PRESS CONFERENCE – Mathieu Amalric: “Psycholanalysis is an adventure similar to underwater diving”

Arnaud Desplechin, Benicio Del Toro, Mathieu Amalric, Kent Jones, Gina Mckee and Misty Upham were in Cannes to appear at the press conference for Jimmy P (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian). Selected extracts below.

About the book:

Arnaud Desplechin: When I walked into a bookshop and just saw the title, I told myself that it was made for me. What I like about Devereux is that he has democratised psychoanalysis. He has taken it to the Indian reserves. He has given characters from humble backgrounds the nobility of characters in Thomas Hardy’s work.

On the difficulty of playing a character based on a real person:

Mathieu Amalric: To begin with, you think you have to read and know everything about the man, but that’s impossible. What I did do is begin psychoanaylsis myself. It’s a new world for me, a world of adventures, like underwater diving, with eels at the bottom.
 

On the production values:

Arnaud Desplechin: I worked with Dina Goldman (American production designer). I tried to explain the principles of the Nouvelle Vague, such as the idea of trying as much as possible to reconstruct events as they happened. 
 

On the notion of “foreignness”:

Arnaud Desplechin: The story revolves around two men, one from Montana, the other from France, who meet in the middle of nowhere. It is the story of two men who become American. What moved me most of all is that Jimmy never returned to his reserve. Afterwards he went to Seattle to live a different life.

On the “American experience”:

Arnaud Desplechin: As Renoir said: “Nothing resembles an Indian cobbler more that a Parisian cobbler”. I never said to myself that this was my first American film. I had to make this film and it could only be made there.

Quotes collected by LR