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How did Same Old Song come about?Alain Resnais: After Smoking and No Smoking, Bruno Pesery asked me to film an opera written for the big screen. It probably would have been easy to finance the project in English but I felt that my knowledge of the language was insufficient for such an undertaking. I therefore looked for an alternative. During the work on the adaptation of Intimate Exchanges, the series of plays byAlan Ayckbourn that led to Smoking and No Smoking, I had become close friends with Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri. I admired the musicality of their dialogue and their performances onstage and screen. I therefore asked them if they would be interested writing a screenplay. They replied that they would but, having not appeared in our two "twin films," they didn't want towrite for other actors than themselves. This suited me perfectly. We then spent three or four afternoons talking about characters, outlines, what we wanted or didn't want to do on film. Weferreted through my subject box. I think I even gave the "Jaoui-Bacris" a totally outrageous halfhour improvisation, a little like automatic writing, that I had recorded on audio tape. The themeof the outer appearances that we wear throughout our lives rose to the surface along with other elements, like a guide and her visits and the psychology of the hermit crab. Then, as I am a great admirer of the English writer, Dennis Potter, I showed them extracts from his TV films. In some of them, the characters regularly lip-synch to popular songs. And gradually, the outline of thefilm came into shape. The challenge was the following: how not to copy Potter, given my passion for his work? We therefore decided to use French songs rooted in an everyday climate, excludingany notion of fantasy. The songs, with two or three exceptions, don't describe the characters' imaginary world either. Nicole Vedres, with whom I worked as an assistant in 1947 on Paris MilNeuf Cent, told me one day that the novel, in its descriptions of love and its melodies, could never match so-called popular or music-hall songs. And I've often noticed that popular songs accompany the acts of our everyday lives. If we behaved at all naturally, we'd use song lyrics in conversation.Your love of musicals is well known and yet it is hard to find an illusion to the genre in Same Old Song.Alain Resnais: I was particularly determined not to stray into that area. A musical almost always contains dancing or at least movements and gestures by actors to evoke dancing. Onceagain, we were aiming for a more everyday style. We wanted the songs to enter the scenes without any warning. If the audience, even only once or twice, could forget that it was hearing a song and think that the words were dialogue, then we would be happy. Jean-Pierre Bacri: In this way, the songs have a direct link to the theme of appearances because the medium of song is both universal and imprecise or approximate. True, people use it tocommunicate and form bonds, but this is also a mask and it's not an ambitious and personal way of communicating. If someone is sad, you say "Every cloud has a silver lining," and he understands what that means. And, at the same time, you don't really reveal your own personality. They are merely a semblance of contacts and relationships. In the film, the family photo shown by my character (Nicolas) that looks like an ad for breakfast cereal is an image of success. The ad for breakfast cereal is a photographic song: "I show you a certain idea of happiness and you think I'm happy."Agnès Jaoui: We also aimed to talk about happiness and the difficulty of being happy, of what happiness means. For me, one of the reasons why people feel unhappy is because they comparethemselves to others. We are bombarded with images of young, healthy people with a happy family... and we continually compare ourselves to this image of happiness. If you're over twentyfive,if you're a bit fatter, a bit thinner, a bit taller, a bit more single, a bit more childless, etc.... not only do you feel unhappy, but you also feel lonely, excluded and abnormal.Jean-Pierre Bacri: In the film, the theme of appearances is balanced out by the thesis. This is a successful relationship. It's taken to its complete and logical conclusion. in this case, on theyeomen of Paladru Lake in the year 1000. You do 800 pages to deal with the issue fully, and you end up within something thick, solid, expansive - the ideal way of boring other people silly. Weneed brief and simplistic signs, as in advertising or these songs that don't mean anything but that we identify with. They talk to everyone, providing a sort of secret for success encapsulated inthree words.Agnès Jaoui: And, at the same time, the consumer society, like popular music, is reassuring. We're not saying that it shouldn't exist.Jean-Pierre Bacri: Not at all. One of the common themes in Cuisine et Dépendances, Un Air de Famille and Same Old Song is the idea that you can go beyond those appearances and get to theheart of things, despite the dangers of conflict, even with yourself, and the risk of seeing yourself as you really are. Too bad if it's even further from that particular ad and the songs. You discoveryourself. That's the main thing. Discovering yourself.Agnès Jaoui: Odile (Sabine Azéma) is the character who maintains this need to put on a front the most stubbornly. She is always on top of the world and doesn't understand other people'ssuffering because she refuses to accept her own.Jean-Pierre Bacri: For her, as for many people, admitting one's weaknesses is tantamount to failure. It's a defeat. In the film, Camille (Agnès Jaoui) has a nervous breakdown just when everything is going well for her. She is in love, she has just obtained her doctorate... Do you think that often happens?Jean-Pierre Bacri: When you spend years - as someone working on a thesis does - devoting all your energy to a specific goal, once you reach that goal, you end up in a void.Agnès Jaoui: You say: "So what, I've obtained my doctorate - or whatever - and nothing has changed. I'm not different, better, more beautiful, I'm just myself. I could die tomorrow. What use is it all?" And in general that happens when you're twenty-five or thirty. Becoming an adult, marks the end of a certain dream, a certain projection into the future, and you have to face the present and the absurdity of this life... You are. that's all.A Merchant Ivory Films Releasein association withArtistic License Filmspresents