Julie Delpy is probably best known for her role as Celine opposite Ethan Hawke’s Jesse in three wonderful Richard Linklater films: Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013). She received Oscar nominations for co-writing the latter two films with Hawke and Linklater. But Delpy is also a wonderful director in her own right, with six films to her credit such as the funny 2 Days in Paris (2007) and its sequel 2 Days in New York (2012) that featured her own family members, along with the 17th century costume drama, The Countess (2009), the French ensemble comedy, Skylab (2011), and her newest film, Lolo. On holiday in the south of France, Parisian sophisticate and workaholic Violette (Delpy) meets provincial IT geek Jean-René (Dany Boon). Against all odds, they discover that there’s a real chemistry between them and at the end of the summer, Jean-René wastes no time in joining his beloved in Paris. But their different social backgrounds and her 19-year-old son Lolo (Vincent Lacoste) definitely won’t make things easy. I talked to Julie Delpy about this very superbly acted comedy that also has some really dark elements.
Danny Miller: I thought this film was so funny, but I also enjoyed the troubling subject matter. Do you think Violette was in total denial about her son and just didn’t think him capable of being so devious?
Julie Delpy: Yeah, at first, for sure. For me, with Violette, it was that thing where if you don’t personally have Machiavellian, manipulative tendencies, it’s not that easy to see them in other people. The way Lolo approaches the destruction of Violette’s boyfriend was very devious. If you put yourself in her shoes, how would you figure out those things? Jean-René is itchy, no one can figure out why. He gets drunk at a party and makes a fool of himself — is that Lolo’s responsibility? No! He was very smart about it.
Vincent Lacoste is so good as Lolo. He’s so appealing and quirky at first that we just fall in love with him before we realize what a nutjob he is.
Yes, he’s a real sociopath because no matter what he does, he’s very laid back. He has no adrenaline in him, there’s no fear. He’s doing everything in a way that’s completely relaxed, and that’s the mark of a true sociopath and narcissist, they have a very calm way of controlling people. Lolo is not neurotic, he’s the opposite of that even though he’s obviously quite fucked up!
And he could probably pass any lie detector test because he believes all of his own lies like a true sociopath.
Oh my God, I had to deal with a sociopath once in my work life — someone that everyone believes is one of the nicest people on the planet. But then the minute he targeted someone, it was deadly. Really scary. And everyone thought the other person was the bad guy and this person was the good guy, no one knew! But you know what? Those people usually go very far in life, they usually become very successful. They can even reach the presidency sometimes. (Laughs.)
I know you have a young son the same age as mine. Was any of this story borne from some primal fear of your future life living with a teenaged boy?
(Laughs.) It’s funny because my son is the total opposite of Lolo, he has such empathy that if he sees someone crying he starts crying automatically. It’s so sweet. I could be crying watching a sad movie that he doesn’t understand at all but when he sees me he gets these big tears in his eyes. He’s such an emotional human being which is really beautiful but it also worries me as a mother because I don’t want to see him get hurt in life.
So you’re kind of in the opposite situation from Violette.
Yes, but it’s true that this story probably did come from some level of anxiety I have as a parent since you never know how what you do is going to affect your child in some way. I actually know someone who I think is a sociopath and I’ve had discussions with his parents about it. “What happened? I need to know!” And they are very confused because they have no idea what happened which is kind of scary. They let him be very free, he kind of did whatever he wanted to growing up, which I do think can create problems. I also think drugs can mess up your brain chemistry when you’re growing up. I knew one young person who was doing a lot of drugs and started thinking that God was talking to him and he had all these weird thoughts. I’m a very free spirit and I think people should do whatever they want but I do believe there are some important times in life when you just have to be a little more careful.
Like when you’re brain is literally still developing.
We actually shot one scene of Lolo in a psychiatric hospital but we had to cut it because it was just so creepy and dark. I talked to the people who worked there and they said about half of the people there were there because they smoked too much pot at a young age. Very strong pot like they have now, not the pot you and I smoked when we were 18. Ugh, I kind of hate saying this because I don’t want people to think that I’m anti-pot. I’m not at all, I think some people are great on drugs and should never stop using them! (Laughs.) But others need to be much more careful. And some should never touch the stuff. I’m actually one of those people. If I do drugs now, I’m paranoid for a week!
Me, too. Those days are long gone.
I do think this kind of sociopathic behavior starts very young — maybe helped by drugs, trauma, a shock. It’s like a form of madness.
Yeah, and possibly something that some people are just predisposed to. In this movie, I never really thought that Violette had done something wrong, Lolo reminded me more of the Patty McCormack character in The Bad Seed.
Oh, it’s funny you mention that movie because that was my main inspiration for this film! I saw it when I was very young and found it extremely upsetting.
It’s so interesting that you succeed in making this film a funny comedy when it so could have gone in a very different direction.
I know! There’s this one moment where Lolo is hugging Violette where I thought, oh God, he could kill her right there and not think anything of it. But then, sociopaths rarely do things like that because they crave social advancement and killing people usually doesn’t get you that! (Laughs.) I think they’re different from psychopaths who will kill you no matter what the consequences but sociopaths kind of need you to stay alive or else they’ll push you to kill yourself but they’re probably not going to kill you.
I thought Dany Boon’s character added such a nice balance to this story. It must have been a lot of fun for him to play such a different kind of character, kind of an innocent rube.
It’s true, he’s a great balance in the film because his character is so endearing. You know, I have a lot of cynicism in me but I’m also a big romantic so I loved the idea that their love conquers all, that’s so wonderful. Lolo thinks he’s going to get rid of him but because he’s so pure and genuine he wins — their love is stronger than that. It was great to work with Dany because he himself is so endearing. And he’s so hard-working, such a professional. The hardest scenes for him to do were the ones when he has to talk about computers because he knows absolutely nothing about that world!
I also loved Karin Viard’s character and the way that she’s always talking about sex. Do you think that kind of openness comes more from your time living here?
Oh, you think it’s more American to talk openly about sex? That’s funny, to me it seems more French! I actually think it’s less about your nationality but more about the kind of people you’re around, you know what I mean? There are certainly very “proper” French people who come from a certain type of background. But I come from this crazy artistic family where they talk about sex like crazy. My grandma talked about sex until she was 100, basically until she died! She would make sex jokes all the time, it was hilarious.
Yeah, you’re right, I guess it does depends on the type of people you’re hanging out with.
But ultimately I think we talk about it more in France than in America. But you know, maybe it’s because in France I’m talking my own language and we have this really fun slang that’s almost untranslatable. Like this 19th century slang where you can talk about sex in a way that almost sounds like it’s from another era. I actually had a very hard time translating the stuff that Karin Viard says in the movie for the subtitles, the expressions she uses are really from another century.
I spent a year in France and even though I speak the language some of that wordplay is very hard for Americans to follow.
Yeah, French is a funny language because we have way less words than you have in English but I think you use less than we do because we like to use more uncommon words in a lot of different ways. I always win Scrabble when I play against English-speaking people because I know all these words that aren’t used very often.