A French Connection

Juliette Binoche bursts into the cramped, smoke-filled room without knocking. Everyone freezes and stares at her in astonished silence. She pales, whispering an apology. Or at least that’s how it reads in the script, but after 16 consecutive takes, French director Andre Techine still isn’t quite satisfied.

“It’s too static,” he tells the extras portraying office workers in a Socialist Party campaign headquarters huddled around a table littered with papers, coffee cups and ashtrays heaped with stubbed-out Gauloises. “Keep taking notes, go on with the meeting. Don’t wait for her.”

But, then, who could blame them? In this stifling hot, neon-lit government office with bile-green walls, Binoche’s sudden arrival is a gust of fresh air, and her bewildering radiance defies all laws of the spectrum.

It’s been a dozen years since Binoche was given her first major role, in Techine’s “Rendez-vous,” and now the Oscar-winning French actress of “The English Patient” has come back to work with the director who instinctively “trusted” her at age 20.

In Techine’s latest drama, “Alice and Martin,” Binoche stars as Alice, a strong-willed struggling violinist with a passion for Argentine music who falls in love with Martin, a troubled youth-turned-successful fashion model (played by newcomer Alexis Loret).

It is Day 35 on the set and the final day on location in Cahors, a medieval town in the lush countryside of southwestern France known for its gastronomic delicacies and excellent wines. At this point in the story, Alice has just learned the dark secrets of Martin’s past and believes she can reason with his family. In the scene underway, she tries to speak to Martin’s estranged brother, Frederic (Jean-Pierre Lorit), a political candidate in the provinces, who dismisses her in front of his colleagues.

“But Martin’s in bad shape,” she insists. It’s the 17th time you’ve heard that lump in her throat and watched a blush creep into her face. In a matter of seconds, what looked like childlike embarrassment has turned into womanly indignation.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Frederic answers coldly, and there is a pause. Everyone is waiting for the line--”He’ll pull through”--but the actress is looking more and more distraught. Suddenly, she breaks into a peal of infectious laughter.

“I went blank,” she declares with disarming simplicity. Even the director looks grateful, realizing that it’s time for a break.

Binoche steps around the clutter of equipment in the hall, grabs a chocolate bar along the way and enters a sinister-looking office, seeking two empty chairs. She crosses her legs, poised but friendly, and waits for the first question. Known for her good-soldier attitude on the set, Binoche doesn’t seem to mind that she has no dressing room or privacy. No whims, no fits of temper, and not a single complaint about the long hours.

Dressed in a pale-blue flowered skirt and navy sailor T-shirt unbuttoned on one shoulder, her character is supposed look simple, fresh but not glamorous. Easier said than done. Though the actress’ dark hair has been rubbed with olive oil soap to dull the natural shine and she’s wearing hardly any makeup, her dazzle clings to her, even off camera.

At first, the only Oscar she feels like talking about is a penguin by that name to whom she was introduced at San Diego’s Sea World, the day after the Academy Award ceremonies. Binoche loves dolphins and dreams of swimming alongside them. “I once saw some jumping behind a boat . . . ,” she begins, then changes her mind. “The Oscar [for best supporting actress] doesn’t change anything essential for me. It was a wonderful gift.”

This is the same expression Binoche uses to describe her contract with Lanco^me. By agreeing to model for the perfume Poeme, the 33-year-old actress enjoys the financial freedom of working on the films that interest her the most and donates a considerable amount of her income to a Cambodian charity, Aspeca. Modeling also allows her to spend more time at her 19th century home in southwest Paris, painting, gardening, and playing with her 4-year-old son, Raphael (whose father is a professional scuba diver named Andre Halle).

Being a “good mother” is high on the Binoche’s list of priorities. So are “truth and integrity,” as demonstrated the day the actress was fired from the set of Claude Berri’s film on French Resistance heroine Lucie Aubrac over “artistic differences.”

“My ambition is to have beautiful encounters,” Binoche says with a sigh, “not to make money.”

Is this why she decided to accept this part in “Alice and Martin”--a modestly budgeted love story with an unknown leading man--at a time when Hollywood has been throwing scripts at her feet like bouquets of roses? “Nothing else has really grabbed me.” She smiles gravely.

Admittedly, she would have liked to accept the lead part in “Lulu on the Bridge” for writer-director Paul Auster, whose work she admires. Does her refusal reflect an ambivalence about spending too much time in America?

“But I’m very busy!” the actress objects, sidestepping the question. “Besides, I like going places where no one expects me to go, even myself.”

In February, Binoche returns to the stage to star in a production of Pirandello’s “Naked,” directed by Jonathan Kent, at London’s 200-seat Almeida Theater. She’s looking forward to the warmth and proximity of a live audience, which she hasn’t experienced since her Paris performance 10 years ago in Chekhov’s “The Seagull.” It’s a bit like going home, since she’s hung around the theater ever since she was a small child, when both of her parents were actors in the central provinces. At age 13, Binoche began taking classes at the local theater club, directed by her mother, and was soon staging her own productions in an experimental Parisian high school.

