ON LOCATION : MOVIES : Malle’s Aforethought : The French director makes sure he’s in charge on ‘Damage’: He snapped up the rights, handpicked the actors and raised the money

Few non-American film directors command the affection and respect accorded to Louis Malle. His films--some made in his native France, some made in the United States--are neither difficult nor daunting, yet he has chosen to tackle subjects no one would describe as commercial.

The companion pieces “Lacombe Lucien” (1974) and “Au Revoir les Enfants” (1987) confront uncomfortable facets of French history in World War II: collaboration, betrayal and the Holocaust. His films set in the United States have hardly been obvious crowd-pleasers, either: the highly praised “Atlantic City” (1980) was a minor-key character study, and “My Dinner With Andre” (1981) showed 110 minutes of two old friends talking philosophy and life experiences over a meal. Even when Malle cast Brooke Shields as a child hooker in a New Orleans brothel for “Pretty Baby” (1978), he crafted a film that most critics found low-key.

Still, he knows a commercial story on encountering one. When British author Josephine Hart requested that Malle be sent pre-publication galley proofs of her first novel, an erotic melodrama called “Damage,” he reacted quickly. “I optioned the book, tried to come up with a screenplay, and within two weeks sent the book to Jeremy Irons, asking him if he wanted to star in it,” recalls Malle. “We’d wanted to work together for quite a while, and his response was very enthusiastic.”

Malle’s speed was vindicated when Hart’s book prospered. It has been translated into several languages and currently, while the film of “Damage” is in production here, occupies a place on British and U.S. bestseller lists. Irons plays Stephen Fleming, a middle-aged conservative British politician with a happy marriage and two children, whose conventional life is shattered when he meets his son Martyn’s girlfriend, Anna. The two embark upon an affair that can best be characterized as erotic obsession, though Anna and Martyn proceed with wedding plans. The affair culminates in Martyn’s death and Stephen’s ruin.

“It’s all sex and death, what more can you ask?” says Malle, suddenly roaring with laughter. He has walked away from the set, on a side street near Charing Cross station, to talk about the film--and wandered over to a group of benches set in gardens near the Savoy Hotel. Sprawled on adjacent benches are groups of London’s homeless, drinking unspecified liquids from bottles hidden in brown paper bags.

Malle settles on an empty bench, impervious to their shouting and noise. The gentle irony of this situation is Malle’s own wealth; he comes from an affluent haute- bourgeois family of sugar refiners. One of the best stories about him is a French interviewer asking him: “What would you do if you had 100 million francs?” “I have 100 million francs,” Malle is said to have replied.

He dresses casually but immaculately in a suede jacket, corduroy pants and Reeboks. Small, angular and handsome, Malle resembles a Gallic academic, a look enhanced by his round tortoise shell glasses and his constant puffing on a pipe.

He recalls that he worked out his own structure for the screenplay before turning it over to British playwright David Hare. Certain aspects of the book have been changed for film; the story no longer unfolds so exclusively from Stephen Fleming’s point of view. His daughter Sally, 22 in Hart’s novel, will be around 13 in the movie, and will act as a silent observer of Stephen’s dilemma.

Malle decided to cast the enigmatic French actress Juliette Binoche as Anna in the $13-million production. Binoche, a star in her own country, is best known to international audiences for her role in Philip Kaufman’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” Last year she also completed work on Paramount’s “Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights,” playing the tough role of English heroine Cathy Earnshaw.

Though Binoche is highly fluent in English, she has an accent, which suited Malle’s designs perfectly: “I wanted her to be really different among the cast, someone coming from a different culture. She’s this outsider, an intruder into this very conventional English family.”

He had also admired her work. “She has a mysterious presence and intensity on the screen,” says Malle. “I can think of some wonderful actresses, and even they don’t have that quality. But she does.” He insisted that Binoche should meet David Hare before he started work on his screenplay: “The part was pretty much written for her.”

Malle had briefly toyed with transposing the story to France. “But if I’d done that, I don’t think it would have worked,” he said. “The fact that the story is taking place in England, where there is a certain rigidity and puritanism, makes it stronger. Stephen is experiencing disorder and chaos for the first time, and doesn’t know how to cope.

If this story had been about a French politician, it wouldn’t have the same force. This way, it’s more interesting than it would be in a more relaxed culture.’

