A NEW TAKE ON ACTION GENRE
Denis Villeneuve brings an auteur’s voice to Sicario
Denis Villeneuve is a ladies’ man.
The acclaimed Quebec director has put women at the centre of several of his narratives — including Polytechnique, Incendies and the upcoming sci-fi flick Story of Your Life, starring Amy Adams — and he isn’t about to stop now.
“Prisoners and Enemy are my only films that didn’t have a female lead,” Villeneuve said last weekend in Toronto, where his new movie Sicario had its North American première as part of the Toronto International Film Festival.
“Inspiration is a strange thing. I wrote my first two features with female leads. It was a way to write about myself with distance. I realized I was touched by the female condition and the position of women in society — there are a lot of things to be explored.”
That’s part of what drew Villeneuve to Taylor Sheridan’s script for Sicario. The brooding thriller stars Emily Blunt as an FBI agent on the trail of a Mexican drug lord. Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro co-star, but Blunt anchors the action. It is through her that we enter this foreboding world, react to it and by extension connect to Villeneuve’s film, of which she is the emotional core.
Things could have turned out very differently.
“Before I got on board, (Sheridan) was asked to change the character to a man,” Villeneuve explained. “It’s about business, sadly. They told him, ‘If you want to make a movie for a lot of money, change the character.’ And he said, ‘Fine,’ and walked out. I admire him for that. He was always adamant that the main character be female. That’s the first question he asked me.”
Villeneuve, of course, had no problem with Sheridan’s request; and he had the clout to make it happen, albeit at a reduced price.
“I fell in love with the screenplay,” he said. “It was important for me (too). When I came on board, there was no pressure (to cast a male protagonist) from Lions Gate. It was maybe suggested once; I didn’t have to fight for it, but I knew I would be making a movie for much less money. That, I think, will change with time.”
It’s part of the ongoing saga of women in film. From independent cinema to the Hollywood big leagues, there is a striking lack of both female directors and female protagonists — the two often go hand in hand.
Men make movies about men, and the powers that be don’t like taking chances, so they do their best to keep it that way. Films with female leads become “chick flicks,” somehow deemed less bankable or appealing to a wider audience.
Placing a star of Blunt’s calibre at the heart of an otherwise maledominated intrigue is a step in the right direction, particularly with an auteur like Villeneuve at the helm.
Sicario had its world première in May, in competition at the Cannes Film Festival — an overdue nod to the director’s ability to infuse even something as potentially routine as an American drug saga with enthralling artistry.
The film creeps forward with
a spellbinding tension, steeped in the potent imagery of ace cinematographer Roger Deakins and haunted by the spiralling drones of Johann Johannsson’s awesomely oppressive score.
At the centre of it all is Blunt, portraying a hard-nosed agent who is out of her depth. Recruited by a mysterious team of government operatives led by Brolin’s character and including del Toro’s, she comes to question everything she believes, en route to the film’s bracing climax.
“She’s a fantastic actress,” Villeneuve said. "I needed someone able to have all this pressure on her shoulders, portraying someone who has not a lot of power, or dialogue to protect her; someone who is disintegrating in front of the camera, losing her strength and moral certitude, and getting more confused.
“I needed an actress able to bring the audience with her, someone who had inner strength. Emily Blunt is the ‘full metal bitch,’ ” Villeneuve said, referencing her character’s nickname in the 2014 blockbuster film Edge of Tomorrow. “I saw that when I watched (Jean-Marc Vallée’s) The Young Victoria, where she plays the Queen of England.”
Sicario is Villeneuve’s second foray into a hallowed genre of American cinema. In Prisoners (starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal), he injected an indelible sense of dread into what could have been just another kidnapping drama. Here, he enters the familiar realm of law enforcement and drug cartels, emerging with a haunting portrait of a society in crisis. Though he may have left Quebec cinema behind professionally, Villeneuve sees a strong thread connecting all his work.
“I’m deeply interested by story and what it says about the world today,” he said. "For me, Incendies — which I made in Quebec — and Prisoners and Sicario are in the same family of filmmaking simplicity in terms of camerawork and using natural light. My main concern is to tell a story in the most efficient and simple way.
“I’m totally inspired by actors, by cycles of violence and how revenge is a double-edged sword. There are strong similarities, even with Polytechnique. That’s why I feel sincerely that Sicario is as close to me as Incendies. When I adapt a screenplay — like when I adapt a book or a play — I have to make it my own.”
Of course, having a visionary cinematographer like Deakins on his side doesn’t hurt. Villeneuve has found a kindred spirit in the veteran Coen brothers collaborator, who shot Prisoners and is on board for the director’s highly anticipated Blade Runner sequel.
Sicario has a more agitated tone than Prisoners, which seeped under your skin with its perfectly calibrated images and slow, steady camera movement. Here, Deakins uses more hand-held camera, interspersed with striking aerial shots of the Mexican desert.
“People always talk about his strength as an esthete, and he is a master,” Villeneuve said, “but for me he’s also a strong storyteller. The thing I’m learning most with him is how to tell a story in the most simple and powerful way.”
The results are particularly impressive when you consider the financial limitations.
Sicario was made for a relatively modest $32 million, according to Villeneuve, when it could have required triple that amount. Here again, Deakins’s experience was essential, both in terms of not shooting extraneous footage (“Roger is pretty precise,” Villeneuve said) and coming up with a visual approach that was within their means.
“I knew the schedule would be very intense, because our budget would not allow us to (wait for) perfect light,” Villeneuve said. "I said to Roger, ‘What can we do?
know we’re going to shoot in ugly light, and it’s going to be terrible. Let’s try to embrace that instead of fighting it, embrace the brutality of the light and create shadows.’
“We spent weeks storyboarding together, trying to find a (visual) language that was specific to the movie. Two things stand out: obviously, you’re seeing the movie through a woman’s eyes, so even the action sequences are mostly shot over her shoulder, from her perspective; and the impact of the geography of that country and the border, and what it means cinematically.”
As an appropriate warm-up to Blade Runner, Villeneuve just finished shooting the above-mentioned Story of Your Life, starring Adams as a linguist called in to communicate with a fleet of alien spaceships hovering above the Earth. Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker co-star.
The film was shot in Montreal, which is as close as Villeneuve will get to making another Quebec feature for the moment. The U.S. simply offers him opportunities he can’t resist.
“The battle sequence (in Sicario) is more expensive than the movies I made before,” he said. "There are movies I can do at home and movies I can do in the U.S. I must say, it allows me to work with people I admire — actors and artists.
“My job is very fragile. There’s no insurance. I never know the next morning what I’m going to do. As long as they allow me to make movies there, I will. But it’s one movie at a time. I’m making every movie like it’s my last one, because you never know. I only believe I’m making a movie when I put my eyes behind the camera.”