THE SHOW
Gilles Porte
I first discovered the heroine of "Dirty Business" in the early 90s.
I remember the texture of her voice, her accent, silences, pauses, laugh and that look with black holes where her
eyes should be, her sparing movements, short and repetitive, and precise like when she mechanically rubs her
blood-stained hands on her stripy dress.
I remember Yolande's minimalist performance - perfectly pitched and superbly effective - and the incredible presence
of the character.
After that, I was lucky enough to see Yolande in several other shows.
I was particularly impressed by her in "C'est Magnifique" by Jérôme Deschamps.
That's when I came up with an idea for a film starring Yolande : a woman touring with her show, "Dirty
Business", meets a "giant carrier".
I went to see Yolande out in the country where she was living.
I had written a few pages and that was the start of a 5-year stretch of writing together !
Yolande Moreau
I remember that when I wrote "Dirty Business" in the 1980s, I wanted to say something about
emptiness, going off the rails and the difficulty of life.
I wrote the show in the afternoons in dance halls.
There were a lot of old ladies there who were all dressed up and who giggled whenever anybody asked them for a dance,
like a bunch of 15-year-old girls.
It was charming and quite awful.
To get across the idea of emptiness, of a desperate desire to be loved, I wore a mask, which removed the character
from reality and brought to mind an Ensor character or Munch's "The Scream".
"A dirty business. I got mixed up in a crime".
That was the opening line of the show. The character has just killed her lover.
She spills the beans on her life in a harsh voice, and the banality of her life turns out to be more frightening
than her crime.
The theater offers an actor the chance to settle a score with life. You twist life.
You throw in a bit of yourself and a bit of other people and you share it all with the audience, which changes every
night, laughs and identifies with the character. Special moments.
Irène's tour and the show were our starting point for a story that deals with the parallels between real life
and life in your dreams, as it is sublimated in art.
CO-DIRECTING
Gilles Porte
Our preparation was crucial to the success of the whole production.
Our frequent journeys in northern France and shared concerns over our tricky situation budgetwise provided plenty of
occasions to open up to each other.
I always think it's a good idea to get to know people before setting off round Cape Horn !
A director of photography and an actress working together actually offers freedom you rarely get, especially as we
were constantly testing each other's ideas on every scene, throughout the process of writing, editing and shooting.
Obviously, I wasn't about to tell Yolande how she should walk in her stripy dress, which often seemed to be like her
second skin.
On the other hand, Yolande, the actors and I would meet up at the start of each day, without a single technician
present, to talk through the scenes we were about to shoot.
Then, Yolande would disappear into her dressing room and I would sort out the technical details with the crew.
I got a handle on the movie day after day, not by watching the dailies, but through the notebook I kept on my belt,
which contained the script, drawings, sketches, photos and ideas for the set-ups that I filled in along the way.
Everybody got the most out of this way of working I think.
We decided together that we would perform the show to an audience on condition that they agreed to be filmed and,
occasionally, to stay behind for a few hours to complete a scene.
In a way, we were working without "a safety net".
Yolande was performing before a "real audience" and I often only got one chance at a shot.
But above all it was a huge plus for the film to have "live sound" in the theater scenes and to be able to contrast
that realism, which Yolande and I were looking for, with scenes that were more figurative.
Yolande Moreau
Wim Willaert nicknamed us "Ying and Yang". I don't think that's too wide of the mark.
Gilles has huge amounts of energy. He provides a kind of structure I can browse around.
We did a huge amount of prep work. Most of the locations where we shot were chosen in advance.
Very often, we'd turn up in a place and I'd mime the scene while Gilles tried to work out how to shoot it.
But once we started shooting, I took a step back to leave Gilles in charge on set.
I wanted to be there emotionally, to get into a zone with the other actors.
I said to Gilles, "Don't worry, I'm with you but I'm going to do my own thing."
Often, after a day's shooting, I'd play music with Wim, my co-star, and that was a great way of preparing and a
great approach to character while avoiding too much talk or psychology.
I couldn't see myself, as an actress, directing the other actors.
Seeing as Gilles was lighting the picture, he couldn't do it either.
The shoot just passed off, with the camera providing the rhythm with wonderful support from the whole crew.
THE NORTH
Yolande Moreau
It's easier to talk about what you know. A little bit easier, at least.
Personally, I'm originally from Brussels and like a lot of people from Brussels, I'm half-French and half-Flemish.
I like the rough-and-readiness of the Flemish, their honesty and lack of pretension that seems to fit in with the
landscapes.
The earth sticks to the soles of your shoes.
The scenery is harsh almost but develops a mysterious sense of poetry.
We didn't set the story on the French-Belgian border by chance.
It enabled us to navigate between two cultures that are close and so very far apart.
I chose as my "prince", my "hero", a Flemish speaker who works in France.
He has such a wonderful accent when he speaks French.
I know northern France very well from having toured there extensively in the 80s.
We were shooting in places where I had performed my show twenty years before, such as Le Palais du Littoral at
Grande-Synthe.
The diversity of the locations we chose (cabarets, village halls, theaters, and even the Beer Fest) provided a
backdrop that allowed us to show what it is to be an actor.
