Sophie Barthes

If you’re a regular reader of our site, this month’s IONCINEPHILE needs no introduction, but I’ll offer one anyway. The spotlight goes to a filmmaker who we’ve had the chance to profile shortly after she workshopped her screenplay at the Sundance Film Institute and we were on hand for the world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Sophie Barthes‘ Cold Souls is moments away from its release (August 7th via Samuel Goldwyn Films) and we’ll keep track of the film’s progress all the way up to awards season, where the comedy with dramatic layers has a solid chance for year end kudos in both the Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor (Paul Giamatti) categories.

IONCINEMA.com’s IONCINEPHILE of the Month feature focuses on an emerging filmmaker in American independent film. We dig into their filmmaking background and look at the nuts and bolts of that person’s upcoming feature film release. This month we are proud to feature Cold Soul’s Sophie Barthes. To see Sophie’s top ten films of all time as of July 2009 click here.

Eric Lavallee: During your childhood what films were important to you?
Sophie Barthes: My parents were fans of Woody Allen. I have fond memories of watching “The Purple Rose of Cairo” at eleven or twelve years of age and being blown away. I still love this film. We grew up in the Middle East and South America. Going to the movie theater was an event, there wasn’t a lot of choice. We loved comedies. We would spend the summers in France and watch a lot of French comedies from the 50s, 60s & 70s with Louis de Funès (“Hibernatus”, “Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob”, “La Grande Vadrouille”), Jacques Tati (“Mon Oncle”, “Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot”) and also films with Peter Sellers, Jerry Lewis… We loved the old James Bond too.

EL: During your formative years what films and filmmakers inspired you?
SB: During my teenage years and early twenties, I was fascinated by Surrealism. I discovered Luis Buñel (“Un Chien Andalou”, “L’Age d’Or”, “Belle de Jour”, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie”, “The Phantom of Liberty”). I also loved Louis Malle early films (“Elevator to the Gallows”, “Murmur of the Heart”) and French films noirs, particularly Jean-Pierre Melville (“Le Samouraï”, “Le Cercle Rouge”). Later on, I got into the Italian 60s: Fellini, Bertolucci, Antonioni. And after Tarkovsky and Bergman (“Persona”, “The Silence”, “Hours of the Wolf”). I was also watching a lot of Woody Allen (“Love & Death”, “Sleeper”, “Manhattan”, “Annie Hall”, “Everything you always wanted to know about Sex”…). But I was more interested in theater at that time. I loved the Theater of the Absurd (Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Jean Tardieu) and Chekhov.

EL: At what point did you know you wanted to become a filmmaker?
SB: I was attracted to documentary filmmaking first. I went to Columbia University in New York to follow a program in documentary making and international politics at the School of International and Public Affairs. I took a class on the French New Wave at the Film School. Our professor was a fascinating Jean-Luc Godard expert. His class was so inspiring that I decided to give a try to fiction. I took classes in film theory, screenwriting, Cinema of the Middle East, etc… After graduating, I met my life and creative partner, cinematographer Andrij Parekh, we went to Yemen to make a documentary. We made 2 short films, one in Ukraine and the other one in New York not in our backyard but almost…!

EL: What is the genesis of the project? How did you get involved? Pitch, Script, Screenplay, Dialogue…
SB: The screenplay was inspired by a dream I had three years ago. In the dream, I am waiting in line in a futuristic office, holding a white box. A secretary explains that our souls have been extracted. A doctor will examine the shape and assess our psychological problems. Woody Allen is also in line, just in front of me! When his turn comes, he opens his box and discovers that his soul is a just a little chickpea. He is furious. At this point, I feel so anxious. I look down at my container to check the shape of my soul but at that precise moment the dream ends… I never saw the shape of my soul.

When I had the dream I was reading Carl Jung’s “Man in Search of a Soul” and had just watched again “Sleeper”. A strange synaptic connection must have happened in my brain…

I wrote the script for Paul Giamatti. Luckily, I won a screenplay competition at the Nantucket Film Festival in 2006 and by a strange coincidence meet Paul in person, who was there to present an award to Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor. I told him about the dream. He got intrigued. Few days later he read the script and accepted the role. This never happens. It was beginner’s luck.

