Interview with Happy Few director Antony Cordier

Certainly the most sexually explicit of the Golden Lion contenders that I saw at Venice 2010, Antony Cordier's relationship comedy-drama, Happy Few, attracted more critical brickbats than pats on the back. I perhaps dug it more than many, flaws and all, and so was therefore pleased as punch to be given opportunity to sit down with the director during the festival to discuss his movie.

Ah, the Excelsior Hotel! Whereas the twin edifices of the Palazzo del Cinema and the Palazzo del Casino, in which the majority of the Venice screenings are held, are more a scene of building bedlam than A-list glamour at present, as work goes on to remedy the danger posed by some recently uncovered asbestos, the magnificent Excelsior harks back to the unashamed wealth and luxury living enjoyed by the elite of post-first World War Europe.

Boasting about as fine a view out over the – today, sumptuously sun-kissed - waters of the Adriatic as you are likely to find anywhere along the beachy banks of the isle of the Lido, the tennis court-dimensioned sun terrace on the third floor of the Excelsior is where the interviews for Happy Few have been scheduled to take place. Though I am booked in to speak to the movie's writer-director Antony Cordier, whose second narrative feature this is, following 2005's Cold Showers, the 37-year-old Frenchman is by no means the sole member of the Happy Few gang milling around.

Alias actress Elodie Bouchez, who plays bewitching former gymnast Teri in the film, is sat at the next table, looking, in her huge aviators and black and gold striped mini-dress, like she is heading straight to the next showbiz shindig as soon as her press chores here have been discharged. Meanwhile, Happy Few's other female lead, Marina Foïs, who takes the role of Rachel, floats about the expansive terrace, puffing on a cigarette, periodically joining our chat with Cordier, and bestowing hugs on one of her male co-stars, Nicolas Duvauchelle, when he emerges in shorts and sunglasses. Duvauchelle, the ruthless young punk from Alain Corneau's Second Wind (and, for my money, a decent lookalike for Nathan Barley actor Nicholas Burns), plays Teri's husband, Vincent, and the primary acting quartet is filled out by the today-absent Roschdy Zem, veteran of Rachid Bouchareb's movies, who appears as Franck, spouse of Rachel.

Happy Few, depending on your point of view, is either a tale of partner-swapping (a term, as we will come to, Cordier views as offering tawdry reduction of the utopian sentiment behind his film) or an idealistic attempt by four people to love one another without any boundaries, deceit or possessiveness. Vincent and Teri, and Rachel and Franck are all content with their lots at the outset of the film, but when an attraction blossoms between Vincent and Rachel after they meet at her work, the couples commence on a close friendship which then swiftly leads on to an arrangement where they are allowed to enjoy sexual relations with one another's partner. This is all conducted completely openly, and indeed a kind of bliss reigns over the four for a while, before irrepressible human foibles cause fractures to appear.

It is not unfair to say that Cordier's film was one of the poorer reviewed movies in competition at Venice this year, with critics rounding on it for featuring characters who are too bourgeois (which you can imagine as being especially irritating for the roughneck dirty fingernails personnel of the press corps), that the sex isn't as salacious as the movie seems to think it is, and most bemusingly that there is an absence of 'dramatic chills', as if a subject which is most commonly reduced to lurid soap operatics is somehow being undermined by the grown-up objectivity that Cordier brings to it. Even Obsessed With Film's against-the-tide rave review damns Happy Few with faint praise by calling it the 'best film about sex since Humpday,' the latter being a flick which sends Indie Movies editor Emma into a cold sweat of hatred at its merest mention. So er, shh.

I liked the movie more than many (though probably not as much as Obsessed With Film), finding plenty to engage with in the central characters, particularly Franck and Teri, as well as appreciating the modern, naturalistic look that Cordier and his DoP, Nicolas Gaurin, frame the proceedings with. The narrative unfolds with humour as well as emotion, and the film is pleasingly non-judgemental about the actions of the main foursome. All of which means I am very interested in what Cordier is going to say when I am beckoned over to begin the interview.

Though the lurking Foïs jokingly tries her best to foster a sense of trepidation amongst me and my three fellow journalists as we sit down with the director (“While doing the interviews, I'm discovering the black side on Anthony. I thought he was much lighter than this”), Cordier proves an amiable fellow, offering a relentlessly upbeat assessment of his characters and the ideals of human behaviour to which they aspire through their passion for one another. If any hint of defensiveness manifests itself, it is solely when any of us allude to intrinsic shortcomings in the four of Rachel, Franck, Vincent and Teri, which as slightly bad luck would have it, is an area touched upon in the very first question, as one of my colleagues wonders if the conclusion of Happy Few suggests that 'free love' is an impossible dream.

