INTERVIEW: This is a film that will go straight to your ‘Head’
Photo: You Go to My Head stars Delfine Bafort and Svetozar Cvetković. Photo courtesy of First Run Features / Provided by Foundry Communications with permission.
Dimitri de Clercq’s debut feature film, You Go to My Head, finds an unlikely couple living in a majestic house in the Moroccan desert. The history between this man and woman is an utter fabrication, and yet they live their lives as if intrinsically connected, as if they were married and once loved each other.
The man is named Jake (Svetozar Cvetković), and he has taken in Kitty (Delfine Bafort) after she’s had a horrible accident that caused post-traumatic amnesia. Although they are complete strangers, Jake plays it like Kitty is his wife and that they live in this reclusive desert home, according to press notes. Kitty struggles with this invented reality, but her amnesia prevents her from finding an alternative and learning the truth.
It’s a startling film, one of beauty and thrilling intensity, and surprisingly it is de Clercq’s debut as a director.
“I’ve produced quite a few films,” de Clercq said in a recent phone interview. “I attended the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and I really wanted to direct film. I met filmmakers, and in the end I ended up producing for quite a few years, making other people’s dreams come true. As I always say, director’s dreams often become the producer’s nightmares, so there’s a moment I really felt like getting back behind the camera to make a feature film. On a previous film I produced two years ago, before I started to make You Go to My Head, I met Delfine Bafort in Morocco, and I was really struck by her. And I really felt like writing a story and making a film for her, so she’s really at the heart of the film. … I always believed that cinema was created to immortalize women, so I really made this film to immortalize Delfine. She’s the muse.”
For de Clercq, it was important to make You Go to My Head as independently as possible. He didn’t want to rely on the funding of other producers or European financing organizations. He wanted this cinematic experiment to be free of money concerns and limitations.
“When I decided to make this film, I really wanted to do it in a very independent way, but in the American sense of the term, the way American independent films were made in the ’60s and ’70s,” he said. “I wanted to make the film in that spirit. … And I didn’t want to spend two years going to all these commissions asking for money, so I basically had a movie poster collection of very rare movie posters, which I dearly cherished, which I sold to make this film because I wanted to make it totally independently. And so I also knew that I would have a small crew to work with, which I wanted, that way I could have more time. I really think that the best way to produce films is to have a small crew.”
It was admittedly difficult for de Clercq to let go of his rare movie poster collection in order to finance the film, but without those necessary funds, You Go to My Head would have never happened.
“I just felt like the most important thing for me at that moment was to really make this film, and, of course, there were some posters of Stanley Kubrick movies, French New Wave,” he said. “But it’s just paper at the end of the day. I’m really happy I did it. For me, it was important for the film to be made. I think the most powerful films are the ones that often are made in a very independent way.”
You Go to My Head was filmed at a picturesque architectural wonder known as the Fobe House, designed by French architect Guilhem Eustache and located 6 kilometers from the center of Marrakech, Morocco, according to a press release. In many ways, this house becomes a character unto itself.
“It’s a house which I had built for my parents who retired in Morocco in 2003-2004,” the director said. “The house was completed in 2007, so I knew the house really well. … We really developed the idea of the film with these locations in mind, the house being of course the principal location, but also the desert vista, the sand dunes.”
He added: “I would say in some ways I approached this film a little bit like a painter. I knew I wanted certain colors to be in the film at certain moments, so that’s why these locations all have very different colors to them. The house, of course, is white architecture, but then you have the brown tones of the dunes. You have the blue of the sea, the greens of the forest at some point. I’d say I probably made this film a little bit the way Jackson Pollock made paintings. He’s one of my favorite contemporary painters; basically he threw paint onto a canvas, and I would say I projected my obsessions, desires onto the white walls of this house, which are like movie screens.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
You Go to My Head, directed by Dimitri de Clercq, is now playing in New York City and Los Angeles. Click here for more information.