EL: What kind of characteristics/features were you looking for your main characters/during the casting process?
SB: My first impulse was to write the script for Woody Allen, but after the first draft I thought it was unrealistic. At the same time I saw “American Splendor”, I was so impressed by Paul Giamatti’s sensibility and emotional charge on screen that I decided to write for him. There was something so human, vulnerable and at the same time so comic about him. Paul Giamatti is very humble, so he would probably not easily admit it, but I think that he has a persona on screen. He has a set of characteristics that make him very attractive to cast. His range is quite remarkable and his intelligence, refinement, facial expressions (plasticity and diversity) and presence on screen are fascinating to me. It’s interesting to simply watch him read the phone book. I think he is one of the best actors of his generation. I read somewhere that Russell Crowe was joking saying that they should make an Italian sports car called “The Giamatti”! I don’t drive but I imagine that directing actors like him is very comparable to driving a good Italian sports car. You just have to slightly shift gears, and you get those amazing performances. I think that he is not a movie star but a real actor, who cares about the craft.

EL: How did you prep for the performances (was there a rehearsal process?). How did you prep for each scene (was there storyboarding involved?)
SB: We actually didn’t really do much rehearsal, except for Chekhov Uncle Vanya scenes. Those scenes were tricky because Paul had to perform Uncle Vanya with his soul, without a soul, a with a Russian poet soul! Paul was feeling confident that he could act Uncle Vanya badly but was worried about acting it well (that’s how humble he is) but I was worried of the opposite. I was scared that Vanya without a soul would just fall flat and not be funny. I don’t know if the audience will agree, but now I feel it’s actually the funniest moment in the film.

With Andrij we don’t storyboard but we worked on the shot list for a long time and we had put together a visual treatment with pictures from Australian photographer Bill Hansen, Deborah Turbeville, Francis Bacon paintings, etc… We would regularly go back to those images and immerse ourselves in that mood.

We also shot seven scenes of the film at the Sundance Directors Lab, which helped tremendously (not with the same actors). As a first time feature director arriving on set with those scenes already shot and edited in my mind was very helpful.

EL: Can you discuss the collaborative process you had with cinematographer Andrij Parekh?
SB: This film wouldn’t be what it is visually and atmospherically without Andrij. He brought all his sensibility and craft on this film. He got really creative and resourceful. For instance, we wanted to create a sort of eerie effect when Nina, the soul mule, carries Olga’s soul, the Russian poet. Andrij took the left lens from his eye glass and pasted it to the camera lens. The result is that half of the screen is distorted and beautifully blurred but Nina’s face (Dina Korzun) is still sharp. It’s disturbing and subjective.

The beauty of Andrij’s cinematography is that he is now so much in control of his craft that it gives him a greater freedom with the camera. Andrij is a dream to work with. He loves to work with natural light. He allows things to happen and experiments. When he lights spaces, it’s for the action not just for the actor face, so it allows a greater freedom of movement to the actors. He never sacrifices aesthetics for logistics. He would find a way to shoot a comedy in an atmospheric way and doesn’t obey to artificial rules, which often dictate that comedy should be static and bright. I think he is able to infuse images with a feeling, something quite difficult to describe, maybe it could be simply described as soulful.

EL: Can you discuss the collaborative process you had with the Production Design department?
SB: We had a lot of fun on this film with the production design. We wanted to create a sort of 60s low-fi world and be quite playful. I was blessed to work with a very resourceful production designer, Beth Mickle, and an incredibly sensitive location manager, Jeff Brown. They understood so well the mood and atmosphere we were looking for. We didn’t have a lot of financial resources so the production design department and the locations department coordinated their efforts and they did an impressive work. The Soul Storage on Roosevelt Island was a kindergarten built in 70s. Beth Mickle transformed the space into a soul storage with minimal resources but a lot of imagination. We also had the collaboration of my dear friend and artist Eric Lahey, who is also a filmmaker (We met at the Sundance lab). He built the soul extractor machine in his garage studio in Portland, Oregon with his brother and other friends. They worked relentlessly for 46 days. The machine is completely hand-made. They drove the Soul Extractor in a truck across America!

EL: Can you discuss the collaborative process you had with composer Dickon Hinchliffe?
SB: I first discovered Dickon Hinchliffe’s music through Tindersticks in the 90s when I was a student in Paris. I wrote Cold Souls listening to Dickon’s music and at that time I wasn’t even dreaming that he would accept to compose the score for the film. Listening to his music while writing would put me in a floating, almost hypnotic state. We tried different things for six months during the editing process. He was composing in the UK and we were editing in New York, but he came for few days early in the editing process and we had long talks about the tone of the film, which was difficult to nail. We didn’t want to push the comedy too obviously with the music. I was surprised that he was able to create such profound and rich melodies and intertwine feelings of melancholy, loneliness, confusion and alienation with a much lighter and humorous touch in the score. Some cues have a charming and playful quality. His composition for the “soul sequences” (when characters see into theirs or other people souls), have a particular emotional resonance and hypnotic quality.

After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and stops at the NF/ND and Los Angeles Film Festival, Cold Souls will be shown at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Samuel Goldwyn Films releases the film on August 7th.