Thus it happened that Malle embarked on his first film in Britain. “It’s a little bit like working in America, because they have similar work habits here,” he noted. “It’s a cinema that’s technically good, but it’s more difficult to improvise, to steal a shot. Whereas in France I’ve made films with a smaller budget, and a smaller crew.”

His experiences in America were by no means all happy ones. Malle plays down his frustrations now, but admits: “It’s a little difficult for me to work in the studio system. I don’t think a director in need of a great deal of freedom can be happy there.” The misjudged screwball comedy “Crackers” (1984), set in San Francisco, was the last straw, and sent him back to France. “I had my arm twisted on that one,” he says. “It was a total embarrassment.”

Still, Malle hopes and expects to return to the United States next year to direct a film that will allow him to work near his wife, actress Candice Bergen. She lives in Los Angeles most of the year, starring in the CBS-TV comedy series “Murphy Brown.” “There is a project I am very interested in,” said Malle. “It’s a set in the Southwest. But I don’t know if I should tell you anything else about it.” Will he be able to work as independently as he has come to prefer? “Absolutely,” he said, nodding vigorously.

If Malle, at 63, is considering his future, Juliette Binoche is rooted in her present work on “Damage.” Sitting in her trailer, staring moodily out at a wind swept London square, she prefaces her comments by noting that she dislikes being interviewed in the weeks a film is being made: “The character is my oxygen, and I want to stay with that oxygen. I concentrate on the character very hard--and then at the end of filming, I try to forget everything. it’s done. But on films people come along, and want to know how work, how things are going. I’m pissed off sometimes because of that.”

Binoche disclosed that she initially declined Malle’s offer for her to play Anna. “I felt Louis wasn’t clear about whether he wanted me to do it. He would probably say he was clear. But when I read the book I found this character special. I understand her completely. I’ve got friends who have experiences (similar to Anna’s). And they feel detached, that they have nothing to lose. I knew I could do it.

“But she’s a difficult character to play because she shouldn’t be a femme fatale , and she shouldn’t be too cute--giggling, living her life free and having affairs. She’s not like that. She’s a passive power. She’s still, she’s patient, and she becomes the center of everyone’s lives. She doesn’t need to do. She just is.”

Binoche concedes that her relationship with both Irons and Malle was initially prickly. “To start with, Jeremy and I had some . . . exchanges,” she says. “Since then, it’s been wonderful. We react in different ways, but I think Jeremy understands (Anna) very well. He gives me lots of good ideas.” And are she and Malle now of one mind? “We agree deep inside,” sighed Binoche. “But sometimes words are not helpful. The less we talk (about the interpretation), the better. If we get into explanations, sometimes things get too wordy.”

Two weeks earlier, on a soundstage at Shepperton Studios, some 20 miles west of London, Irons paced up and down the country-style kitchen designed as part of Stephen Fleming’s comfortable Hampstead home. Irons was dressed in a dark suit, with the jacket collar turned up. Water had been spritzed on his shoulders to simulate rain.

He was involved in a delicate scene with Miranda Richardson, the English actress who plays Stephen’s wife, Ingrid. This was their first meeting since the death of their son Martyn (played by Rupert Graves), and the distraught Ingrid had been lashing at her face with a knotted towel in an attempt to inflict a physical pain that would supersede her emotional pain.

The draining scene needed several takes to get right. Irons looked pale and grave, and between takes retreated to a wooden table where he smoked furiously and studied the London Times crossword. Malle sucked on his pipe anxiously. Finally the pair elicited the required response, and Malle strolled over to Richardson to ask if all was well. Richardson, who starred as the murderess Ruth Ellis in the British film “Dance With a Stranger,” nodded dumbly but forcefully.

The high drama made Irons hungry, and he swiftly headed to the studio commissary for lunch. “I think ‘Damage’ is a wonderful story,” he said between mouthfuls of pasta. “And I’d wanted to work with Louis for a long time. I adored ‘Au Revoir les Enfants.’ He’s one of the greats.

‘The danger is that the film will be seen as a story of adultery, which it’s not. I think very few people, fortunately I suppose, have Stephen’s kind of experience. I don’t think he has an option. Even after the death of his son and the break-up of his marriage, extraordinarily he never regrets it. So that’s a big thing to convey.”

