Tales of the clash of classes in a domestic situation have abounded on television and in cinema for decades, with the “upstairs / downstairs” tag evolving to describe the subgenre. After carving out a successful cinematic career over the course of the last three decades, French writer / director Philippe Le Guay ponders the topic, exploring the experience of Spanish maids in Paris in the 1960s in The Women on the 6th Floor (Les femmes du 6ème étage). At the film’s centre sits repressed stockbroker Jean-Louis Joubert (Fabrice Luchini), who finds his life turned upside down by the presence of the maids in his building. Accordingly, Le Guay crafts an amiable comedy about acceptance and emotional awakening, as demonstrated by the juxtaposition of the employer and the servants.
In Australia to promote the film, Le Guay spoke with Sarah Ward about the history and reality of the story, the energy of the women at the centre, and the importance of curiosity.
Can you tell me about the origin of the film?
The film was inspired by a childhood memory – as a matter a fact my parents had a Spanish maid at home. I was born in the 1960s, and in those days there was this massive emigration of Spanish women – and men – to France. I decided to focus mostly on the women that came to big French cities to work in houses and with families. I forgot about this presence in my own life for a long time. Her name was Lourdes, and she left when I was about four years old, so I was pretty young. But there was a kind of legend about her in the family – the songs that she sung, and the prayers that she taught me in Spanish when I was little. And then I realised that around me there had been many families with Spanish maids. It was only very recently that I thought about this hidden community in Paris, and felt that there was a possibility of a story mixing the two worlds – the French bourgeoisie and Spanish immigration.
Once you tapped into that idea, how did you compose the story around it?
The first story I built was about a fourteen year-old boy who was abandoned by his parents – he was forgotten, his parents didn’t care about him, his mother was selfish and light, always going to parties, teas, probably having affairs. And little by little this young boy discovers by the presence of Spanish women in the streets and on the 6th floor, awakening him not only a different social world, but different values like courage, money and of course the feminine world and sensuality. This experience was a kind of initiation of this young boy. So I wrote a script and we were close to shooting, but we lacked a quarter of the budget needed, so the producer decided not to go ahead. Approximately one year passed by, and I had the idea of changing the point of view and putting Fabrice Luchini into the story instead of the young boy. Suddenly a new film came alive, one that was more open and with a different tone. It was probably less melancholic, and with more comedy possibilities. It had a tone that is both critical on the bourgeoisie and tender, which is what I wanted for the film.
The film does include those competing elements, with the story framed around social commentary, romance and a clash of cultures. How did you perfect that balance?
First of all, I knew it was a really terrible cliché of the bourgeoisie falling in love with the domestic staff, or the boss romancing the maid. And in a way I tried to avoid this cliché by building a group of women, instead of just a single person. That way, he falls in love with an ensemble, with an energy, with the group, with all these women put together. It is not a psychological story about how he is going to tell what he feels – as a matter of fact the main character doesn’t realise this reaction within himself, and that’s part of the comedy. He doesn’t know what is going on inside of him, he is repressed. He is part of a world and a time where no-one knows that – in those days no-one in the bourgeoisie would care about their own feelings, and it was unsuitable to try to analyse what is going on inside of you. So in a way the character feels something, but doesn’t know how to put it into words, he is not even aware of it. The audience is aware, and can see what is going on inside of him, and that’s part of the comedy. It is always fun to see a character that doesn’t know his own feelings, and the effect on his behaviour.
The film does have quite a sense of time and place. How important was it to the story you wanted to tell to have that setting, and that era?
Well, the story couldn’t happen after 1968, because that is really the moment of consciousness. Even the bourgeoisie traditional values fall apart – there is a wave, not only in France, but in the U.S., in Europe, that it is over, the bourgeoisie system. All the values that came out after the second world war of dignity, of nobility, of repression, that falls apart. There’s Algeria and France, and Vietnam and the US, and many conflicts – including, of course, the Cold War – all these tensions create this movement of 1968, and after that it is part of the political rightness to be against the values of the bourgeoisie. I knew if I was to set the story after 1968, the behaviour of the character would be completely different, because I needed a man to care about this woman without feeling he is doing it for social or political reasons. It just seems natural, he doesn’t think about what he is doing, he doesn’t say anything, or think that it is a way of helping the workers, the domestics. In a way he has no statement. So that’s why I needed the story to happen in the 1960s. As well as that, of course there is this reality of the Spanish immigration of the 1960s that stopped in the 1970s after Franco. Then it was the Portuguese that came out to France, and I couldn’t imagine that as a film. It would’ve had a sense of melancholy, not the lively tradition of Spanish singing and dancing.
