Opening new doors

When he was making “Intimate Strangers,” French director Patrice Leconte admits, he was oblivious to the kindred spirit between his latest film -- about what happens when a distressed married woman (Sandrine Bonnaire) enters the wrong office door and begins revealing her innermost secrets to a person she thinks is a therapist but is in fact a tax man (Fabrice Luchini) -- and the voyeuristic gamesmanship of his 1989 thriller “Monsieur Hire.”

But then again, most of the 56-year-old director’s noteworthy films -- “The Hairdresser’s Husband,” “The Girl on the Bridge,” and “Man on the Train” -- share a belief in the narrative power of opposites meeting and unexpectedly determining, even hastening, each other’s fate. “Strangers,” which opens July 30, is lighter fare than the sinister Georges Simenon adaptation that first got him noticed in America, but Leconte will be returning to “Monsieur Hire,” planning a remake of it to be his first English-language feature.

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Among the connections to “Monsieur Hire” is the same female lead, Sandrine Bonnaire.

She’s that rare actress that can show so much emotion with so little. There’s not a lot like her. When you see her acting, you don’t see the work, the effort involved.

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Were there any hesitations about working together again?

Every time we saw each other in the last 14 years, we always said, “We should find something to do.” This was the right one, so I called her and asked if she would read the script. She said, “I’ll be there in an hour.” We met in a cafe and when I handed her the script, she said, “You know, I love hanging out with you, sitting in a cafe, but I really want to go home and read the script.” That very night, she accepted.

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If you were to read in the newspaper that this scenario had happened to someone, would you be amused or horrified?

I doubt this could happen in real life. After three seconds of having been to the wrong door, the person would have told her. But [in fiction] that same beginning could actually lead to many different types of universes, be it light comedy or something dark. That’s one of the rules of vaudeville, which has origins in the French: opening the wrong door of the wrong person at the wrong time. Anything’s possible.

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“Intimate Strangers” takes place primarily in an office. What challenges does that pose to a director?

One of the great advantages was we could actually shoot the film in chronological order. The downside is that it’s very difficult to not repeat yourself, to have something visually that evolves through the film. That was very hard. It’s a lot easier to shoot a car chase where a car flips over the side of the road and explodes. You put up five cameras and let go. It’s much harder to film two people in a room. I lost a lot of sleep thinking, “How am I going to do this?”

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You’re such a committed genre-jumper, why revisit “Monsieur Hire”?

Once a year, since the release of that film, some American company contacts me to film a remake. Each time I refuse, because why make something I’ve already done? Now, [15] years later, I’ve come up with some ideas that would transform the film, make it a different type of movie. So I said yes, because it’s important at least once in your life to have an American experience.

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Before “Monsieur Hire” won you acclaim, your reputation in France was for broad, mainstream comedies. Do you still have a fondness for those?

I’ve never lost the taste for making comedies. Especially now. Aside from the “Monsieur Hire” remake, all the other projects I’m working on are comedies, in part because the world we live in is not light. Since “Intimate Strangers” I have made another film that’s experimental, poetic, very different. It’s similar to Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi.”

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After “Intimate Strangers,” would you say a filmmaker is more likely an all-seeing therapist or a patient revealing insecurities and doubts?

I’m absolutely not a therapist. It’s not about conducting therapy around me. But there is true pleasure for a filmmaker in trying to capture the darker corners of what actors have to give. And if your aim is to make a film that’s sincere, then you have to give up something of yourself that is sincere and true. After having made this film, a lot of people ask me, “Well, have you studied analysis? Are you seeing an analyst?” I say, “Why should I see an analyst? I make movies.”

-- Robert Abele