By Elliot V. Kotek
(Cannes Special Issue 2006) Born with a name as tall as he is, Don Juan Moreno y Jederique Jimenez has had an impressive impact on our favorite art form. Known to Gallic audiences for comedic turns in such box-office behemoths as Les Visiteurs and Le Grand Bleu, Jean Reno's overseas sojourns in The Professional (with Natalie Portman and Gary Oldman), Ronin (alongside Robert De Niro) and Brian de Palma's Mission Impossible (co-starring Cruise) introduced him to international audiences as a no-nonsense dramatist intent on delivering danger. Having already posted a surprise hit this year with Steve Martin's The Pink Panther, and despite Flyboys, Flushed Away and Margaret also slated for 2006 release, it is Reno's turn as Bezu Fache in the adaptation of The Da Vinci Code that is sure to set Reno's star power in cement. While the cast (including co-stars Tom Hanks, Sir Ian McKellen, Alfred Molina and Audrey Tautou) are due to accompany helmer Ron Howard to Cannes for the World Premiere, and the May 17 release may well break attendance records across Atlas's globe, Reno's sights are set on something more modestly satisfying... Moving Pictures Magazine: Bouillabaisse?
Jean Reno: There's a great place for bouillabaisse in Antibes, next to Cannes, and we already booked the restaurant so we'll go there. MPM: But Cannes has treated you well?
Jean Reno: I had The Big Blue in Cannes, and Godzilla. It's a generality, but if you come with a very big-name film in Cannes, people - critics - are not going to help you. If you come with a small black-and-white film people will help you. Godzilla was an acceptable film; it wasn't a great film but a movie is only a movie, and then there is life after that. Life is not going to stop because a movie is a flop. MPM: And life has kept you in Europe lately?
Jean Reno: I felt like the luckiest man. I had The Pink Panther shooting in London, where my fiancée is from, and in Paris. And for The Da Vinci Code, it was the same situation. MPM: And you got to work with Ron Howard? And have the Louvre to yourselves?
Jean Reno: Working with Ron is like being with a real pro. He is very simple, talented, open-minded and easy. He knows acting, knows what he wants, and he's very humble somehow, mature. Shooting in the Louvre at night, just us, was like a gift: to have the Louvre the entire night and you can go visit and there's no people, no audience, you can be alone with the art. I have to admit that when I have time to watch "La Giaconde" [Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa"]... it's truly a great painting. MPM: How much research into the Vatican's inner workings did you undertake?
Jean Reno: I had a vague idea because I read a long time ago, when I was younger, a book about Opus Dei. And it struck me that, for my character, there is great importance on codes of honor and morality and a strict discipline in the right of the Christian Church. I took the strict morality - "do this and don't do that" - as important. I then looked at the journey the character can do over the movie. I wanted to show that he's been betrayed because if he has this way of doing things that is strict and high and has a lot of expectations, then when he's betrayed he falls further. MPM: Do you take souvenirs away from the set with you?
Jean Reno: Sometimes I take the watch, or I take the shoes, but usually the souvenir is to take the life you had with those directors, or the crew - the camera person, the lighting person. When you finish a film it's like a little death. You had a family for a bit, and you finish the movie and you probably will never see each other again. MPM: What's it like to work with these great actors: Tom Hanks in this film? De Niro?
Jean Reno: With a very good actor it seems to be easy, like a river, like a song - boop boop boop - even when the lines are completely stupid. In Ronin there was a line De Niro repeated for 30 or 45 seconds. He was able to say that line over and over because he has something inside to fit the line. A word is only a word and is completely empty by itself; a good actor can see it and give the scene its rhythm, its reason and a lot of other things, without saying, "Look at me, look how intellectual I am." And a good actor will utilize his talents in a generous way. Hanks, like De Niro, has that same general trunk of the tree: They understand who they are, where they are and what they are doing, and bring all the emotional things and all their experience with them and then are able to just do the scene - showing themselves and everything they've brought, and not in an obscene way. MPM: Was film important for you growing up?
Jean Reno: Growing up, I was very into Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and the Italian black-and-white comedies. John Wayne, James Dean, Jean Gabine. Movies were everything. François Truffaut. Louis Malle, of course. I met most of them - Jean Gabine, Alain Delon, [Jean-Paul] Belmondo, Marcello Mastroianni. They know how to enjoy themselves, to eat and to drink and be very happy. I was wondering what it was like for them to get old, but for them it is to go to a restaurant and eat and drink and enjoy. MPM: [Hmmm, like heading to the Cannes Film Festival with the year's biggest film but looking forward to the bouillabaisse.] Louis Malle, François Truffaut - France has a great tradition in cinema. Where does the industry stand now?
Jean Reno: It's difficult living in France now - there's a big problem re-establishing the economic situation, and we are dealing with high unemployment. It seems that in our films in France, we want a mirror in front of us so that we can see the pain or see ourselves avoiding the pain. The French industry is looking more for directors and writers than for actors. The directors at the moment are telling a little bit boring stories. Luc [Besson] was one of the last good writer/directors; Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who did Amelie, is still doing interesting things, but there are very few intelligent comedies. In dramas, there is nobody like Truffaut. We need a shock to restart the industry here. MPM: With The Da Vinci Code's controversy and your cameo in Hotel Rwanda, do you think it's important to do more projects that carry a message?
Jean Reno: For me, I like acting to be a chance to use colors you don't utilize in life. When someone comes to me and says I have a movie with a message, my first reaction is, "Uh-uh; pretentious." Because if you look closely, there are very few films with a real message; it's not easy to be a Charlie Chaplin or a Stanley Kubrick. The thing is to do a movie with the most honesty we can. I just did a film with Kenneth Lonergan [You Can Count on Me]. He looks at youths in society, their relationships with sex, relationships with drugs... Americans know how to do that. It's for the audience and for journalists to decide whether the film carries a message. I don't like people coming and saying, "This has a message." It's putting the coach before the horses, so to speak. MPM: And you've made commercials in Japan? I have to ask whether your experience resembled Bill Murray's character in Lost in Translation.
Jean Reno: It was the same, more or less, to Lost in Translation. The reality I felt was the same - that same kind of loneliness in a country where you understand very few things, the TV is hard to understand, you already finished the book you brought with you in your luggage and you spend the week between the bar and the bed. MPM: Do American fans and French fans approach you differently because of the films with which they associate you?
Jean Reno: Fans everywhere feel you're close to them. They feel they know you inside because they've seen you act with candor, with heart. If you act normal, then people still come up to you; they want to shake your hand, and if you act normal, they act normal. It's when you act like a crazy person that people will act crazy with you. I have a place in New York, and life is basically the same there for me as here [in Paris] - visiting friends, cooking food, playing music. I'm an observer. I watch people, watch life in front of me. If you're open to the street, open your eyes to the people on the street - the characters are all right in front of you. For the record, Reno plays piano, guitar and drums. While he's into Rock 'n' Roll from the '70s, he admits the tune he's guilty of playing most is the Beatles' "Let It Be." |
