French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve ( Goodbye First Love , Eden and Things to Come ) has made a different sort of a film set in India. Maya ’s protagonist Gabriel (Roman Kolinka), a French war reporter, recently released by the ISIS, makes a trip to Goa, reconnecting with his childhood roots while searching for calmness, and perhaps love. Along the way he meets several people, including a feisty young woman Maya (newcomer Aarshi Banerjee). Maya becomes Gabriel’s companion of sorts in his Indian sojourn. The opening film, at the Toronto International Film Festival, Maya is also playing in the ‘Rendezvous With French Cinema section’ at the 20th Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. Edited excerpts from an interview…
I read when you made Eden you were inspired by Oliver Assayas’ Something in the Air . Eden was about music, but also about a young man searching for something. I found that same sense in Maya , since Gabriel is also searching – for peace perhaps, and that connection is beautiful between the three films.
Because I make personal films, they are all linked together. It’s like they respond to each other. Perhaps the quest was also mine. I always identify with my characters, no matter if they are men, women, young or old.
I don’t want to pry into your personal life, but was there something happening with you that led you to this quest?
Probably. Things to Come was about a woman who renounced love. Her husband had left her and while it was painful, it was also freedom for her. Because I feel so much empathy towards my characters, I identified with Nathalie (Isabelle Huppert). This painful freedom was also mine. And it wasn’t by accident that after Things to Come I had to do a film that is about going back to sensuality. It’s about India and about sensuality. We can look at it as a love story, but even more it’s about finding yourself through the body and the beauty of the world.
I am curious about what’s there in India that people from the west come looking for?
I had been to India many times and it was the question I asked myself. It’s a place I would go to when I wanted to escape friends. I know a lot of occidental people go to India…
Hippies were coming to India, back in the 1960s…
Yes, and I am not a hippie, but I went back many times. I made friends, wrote a film there. I was at a point when I wanted to make a film far from France to face another world and culture. India was really where it made sense, because it was a country where I myself would go in search of something. I don’t pretend to know India better than I do. At the same time I had a real connection that made it possible for me to film in Goa, without showing the touristy spots.
What was it like shooting the film in India?
We were a group of French women and an Indian crew. The DOP, costume and production designers were French women and the rest of the team was Indian. It was so different [from] anything I had experienced before.
I wanted to film the reality of India. That was the big ambition of the film. And while it sounds obvious, it is not so easy. In making films anywhere, but in India more so, when you recreate a world, it becomes a fantasised India. I wanted to film the real India. We had to be very smart in the way to mingle in the crowds, mix fiction with some sort of documentary look.
How did you find Aarshi Banerjee?
When you start to make a film, you really don’t know what will be the most important thing in the end. Now if I had to pick one thing it would be meeting Aarshi. This connection between us would not have been possible if I had not made the film. I got to know her well, and the way she influenced her character gave me so much joy. She hadn’t acted before and lived in Mumbai with her mother. My casting director Nandini Shrikent and I were looking for non-professional actors. I wanted a fresh, raw look. I received a video of Aarshi and I fell in love with her.
You found someone who is so authentic.
I thought Aarshi had this authenticity that was really special. She’s extremely beautiful - not in the way you see women in Bollywood films, but in a raw way. I appreciated the simplicity of her acting. She allowed me to film her the way she was, the way she talked to me. She wore her own clothes. Her way of being really influenced the film a lot.
The title of the film Maya – I know it is Aarshi’s name, but maya also means illusion.
It’s reflected in Gabriel’s ambivalence. He goes to India to escape the brutality, violence of the world and his job. India is this utopia. Actually you can never escape the reality. There are two Indias – the India that you dream of, the lost India. Then there is the India of the reality – the modernity in Goa, the corruption.
Maya – she’s both real and unreal to me. It’s the girl you dream to meet in Goa and she exists, but at the same time she’s almost unreal.
How did your producers react when you told them about shooting in India?
They were most worried about how I was going to finance it. It was very complicated because the film doesn’t fit into any financing program. There are ways to look for money even for art-house films, but we could not get to those sources. In France if your film is not in French you cannot get much support. You can’t find money in India for a film like this. Shooting in India is expensive, especially in Goa during tourist season. Getting everyone from Mumbai, have them stay in hotels add[ed] to the costs. We had to get so many permissions. It’s crazy. Every time you decided to put the camera some place, you needed permission and you had to pay. When we shot in Hampi we had to pay for every single temple. Each time we needed new authorisation.
The film is quiet from within. How did you bring that calmness?
It is definitely what defines my films. There are a lot of noisy, violent films and they are good also. But the films I absorbed have this quietness. It’s something I aim for and that is how I work. I am also looking for that in my life, trying to get rid of the noise of the world. That’s what makes me want to make films.
Maya will play at PVR Icon, Infinity Mall, Andheri West as part of Jio MAMI 20th Mumbai Film Festival with Star Festival at 6.15 p.m. today