Given the fact that the narrative is steeped in the reality, did that enable you to base the characters on real life figures or stories?
Oh yes, there is still a Spanish church in the 16th district of Paris, this church has been there for ages. And the head of the church, the father – padre – arrived in Paris in 1948 and he is still there. He is 82, he’s like a rock, 6 foot tall, bald, a little bit frightening, but nice. Not only did I ask him for authorisation to shoot in the real church, but he put me in contact with all the Spanish women that are still there in Paris. Of course, as the priest, he did the marriages, baptised the children, and everything was recorded in the books. He has shown me, for instance, in 1961, the books with everything in it – death, weddings, and whatever. Everything went through the church. It was more than being Catholic with prayer and confession – it was really the heart of the social experience, the community. And then I met all these women, and some of the women that hired them as well. I had interviews, and heard many stories – and many of the lines in the film come from these interviews.
Once you heard those stories, how did you proceed with assembling the cast of women to bring them to life?
With my co-writer (Jérôme Tonnerre), we put the story together in Paris, but then I had to go to Madrid to hire actresses. I didn’t mind if they didn’t speak French, but I needed their energy and vitality. I wanted to be like the character of Jean-Louis, I wanted to be overwhelmed by these six women. Ten years ago I did a film about six workers in a glass factory, and it was shot in winter, and it was very tough shooting. Now I did the opposite – six wonderful Spanish actresses in Paris, in spring. It really was the other side of that.
Still on casting, you have worked with Fabrice Luchini a number of times now. How crucial was he to the character, and to counteracting the presence of the women?
Well, he is an actor that understands in a very few words what he is going to play. He told me that in this film he had only to receive the impressions and information from the group. He had a character that was asleep in many ways, and therefore he didn’t have to work very hard. So he didn’t really work! No, I’m joking, he did. But in a way it is true that he was responding to the group, he was just listening. In real life, he is the exact opposite of the character – he could speak for four hours without stopping, he could make an entire show, tell stories, poetry and whatever, and most of the people in France know him in this way. On TV, in interviews, he never answers the questions, he tries to make jokes about the journalist’s questions, he makes the whole show very funny. But here in this film, he is much more fragile, innocent, and he welcomes the waves of positiveness coming from the women.
Upstairs/downstairs features aren’t always uplifting. How did you ensure the film retained a positive sentiment?
Well, I wanted the audience to be happy about the story, and I wanted to feel happy about the story. Really the film is a battle of the principle of reality, which is mostly connected by the character of Carmen Maura. She knows that this attraction between the bourgeoisie and the domestic staff is an illusion, and she will do everything in her power to prevent it. Until the end, even after time has passed, she is still an enemy of this kind of false friendship, false love story. That is her point of view in the film, and the audience that knows she is right. But on the other hand, it is a utopia, as seen in that final meeting. Many people ask me what is going on after, and I don’t care. For me, what matters is that the lead character changes, and wants an answer as to what has happened inside of him. I wanted this energy, this question, to go to the end.
What do you want the audience to take away from it – what do you want them to be thinking and feeling when they leave the cinema?
I think in a way that cinema is more close to music than an essay, and I like putting some ingredients together and having this tone of hope and complicity. I think I want the audience to identify with the character of Jean-Louis, and share his feeling of wonder, astonishment and surprise. I want them to wish that this kind of feeling was the feeling they have in life about people they meet, that they could have this childish innocence within them. Of course, he is a man, he is a grown up, but in a way if he has kept this curiousity, and if the audience shares this feeling with him, I feel the film has succeeded.
Now that The Women on the 6th Floor is opening around the world, what comes next for you?
I’d like to do another film with Fabrice Luchini. We were talking about it while we were traveling in France, showing this film over about two to three weeks. On the train we would explore the idea of showing the work of the actors – two actors facing each other on the rehearsal of a play, and how they explore the text, the feelings of the text, the different shades of meanings, the different contradictions, and all the things that acting is about. Narcissism, selfishness, sometimes stupidity – but also courage, the ability to charm and seduce. I’d like to make a film where both my fascination and distrust about actors is addressed. I don’t know if the word distrust is right, but I feel you can never be sure when you talk to an actor what is going on, or where you are going to get. But that’s the fun of it. Of course, actors are the flesh of films. We may write wonderful stories for ages, but if they are not incarnated by wonderful actors, then there is nothing. And this time I am going to show the real face of Fabrice Luchini, which is less innocent than in this film!
The Women on the 6th Floor is released in Australian cinemas December 15th.