At this point, Irons was just starting to become accustomed to Malle’s working methods. “I like him very much as a man. He’s less confrontational, he likes working very hard. I’ve been used to churning it about a bit with directors. But he has an awful lot in his head before he comes to the set about how he wants the scene to be--its pace, its rhythm. Of course, as an actor I fight against that because I want to surprise him, show him things he hasn’t thought of.

“He’s more of an auteur than I’m used to working with. But one learns. Steven Soderbergh, David Cronenberg, they’re all a bit different. It’s a bit like a marriage--one finds one’s role.

“Louis comes from a tradition in which actors fulfill his idea in his film, which is, I think, a European tradition. Having said that, he’s changing a little as he gets used to working with English actors. Of course, he doesn’t like working in America. And I suspect the reason is because there’s too much outside control. The director is more of a punchbag, and Louis likes to be in control.”

Irons, who won an Academy Award last year for his portrayal of Claus von Bulow in “Reversal of Fortune,” has always striven to choose roles for himself that have been interesting rather than likable or overtly commercial. “Well,” says Irons, “it seems to me that if you get a prize for doing the sort of work you like, the sensible thing is to keep doing it. I’ve never worried about likability. Claus wasn’t likable. The twins in ‘Dead Ringers’ weren’t likable.

“When you’re shooting and having a boring time, it’s no consolation to know the audience are going to love you. What gets you going is that you have to believe in what you’re doing, that it interests you, stretches you a bit, involves you. I try not to think too much about the public’s perception. I just keep doing what I like doing, and hope they’ll tag along. Some of the films I’ve made haven’t been as widely seen as I’d like, but people who do see them like them.”

Irons agreed that work on “Damage” was going well, but he sounded decidedly world-weary. “I’m finding acting harder and harder,” he admitted. “One would think it would get easier. But I feel less and less that I can do it.”

Don’t the years of acquired technique help? “I suppose so,” he said gloomily. “But maybe your standards go up. I think to an extent when you’re starting work, you discover and surprise yourself with what emotions you can find. But when you know you can have that range, it ceases to be self-examination, and it begins not to be enough.

“I’ve never really seen stuff of mine that I’ve liked. At base, I think I know acting is a pretty ridiculous thing to do.” He sighed deeply. “Maybe I just need an early night.”

But if Irons seemed downcast, the executive producer of “Damage,” Vincent Malle, occupying an office near the Shepperton soundstage, was effervescent. Malle’s younger brother (by 11 years) operates as the purely business end of their partnership.

“It was easy to raise money for this film,” he said. “Louis’ last two films, ‘May Fools’ and ‘Au Revoir les Enfants’ were successful. He has attained a position among the directors in the world where people expect his next movie. And actors want to work with him.

“People were really extremely enthusiastic about the script. It very quickly became an A project, the kind distributors will fight for.’

He then appeared to contradict himself in his next comment: “We happened to be looking for a U.S. sale and approached Hollywood studios where we felt it would be well distributed. But they said it was difficult to grasp how to market it. Was it an art film or a normal commercial movie?”

Eventually, independent distributors New Line came up with a deal that suited the Malle brothers. “With an independent you have much more input on a film’s release pattern,” said Vincent. “Instead of talking to 200 studio people, you talk to two.

“America’s hard going,” he added ruefully, shaking his head. “And it gets worse and worse. In 1978 we first came to America, made ‘Pretty Baby’ for Paramount, it cost $3 million. Film was not a big hit but a critical success. It didn’t lose money. What I find bizarre in the U.S. film industry is that if you put $1,000 into a movie and five years later get back $1,500, that should be a success. But there, if you put $1,000 into a movie it’s not a success unless you get back $25,000. It’s ridiculous. There’s no middle ground. We’re not about to make ‘Terminator 2.’ When you make French films, you get your money back and that’s very good business.’

Certainly, independent distribution for “Damage” in the United States will suit Louis Malle temperamentally. On his park bench near the Savoy, he admits as much: “This is my production with Vincent. I read the book, optioned the rights, so I’m completely responsible,” he said.

“We’ve raised money all over the world. For better or worse, I’m 100% in charge. I’ve always worked best that way because I don’t feel that I have anyone breathing down my neck.”