A Chameleon in the Director’s Chair

Patrice Leconte, probably France’s most lighthearted auteur, attacks each new film as if it were a sporting event. The director, a boyish 53, wears red running gear, whistles while he works and never looks back.

The versatile filmmaker began with burlesque comedies but has shown his mettle with all genres, from period satire like “Ridicule” (1996) to an offbeat love story like “The Girl on the Bridge” (1998).

“I change with each movie and get the impression that I am several different people,” he says. “If I kept repeating myself, I couldn’t make so many movies. This way, I keep up my curiosity and,” he says, sighing, “a certain instability.”

When he shot “The Widow of Saint-Pierre” (which opened Friday), a drama set in 19th century Saint Pierre-et-Miquelon, off the Canadian coast, Leconte was up against the elements. He inherited the project when another director backed out and the lead actors, Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil, found themselves orphaned.

“It was a difficult situation and a difficult shoot,” he explained. “Canadian winter is too cold for my taste--just looking at that frozen sea!”

“The Widow” is a tragedy based on the true story of a couple determined to save a murderer from the guillotine. Auteuil plays an officer in charge of the French colony and Binoche is Madame La, his wife, a passionate woman who challenges the smug self-righteousness of the reigning notables. Prize-winning Bosnian director Emir Kusturica plays Neel, the condemned man, who wins favor with the islanders and touches the heart of the captain and his wife. “To me, the love story at the heart of the film counts the most--that was my artistic motivation rather than showing up injustices,” says the director.

From the start, Leconte was comfortable with Auteuil, who had been the hero of his previous “The Girl on the Bridge.” “Daniel and I are on the same wavelength. The captain’s cool detachment suits him to a T.

“As for Juliette, we didn’t know each other, but we trusted each other, and she brought rare intensity to the part,” Leconte says. “She’s always trying to get to the bottom of things with a kind of creative dissatisfaction and flings herself into the fray, just like the woman she plays. I never saw her sit down or give up.”

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In 1849, Neel murders a man during a drunken spree and receives the death penalty. But the island has no “widow,” as the guillotine was called in French slang, nor executioner--they have to wait for the executioner and his instrument to come all the way from France. Madame La takes the condemned man--who turns out to be a diamond in the rough--into her care, teaching him to read and to do his share of community service among snowbound islanders.

“If the film had been simply about the death penalty, it would have been too heavy for me, too openly a militant movie. While I don’t believe in keeping things light at any price, I’m not interested in denouncing injustices,” says Leconte. “I want to show the stuff of dreams, emotions and romance; I’ve never felt I had a mission.”

But the director knew that Binoche had committed to making the movie after she had read the script and seized on the humanitarian nature of her role. “I realized right away that Juliette was motivated by her feeling about the death penalty and I didn’t want to distract her.

“I felt sure that her passionate stand against the death penalty and my passion about the love story would work together. It wasn’t as if we were going in different directions--the dramatic angle is emotionally effective in light of the strong love story that links the couple, and the strange tenderness that they develop with the criminal.”

As Madame La civilizes her brutish charge, he turns docile, hands touch and a certain sensuality hovers over the room. “I had trouble with that scene,” the director admits. “Emir is very prudish and it never occurred to Juliette that there could be a sensual confusion, an attraction between them. So she played it like a schoolmistress and he like a shy schoolboy. After seeing the rushes, we had to shoot it again--a dimension was missing.”

As for the casting of two-time Golden Palm winner Kusturica, Leconte says, “Everybody told me I was crazy to take a great director as an actor, but he never acted like a director on the set: He found it delicious to be simply an actor. The experience excited him--he wanted to be as good as Juliette and Daniel. And he is.”

At times, Kusturica tried to inject his own Slavic humor, including a pratfall in one scene that he thought would add poignancy. “He likes gags that would work in one of his own movies, but not in mine. My sensibility is different.” Leconte says.

The director, who has made 19 films, started in the ‘70s with madcap comedies about sex and fun in the sun, such as “Les Bronzes,” featuring talented young actors, such as Thierry Lhermitte and Michel Blanc from Le Splendid cafe-theater troupe. In 1988, he tackled a more melancholy theme with “Monsieur Hire,” starring Blanc as a mysterious loner attracted to a young girl, played by Sandrine Bonnaire. It intrigued audiences at Cannes and proved to be the opening that allowed him to try his hand at weighty subjects.

“ ‘Monsieur Hire’ wasn’t funny. The film intrigued Americans; they felt the latent eroticism. My films are different from each other and evoke audience response for different reasons.”

“The Hairdresser’s Husband” (1989), a whimsical comedy starring Jean Rochefort and Anna Galiena, was also an international success and won the prestigious Louis Delluc prize in France.

Leconte had his biggest hit with “Ridicule” (1996), starring Fanny Ardant and Charles Berling. The scathing study of French manners on the mean streets of Louis XVI’s Versailles court featured a royal lot of cruel jesters and lethal wits. “I was surprised when the film got such a good reaction at Cannes,” he says. “I thought it might be too elitist, but they liked it.” “Ridicule” swept the Cesar awards for best film and best director, as well as getting an Academy Award nomination for best foreign film.

“The Girl on the Bridge” (1999), starring Vanessa Paradis and Auteuil, has been his most popular movie abroad so far. “It’s a love story, it has charm, and has worked very well in America, I don’t know why.

“Every time I go to the U.S., I realize that people have a bad image of French movies. They think that we make intimate little stories with characters who talk all the time. When they reduce French cinema to that notion, it’s too bad, because there are good French movies that don’t try to imitate American movies, ambitious stories with emotion, sensitivity, imagination. Truffaut’s films were very French.”

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Leconte has had more hits than misses. Perhaps his biggest flop, the one that makes him wince, was a project that looked sure-fire: “Une Chance sur Deux” (1997), a caper with superstars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon. “After two years of work, it was an enormous disappointment,” he says. “And hurt even more because it was meant to be popular.”

Now he feels his true calling is to make love stories. “I don’t know what else to make--all movies are love stories,” he says. Right now, he is shooting around the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre. The movie is “La Rue des Plaisirs,” with Patrick Timsit and Laetitia Casta, and takes place during the liberation of Paris in 1944. “The liberation coincided with the closing of the bordellos, and this is a pure love story about a whore who dreams of romance.”

At the same time, Leconte’s “Felix and Lola,” with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Philippe Torreton, is about to open in France. “It’s another love story, set on fairgrounds. I like strange, out-of-time zones, circuses, fairs, and I was in the mood to make something light after ‘The Widow of Saint-Pierre.’

“When I prepare a film, images rather than ideas spin in my head, and I hope that these images will end up on screen. With each new project, I find it harder to make a movie that matches this ideal film in my head. But I must say that ‘The Widow of Saint-Pierre’ looks just like the movie I saw in my mind’s eye. So if people don’t like it, I’m the only one to blame.”