Gilles Porte
It was the Giants and a documentary I'd shot that led me back to this part of France.
Then, the landscapes I'd first seen when I was young, watching legendary cycle races (I'm a big fan) like Le Tour de
Flandres, Paris-Roubaix, Gand-Wellegem, became increasingly fixed in our minds the more Yolande and I came here :
the church steeples, the light with skies so heavy they seem to be falling on top of you, the redbrick buildings...
And the people, above all. Yolande and I plunged into this geography with just a couple of lifebuoys :
a road dear to Yolande's heart, with lines of leaning poplars ; in the suburbs of Lille, a Giant maker whose
workshop I had already visited.
We met so many people on the road, in cafés, baker's stores and gas stations.
Our "North" was becoming sharper and more defined.
The idea of being on the French-Belgian border suited us fine because the screenplay was impregnated with this sense
of "neither-nor" : neither fiction nor reality, neither old nor young, neither all beer nor totally red wine.
THE TITLE
Gilles Porte
Every time we went north, people always mentioned Raoul de Goederwaervelde's song "When The Tide Comes In", or
they'd hum it to us, but strangely enough it was in Marseille, where I'd hooked up with Yolande who was on tour,
that we discovered the lyrics, music and growling voice that perfectly echoed our love story.
It was Christmas Eve and there was the Mediterranean stretching out in front of us, light years away from the beaches
of the North Sea. We'd just finished the first draft of the script.
We didn't say a word while the song was playing but we were sharing the same emotions.
It was like the cherry on the cake - a cake that we had called "Dirty Business" back then.
It was only when we were editing that we changed the title because we gradually realized that the story wasn't as
dirty as all that ! Yolande wanted to call it "Chicken" and I wanted "Chicken and Me".
Then, after we had obtained the right to recompose the melody of Raoul's song at certain points of the movie, we
decided to borrow it's title.
Yolande Moreau
It was unthinkable to make the movie without Raoul's song. It's still very popular in the north. Everybody knows it.
It's an institution. We took the title as well because it went so well with the story we were telling.
The rising tide erases all footprints and marks - it wipes the sand clean and covers everything before gradually
receding. It's as powerful as desire and as salty as tears.
THE BIOGRAPHY
GILLES PORTE
Gilles was born on May 11, 1965 in Lyon.
In 1987, he directed his first short, COUP DE POMPE.
In 1988, he directed two shorts, HISTOIRE PRIVÉE and QUE LE SPECTACLE SOIT.
In 1990, he directed another short, CONTE À REBOURS.
He became an assistant cameraman in 1989 working with DPs such as Carlo Varini, Patrick Blossier, Laurent Machuel,
Pasqualino de Santis and Henri Alekan, on films by Jacques Audiard, Marcel Carné, Raoul Ruiz, Maroun Baghdadi,
Patrice Chéreau, Costa-Gavras and Xavier Durringer.
In 1991, he made his fifth short, 116/1.
In 1993, he directed a documentary, PETRO.
In 1996, he shot his first picture as camera operator, GENEALOGIES OF A CRIME by Raoul Ruiz.
As Director of Photography, Gilles has shot around 30 short films, including CONFESSIONS DANS UN BAIN
by Marc Gibaja,
several documentaries including ALOÏSE by Muriel Edelstein and SOUS LA PLAGE
by Stéphane Riga,
and a dozen features, including
EARS PINNED BACK by Xavier Durringer,
PRETEND I'M NOT HERE by Olivier Jahan,
WHO PLUCKED THE FEATHERS OFF THE MOON ? by Christine Carrière,
LES INFORTUNES DE LA BEAUTÉ by John Lvoff,
KHORMA by Jilani Saadi
and THE HEAT'S ON by Christian Philibert.
WHEN THE TIDE COMES IN is Gilles' first feature film co-written and directed with the actress
Yolande Moreau. He was also the film's director of photography.
YOLANDE MOREAU
After working in children's theater for a few years in Brussels (Théâtre de la Ville de
Bruxelles), Yolande Moreau trained with Philippe Gaulier.
In 1982, she wrote and performed A Dirty Business of Sex and Crime, a tragi-comic one-woman show
that toured all over France, Switzerland, Quebec, etc.
In 1989, Yolande joined La Compagnie de Jérôme Deschamps, a highly successful troupe
of deadpan comics with their own slot on Canal +.
Yolande Moreau's film credits include :
1985 VAGABOND Agnès Varda
1992 GERMINAL Claude Berri
1992 THE SON OF THE SHARK Agnès Merlet
1994 THE HORSEMAN ON THE ROOF Jean-Paul Rappeneau
1995 THE THREE BROTHERS Bourdon and Campan
1995 HAPPINESS IS IN THE FIELD Etienne Chatiliez
1995 LA BELLE VERTE Coline Serreau
1996 AN AIR SO PURE Yves Angelo
1997 FULL MOON Fredi Murer
2000 AMÉLIE Jean-Pierre Jeunet
2000 THE MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS Dominique Cabrera
2002 A PIECE OF SKY Bénédicte Liénart
2003 FOLLE EMBELLIE Dominique Cabrera
WHEN THE TIDE COMES IN is Yolande's first feature film, co-written and directed with the director of photography
Gilles Porte.