Interview: Pierre Morel

 The summer is the best season to go to the movies. It starts when you’re a kid, when you’ve suddenly got twenty-four hours of free time a day, but are too young to be stuck working most of the summer, and too young to drive. Chances are you’re going to spend some of those hot, hazy afternoons in a cool, dark theater. This is why the majority of big-budget action/adventure movies get released during the summer – the Star Wars movies, War of the Worlds, X-Men, Mission Impossible (I, II, and now III) – and why they are all rated PG-13. This carries over into adulthood – when the lights go out in that cool, air conditioned theater it can be as refreshing and rejuvenating as diving into the crystal clear water of a swimming pool.

Unfortunately a lot of the summer movies of recent haven’t been that great, and by not great I’m not talking about the usual criticisms of character, plot holes, inattention to the laws of physics, bad acting and the rest of what critics usually write about movies that take in a hundred million dollars at the box-office – all that is easily overlooked in favor of car chases, explosions and stylized fight scenes. Or it is in the summer months at least. A good summer action movie doesn’t give you the time to decide whether or not it’s good or bad, it’s too busy keeping you entertained.

The answer: France.

District B13 is one of the most entertaining films ever made. It’s an action movie that takes place in France circa 2010 where a wall (circa John Carpenter’s Escape from New York) has been built around the city’s most dangerous ghetto, District B13. When a nuclear weapon (a ‘clean bomb’ with the unique feature of detonating without leaving a radioactive fallout cloud) falls into the hands of the B13’s crime syndicate, Damien (Cyril Raffaelli), a cop with nearly super-human athletic ability must infiltrate B13 and defuse the bomb. He is partnered with Leito (David Belle), a convict with even more super-human like athletic ability, a one time citizen of B13 whose goal is to rescue his sister who has been kidnapped by B13’s boss criminal.

Yes, the plot and characters may sound derivative and familiar: the cop-con team up; the dangerous mission; the bleak vision of the future; the Dirty Harry-like cop; the convict who broke the law in defense of a higher moral cause. And yes, the plot does not really get rolling till about a third of the way through the film. And yes some will criticize this film the way those who criticize always do.

But the fact is that District B13 works, and it works really well.

The film is directed by Pierre Morel, his debut film as director after having worked as a director of photography and second unit director on films ranging from The Dreamers to Kiss of the Dragon and Unleashed, and who is also somewhat of a protégé to Luc Besson (The Professional, The Fifth Element, producer behind the Transporter films and countless others). Along with director Morel, making its big-screen debut is Parkour a discipline of movement that fuses athletic ability with reactionary thinking, resulting in the ability of one to adapt to the environment around them while moving through it, constantly going forward despite what obstacles lie in the way, and founded on the belief that no obstacle cannot be overcome, one just needs to find the right path.

Parkour was founded in Lisses, France by actor David Belle, who plays Leito in District B13. Belle’s father was a firefighter who strongly believed in the “Natural Method of Physical Culture” developed by George Herbert (the 16th century English poet). Influenced by this way of thinking and seeking to put it into practice, Belle developed Parkour. Though not a martial art, Parkour has a defined philosophical element to it, much like a martial art; the same mindset and discipline practitioners of Parkour use to overcome physical obstacles can be applied to life’s mental obstacles.

And no obstacle is not overcome in B13. Raffaelli and Belle climb, jump, roll and sprint their way across, over and through the war-beaten streets and buildings of the film’s forsaken district. Morel has found a perfect match with Raffaelli and Belle, both behind the camera and in front of it. In addition to being a stuntman (he was Jean-Claude Van Damme’s stunt double at one time), Raffaelli is a former circus performer, acrobat and Chinese boxing champion. Belle has learned martial arts from Raffaelli and Raffaelli has learned Parkour from Belle, and the audiences will see a mix of both onscreen in B13. Both actors perform all their own stunts in the film without the aid of wires or special effects, and Morel captures it all in standard 35mm film, nothing sped up or slowed down, giving the action a raw, frenetic energy that so many other films fail to create and that this summer so desperately needs.

I was fortunate to speak with Pierre Morel at a roundtable interview while he was in New York City.

Question: This is your first film as a director, moving from working as an assistant director and second unit director, was it challenging making a film with so many action sequences your first time out?
Pierre Morel: Actually yeah, that was the big move. I worked on a lot of action moves as those positions, and then into DPing, which once again I did a lot of action movies as DP. So movie from DP to this movie was, I wouldn’t say easy, it’s never easy. But the action part of it I felt comfortable with, actually. Quite comfortable. The direction part was the challenge part, for me and for them because it was their first time acting. So altogether it was an overall challenge for the three of us. And that made it very interesting. So, with a little help from Luc Besson, who gave me a few tips in the beginning, and a lot of rehearsals, we got out.

Q: It’s obviously a big transition, from filming the characters to directing them. How did you go about making the characters seem believable?
PM: First it was to get them acting without acting, not showing that they are acting. I think that is the main obstacle that you find when you start directing or when you start acting, you tend to overdo everything. So that was what we worked on, not making it too much. So I tried, and I think that their characters worked like this – I tried not to make them cartoonish, or just caricatures of what they’re supposed to be, so we kept it as – how can I say it? – as sober. As sober and natural as possible.

