that time. That’s why a lot of these films, especially the ones that came after… were done with complete innocence and joy, when sex was not taboo.

Camera Lucida: Passion often involves violence, as crimes of passion in Chacun sa nuit and American translation. Can there be one without the other?

Jean-Marc Barr: We did the trilogy on adolescent rebels. Our desire was to make the event that took place in France, as it really happened, the kids didn’t give a reason why they killed their best friend. It was done even better in Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the lake, that was what we dreamed of doing, that’s what I would dream of doing  - put the film in front of  the audience and tackle the taboo of sexuality and homosexuality. It was treated in such a way that it becomes beautiful and normal. One of the big criticisms and why we got an over 18 rating for American translation, is that they found the strangling scene too violent. And you see people getting blown up and tortured in some movies, and this is just because it takes over 4min to kill somebody. We did 4 minutes and it suddenly became gênant (disturbing). That’s what we wanted. And it became the sexual scene of the whole movie for me. We ask if they are linked. Yes, they are, that’s how we are conditioned in our sex, how we are conditioned in our violence.

Camera Lucida:: Unfortunately, I haven’t seen Chroniques… yet.

Jean-Marc Barr: It’s the one that’s worked the best, the actors actually make love, we released it in France to all ages over 12 (laughs). There is also a xxx version we made for Canal plus,  which is longer. You might be able to see it soon in your region. It worked well in Germany, Eastern Europe hasn’t picked it up yet. A beautiful film on the joys of sex seen through an 18-year old going through it for the first time

Camera Lucida: In the two mentioned films, men are, first, sexual objects, then turn into “easy preys”, while women are shown as, equally sexualised objects, but also patient, watchful observers and occasionally helpers. But it’s only boys/men who are victims of men?

Jean-Marc Barr: It’s an interesting question. Many male directors are behind the protagonists who are women. And we used Elodie and Lizzie after that, a woman for us is the desire for… youth, ritual and for stability (laughs).

Men have a huge history of being dominant and when they realise their true insignificance, then it becomes hard, because you realise your education is very macho and you try your best to bring it down.

Camera Lucida: So, in a way you reversed the dominant male model?

Jean-Marc Barr: My study is trying to create a true drama in situations I am given, and that becomes an art. I don’t think actors are artists, they are life watchers. I mean Anthony Hopkins, even when he does nothing, he understands the true drama and it allows the spectator to come through women and be there. Then it becomes a gift, that’s beautiful.

That’s what I try to work on, the situations I am given. Before I was a nomad, I could get away with being irresponsible. Now I have almost a 2 year old boy, I have a little bit of concentration of giving him the same stability my father gave me.