“You don't have to think that the moral can only be seen at the end of the film,” suggests Cordier. “This is true for a children's story but not for the stories concerning adults. The moral is everywhere in the film and it shows that despite all the problems, despite all the difficulties, despite the feelings of jealousy and despite everything, the four characters in the end can live how they want to live. The meaning of cinema is that it shows us something that is possible, that something can happen – in this case it's a sort of dream which can be lived.”

Though attraction first burns between jewellery designer Rachel and website designer Vincent, it is Franck who (seemingly) pushes things forward earliest, snatching a kiss with Teri while he massages her, before nonchalantly revealing this to her husband via an inscription in a book later that very evening. Intriguingly atypical behaviour, you might think, but Cordier was keen to explain the motivation behind it, offering as it does a gateway to understanding the relationship between the four characters. “The feeling they have on that night when he kisses her is a need to share. He doesn't only feel attracted by Teri, but he also does not want to hide that from the other people. It's not just the fact of being attracted by the other man's woman, but also a sort of love coming up. He doesn't want to accept the classical model of adultery, which is why he's being open.”

Foïs picks up this thread, “The character does find that he is brave, as this is totally unexpected for him, and this bravery surprises Franck. This is something he hadn't thought about before – it is just something he feels at the time and he just goes for it. So it is a chemistry mixing with the unexpected. And also we always keep on saying that women go for it much more than men and that it's women playing the main role, but in this case it's not, as it's Franck doing it.”

This openness between the characters, this commitment to total honesty, is what Cordier argues differentiates their arrangement from stereotypical notions of partner-swapping. The director explains, “We know that there is always partner-swapping, which is connected to bourgeoisie or middle-classes, but this is not the case, this is not true actually, because it's very common in the rural counties, for example. The only thing is that you hide it, you just don't want to show it.”

But over time this multilateral front begins to fracture, posing the question of whether, even with the noblest of intentions, total honesty can ever truly exist. “Yes, in the film there things that are not shown,” concedes the director, “That are hidden, but not on purpose. We want to show an ideal relationship. The characters want to protect each other, they don't want to hide anything from each other, but of course you have to come to terms with human weaknesses which are always present. [But] what we mostly focused on in the film is the heroic element, the heroic aspect of the characters.”

Blessed with a hugely talented cast to invest those characters with cinematic life, Cordier suggests he was keen to harness those talents to make a Happy Few which surpassed even the film he and co-writer Julie Peyr had conceived of when they penned the screenplay. “When you give a role to somebody,” he explains, “you don't give the role to take it back immediately afterwards. During the shooting sometimes, the actors were saying sentences in a totally different way, in a totally different intonation from what we had expected in the script. But that was good. That was the most exciting thing because that was their own contribution. The script is just a starting point.”

There is plenty of sex and nudity in Happy Few, with the explicit interactions between the principals certain to upset the prudish. Foïs, however, emphasises how unperturbed she was by the risqué content of the movie when she signed up, noting that, “When I first read the script I realised that sexuality was part and parcel of the film, so it would have been absurd not to deal with it in the film. I immediately decided not to ask myself any questions, not to have any embarrassment or any form of shame whatsoever.”

She continues: “And then also there was a sense of trust; as soon as I met Anthony after reading the script, I looked into his eyes and said to myself, 'Okay, yes, I'm going to do it.' Anthony is also a very delicate person so there is no embarrassment with him, and also there was a very good feeling among the four of us, so that was also quite easy. Plus it's also my job. And it's much more embarrassing to watch [sex scenes] than it is to do them.”

Interview almost over, it would be remiss to neglect the opportunity to ask about the most obviously arresting of the sex scenes in Cordier's film; when Vincent, Rachel, Franck and Teri all take a break in the country and engage in what is basically a ménage a quatre, a bag of flour being messily utilised to connect the group humping with a previously expressed fantasy of Teri's. “When you have an idea for a film,” begins the director, attempting to elucidate the thinking behind the scene, “you always want to look for unexpected ideas or ideas that are original or not very common. That is also done in order to convince the actors to play for you, and so if you tell an actor, 'Okay, you're gonna shoot a scene while making love in flour', it's something that they've never done before, so it's much easier to convince them.”

He concludes by remarking, “This is also true for the director; this is something new for you and therefore more challenging and more interesting,” an observation which prompts a mock-angered Foïs to apply the sharp edge of her tongue to the director. “Okay, you have to stop with your idea of your actors being bored with you and what you do, because we were not.” And neither, given the copious whoopee-making involved in Happy Few, are audiences likely to be - even if, on the evidence provided by Venice, some may not like what Cordier's film has to say.

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