After England, she plans to revisit familiar turf in Tuscany, not far from where “The English Patient” was shot, where she’ll be playing the part of an artist’s model in Chinese director Chen Kaige’s “The Assumption of the Virgin.”

So this is the year of “returning to the source.”

“I always knew I wanted to do something again with Techine, and now seemed like the right time,” Binoche says quickly. “And it’s also out of loyalty to Andre Techine--for me, loyalty is very important.”

The director discovered Binoche by chance in 1984 while searching for his female lead in “Rendez-vous.” When Techine (“Ma Saison Preferee,” “Les Voleurs”) saw a screen test the actress had done for another film, he was so impressed by “the irrational light that this woman’s face gave off” that he hired her without any further tests. Before that, Binoche’s screen appearances had, in fact, been brief: She’d appeared in a commercial as a bleached blond munching suggestively on marshmallows, had been asked to scream two words (“Stupid ass!”) in an unmemorable French film and was given a tiny role playing basketball in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Jevous salue Marie” (Hail Mary). She remembers waiting for hours in a hotel to be called to the set and ended up losing her job at as a cashier in a Paris department store.

“Actually, when I first read the script of ‘Alice and Martin,’ I was a little shocked by the ordinary ‘street’ language,” Binoche says. “I’m not used to speaking that way in a film, or in real life, for that matter. But then I realized that the essence of the character is what’s going on inside, not in the dialogue. You see, Alice starts out a little lost--she’s anxious, fragile, someone who has taken drugs in the past. Even her violin playing is leading nowhere.”

Is the actress concerned that this role might affect her elegant Lanco^me model image? She laughs dismissively, as if to say, “Come on, everyone knows this is just cinema.” Still, Binoche frequently teases the director that he’s trying to make her look like “a shameless woman.”

Why, just the other night, they shot a scene of Alice partying with a team of inebriated French rugby players. Sure, she is lonely and can’t sleep, but--Binoche now leans forward, confidingly--”by then, the audience is aware that I’m pregnant, and there I am, lighting up cigarettes and drinking beer with them! It’s fake beer--no alcohol, of course--but it looks real.” She giggles. “If for no other reason, this film will be probably rated PG.”

Smoking aside, what else has she had to do for this role? First and foremost, learn to play the violin: “The only results so far are cramps in my arms, calluses on my fingers and relief in knowing that no one will actually hear me,” she quips.

She’s far more enthusiastic about the past weeks of intensive tango lessons, in preparation for one of the most magical scenes of the shoot. The townspeople of Cahors are still buzzing about the night they heard ballroom music until 4 a.m., wafting through giant speakers installed in the parking lot of the train station.

In this dreamlike sequence, added to the story at the last minute, Alice finds herself with Benjamin (Mathieu Almaric), Martin’s gay brother, dancing cheek to cheek in the moonlit streets. Almaric (who recently pocketed France’s Cesar Award for most promising male actor) plays Alice’s roommate and best friend--that is, before Martin turns up.

The first thing you notice about actor Loret is his wide smile and how relaxed he seems, even though he’s got every reason to feel jittery. That afternoon, if all goes as planned, Alice and Martin are slated for their first intimate love scene, in a hotel room.

“It’s not really a problem,” Loret says. “Juliette has been friendly right from the moment we met, cracking jokes and trying to make me feel comfortable. Actually, I’m more worried about another scene we’ll be shooting in Spain.” He takes a gulp of mineral water. “It starts out romantically, but then I go nuts and I have to slap her.”

Techine found the 22-year-old Loret by combing every major modeling agency in Paris, after many nerve-racking months of searching for someone who not only looked the part but could relate to the character’s stardom in the fashion world. Loret’s sandy-haired, lanky “American” look has made him a favorite for trendy designer ads like Prada, but that too happened by chance. Three years ago, when Loret was enrolled in design school, a scout came up to him in a bistro and handed him a card. “He told me to call, so I did.” He shrugs.

Back on the set, everyone is wolfing down the dessert--a heavenly mousse of fromage blanc from a local farm, topped with strawberries. Binoche chats with her 19-year-old half brother, Camille Humeau, who has the same dark, inquisitive eyes and sensual lips and is here working as an extra.

“Alice and Martin” is a decidedly family affair, on screen and off. Marion Stalens, Binoche’s sister, is also an actress and the official set photographer. The three siblings have been living together in a sprawling countryside villa during the shoot, along with the film’s tango instructor, George Rodriguez, Binoche’s assistant Lina and, of course, Raphael. For a star like Binoche, who proclaimed only an hour earlier that “cinema is always about intimacy,” what could possibly be better than this?”

Suddenly, the actress stands up, takes her son by the hand, and announces that she’ll be back shortly. Chances are that this is her way of gearing up for what promises to be an exhausting afternoon back in that cramped office, until Techine decides to move on the next scene.

As she drifts out into the street, twirling her car keys, a few passersby look up distractedly. But no one turns around to stare at the pretty woman and child, out for a stroll on a sunny day.