Q: How much did you and Luc work together?
PM: A couple hours. [laughs] He wrote the screenplay. But actually from the start I wasn’t supposed to do this movie. Those guys (Cyril and David), the script was written for them, by Luc, and I got on the boat later. So I had a few work sessions with Luc on the script, I told him what I thought, what it felt like, what I’d see differently in a scene, a few changes. But that was very limited. And then we just went through this rehearsal process, just two or three times we went through the script reading it, some parts, and that was it. But that was a very, very short process. All together I saw Luc once when he proposed me that I do the movie, and like one or two times to work through the script, and then two or three times to rehearse. And that was it. And so total, that was like, ten hours.

Q: Can you talk about the look of the film, what was the idea behind the visual style and the color?
PM: I wanted to get away from the now trendy look of de-saturated color and as DP I’ve done that too, I mean the movie I did before was actually Unleashed which had that grainy de-saturated color. So I didn’t want to go and do that again. We went for the colorful, the bright costumes, saturated warm colors – that was more interesting and it was just a different look, and probably served the story more by making it prettier and darker.

Q: This was the first movie that really showcased Parkour, which is based on the philosophy of free movement and adaptation to the environment. Was there any improvisation at all or did everything have to be choreographed for the cameras from the beginning?
PM: Well it’s a very educated process. The point was to do this movie to capture what they could really do. The basic thing in this movie is that they do everything themselves. Usually when you do an action movie you have the main cast and you do the close-ups and then you have stunt doubles to do the action. On this particular film we didn’t have to do that, we didn’t have to cheat. So that made the style of the movie and the way we shot things way different from the practical movie-making process. So what we basically did was write the script and then rewrite the script according to what David could do. We knew the moves he could do, we found the right spot at the right location to let him do what he can do, and then we shot it so we could show it in the best possible way. So that was kind of an intricate thing. ‘Okay you can do that kind of thing so let’s put it in the movie, in the script, let’s find the right place to do it, and let’s shoot it so that we show that you do it for real.’

Q: So how did you decide to shoot once you found the location? Did you have David go through it once and then decide how to film it?
PM: Sometimes he just sees things and says ‘I can do that. I know I can do it.’ Sometimes you can’t just try it. Some places we shot in the suburb, in the city where he grew up, so he knew the places, he knew the spots, and he had done it before, so that was kind of easy, like ‘I’ve done that jump before, I can do it.’ And some places he said ‘This is too dangerous I will not do this,’ and that was okay. He just knows his possibilities, he knows how far he can go, so we don’t need to try it. He just actually tries it on set once we are ready.

Q: When you became a DP had you always had the intention of moving into directing?
PM: When I entered film school I had wanted to be a director, and then you know, life is what it is, so I just went into the camera department and went to operating and blah blah blah, and I started DPing and twenty years later you’ve been so busy you haven’t had time to direct anything and then someone taps you on the shoulder and says ‘Oh by the way, did you want to direct someday?’ and I say, ‘Ohhhhh… Yeah! Why not?!’ – And that’s what Luc did. [laughs]

Q: How did you find the composers who did the music for the film?
PM: We found these guys that do that music in their garage. They’re computer freaks and they do a lot of that techno-ish electronic music, and we just got a sample from their work because there is a department of Europa that produces music. We received that, listened to it and it was exactly what we were looking for. Modern enough so that it could be 2010. It was not rap music because that was already dated, but in five, ten years from now, what will rap be. Who knows? And I was very interested to give them a chance. And the beat of their music was always very close to the pace of what we wanted, so we tried it. We showed them the movie and locked them in a studio for a few weeks and they came up with that.

Q: Why set this movie in the future and make it part science fiction? Is there a place in France where crime is getting so bad that this is a possibility?
PM: Well is it really science fiction? It’s such a close future, it’s supposed to be 2010 which is only four years from now. It’s so close there’s not very much difference. We needed to set it in the future to set up the possibility that there could be a wall build around things. But I think it could be. Not that the situation in France is that bad. But obviously last summer’s riots and stuff like that show us that there are issues. So it might happen. Who knows? Well, they will never build a wall around things.

Q: Is there a bit of a political message in that aspect of the film?
PM: I don’t think it’s supposed to be a political movie, it’s just an entertaining movie. But there’s a base. And who knows? It’s a worldwide situation, there’s more poverty on one side and more riches on the other side and the gap is just slowly increasing, so at some point there will be social issues in France and in the States, and at the present in Brazil right now, and it shows that things can happen. And so the best way, or the so-called best way for the government to take care of it is violence. And making ghettos out of those problematic places is probably not the best solution but that’s what happens most of the time. It doesn’t have to be a ghetto with walls around it, you can ghettoize a place just by a lack of public transportation or a lack of education or a lack of anything and then it becomes a ghetto. That is what might happen.

Q: Are you a fan of Escape from New York?
PM: Yes, I’m a big Carpenter fan.

Q: So is this in part a kind of tribute to that film?
PM: Of course. There are a lot of tributes to a lot of films in this. Scarface in Taha’s death scene, that one just for the fun of it. Lots of tributes to Chinese movies too. Because I had the chance to work with Jet, I had the chance to work with Corey Yuen who did choreography on Transporter, and a chance to work with Woo-Ping who did choreography on Unleashed. So I learned a lot from them. Cyril was a fan, and so was David, we were all big fans of Chinese or oriental martial arts movies, so it’s kind of a tribute to a lot of that.

Q: Do you study and martial arts yourself?
PM: No I play golf. Can I go now? [laughs] It’s a good time, when you don’t have to get someone else to fight against, you can just fight against yourself. [laughs]

Magnolia Pictures releases District B13 nationwide on June 2nd.