Bertrand Bonello's background is in classical music, having played the piano since the age of 5. However, his films are decidedly transgressive: He made his feature directorial debut with 1998's Something Organic at the height of the New French Extremity, of which Bonello is counted alongside filmmaker provocateurs like Leos Carax, Claire Denis, and Gaspar Noé. Still, he serves as the composer for nearly all of his films.
"If I write a scene and I think it will need music, I stop writing and I go into my studio. I start to find some sounds, colors, notes — stuff like that — and then I go back to my desk. The script is always written to mark the beginning of the music and the end of the music. It's very precise," Bonello says. "I think you must not just write a script, you must write a film, and the film is the addition of everything."
Bonello is best known for his films Saint Laurent (2014) and Nocturama (2016). His latest is arguably his most ambitious work yet: The Beast, a sci-fi romantic drama that was inspired by Henry James' 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle. With Bonello as the director, producer, co-writer, and co-composer, the story became something entirely original. (Bonello crafted the score with his daughter, Anna.)
"I decided to push the feelings of fear and love as far as I could," explains the filmmaker, "through [different] periods, multiple genres, contamination of the genres, and things like that."
Still, Bonello's own favorite films skew towards the classics. Here, he shares with A.frame five of the films that he finds himself revisiting over and over again. "If I'm sincere, I'm going to be very unsurprising," he admits. "For example, it's not for nothing that Vertigo is one of the greatest films of all time, and I've watched it 20 or 22 times. It's not very original as a choice, but at the same time, being original just to be original is not very interesting."
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock | Written by: Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor
It's probably one of the craziest films in cinema history and it's from 1958, which is pretty much the year that modern cinema started. As the passage from classicism to contemporary cinema, Vertigo carries this modernity. It's a film that has many doors so that you can talk about the movie in so many ways, and every time I see it, I discover something new. That is not the case with so many films, even if I have seen them 10 times. I know Vertigo is this huge classic and very popular choice, but whatever. There is a reason for that.
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola | Written by: Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola
This is not an original choice, but it's something that comes from my childhood. I love The Godfather not because of the mafia but because of the family. I watched it with my father a lot when I was a kid — maybe once a month. I come from an Italian family, and the film has meant a lot for personal reasons. I look at it differently now that I am older. If you see a movie by David Cronenberg or John Carpenter when you're 12 and you see it again when you're an adult, you can see stuff that you didn't catch before, such as some of the political things. With The Godfather, the more I see the film, the more I think it is crazy and intelligent. Even in the most horrible parts of it, you can see humanity behind those things.
Written and Directed by: Robert Bresson
Pickpocket is a masterpiece in terms of mise-en-scène, but I really love the fact that in one sentence, at the end of the film, you rewind it, and you see it differently. This sentence is so heartbreaking, but you realize it is a love story that is not at all known during the film. It's very emotional. I like all the movies by Robert Bresson, but this one is maybe the apogee of his style. It's such an influential piece of cinema.
Directed by: Jonathan Glazer | Written by: Jean-Claude Carrière, Milo Addica and Jonathan Glazer
Birth is more contemporary. It's an incredible film about refusing the death of someone and accepting anything to get the person back, even if that person is a kid, as it is in this case. The story is just crazy. She sees him dying twice. First of all, the real husband and the fact that the husband could have been this kid, but it's not real. It's twice the death, and it is heartbreaking. The writing is genius, but so is everything in the film. It is a state of grace. Of course, Glazer's work is incredible. Nicole Kidman has never been so amazing. It's the best music Alexandre Desplat has ever done, and it's one of the best works from cinematographer Harris Savides. That's just state of grace.
Directed by: F. W. Murnau | Written by: Carl Mayer
Sunrise is pure perfection. It's wild that they made this film in the 1920s. The subject, the ideas, the invention are all ahead of their time. It's a film that I love watching and changing the music. I put a record on, and I put on that film. The last time I watched it, I put on an album called Consumed by Plastikman, and it was fantastic. It worked perfectly. In silent films, you do not see the same movie when you change the music, and it's an exciting and fascinating experience. I love that.
