Filmmaker feels ‘big, big joy’
Villeneuve is the only Canadian screening a film at Cannes
Denis Villeneuve calls it a “big, big joy” to have his new film, Sicario, chosen to première at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
“It was an old dream. I say ‘it was’ because it was a dream that was so old that I was not dreaming about it a lot anymore.”
The 47-year-old Quebec director has been to Cannes several times, most recently in 2009 with Polytechnique, but never in competition for the Palme d’Or. His features since then — Incendies, Prisoners and Enemy — have screened at the Toronto Film Festival and elsewhere before opening in wide release.
A question about being the lone Canadian this year — last year saw films by Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg and Xavier Dolan — seems to take the filmmaker off guard.
“I don’t feel that I’m going against Italians, French, American or Japanese,” he says. “I feel that I’m going into competition with other filmmakers. Cinema is my country.”
Besides, he points out, Sicario is a U.S. production about a CIA war against a Mexican drug cartel.
“I feel I will represent North America,” he says.
Villeneuve worked with many of the same people as on Prisoners, including costume and production designers, visual effects and makeup, composer Jóhann Jóhannsson and cinematographer Roger Deakins, a 12-time Oscar nominee, including for Prisoners.
“I had the best crew ever and I tried to keep the same people. I don’t need to explain things anymore. They know exactly my sensibility. We can just push boundaries.”
Villeneuve says he was struck by the film noir quality of the script for Sicario, written by actor and first-time screenwriter Taylor Sheridan. “I thought it was very accurate, almost like an anticipation movie, a dark tale about our near future.”
He knows a thing or two about the future. Villeneuve is working on Story of Your Life, about a linguist who must figure out whether alien craft come in peace or as invaders. And next year he hopes to begin shooting a still-untitled sequel to Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s 1982 science fiction epic. Harrison Ford is attached to reprise his title role.
“I’m ready to do it because the original Blade Runner is by far one of my favourite movies of all time,” Villeneuve says. “Blade Runner is almost a religion for me.”
He says Hollywood first noticed him after his Oscar nomination for best foreignlanguage film with 2010’s Incendies. “People were asking me, what do you want to do? I said science fiction, always science fiction. I’m dreaming to do science fiction since a very long time. So now that the door is open, I’m just jumping into it. My soul will be filled if I do that.”