Straight shooter
As a woman and a foreigner, Danish director Susanne Bier faces a dual challenge as she prepares to break into Hollywood after a series of hit movies that culminated with an Oscar nomination this year for her drama After the Wedding (below).
Not only are there pitifully few female directors working for major studios, but Hollywood history is littered with numerous talented foreign filmmakers who have struggled to adapt to a notoriously risk-averse movie culture in which the bottom line is the bottom line.
Although this year's Academy Awards were notable for their diverse line-up, with an unprecedented show of overseas talent among the nominees, it's a bitter fact that for every Ang Lee there's also an Oliver Hirschbiegel. The Hamburg-based filmmaker directed Downfall, about Adolf Hitler's last days, and was then hired for the Nicole Kidman vehicle The Invasion. Warner Bros was so unhappy with the final cut of the film that it brought in Matrix creators Andy and Larry Wachowski before hiring V for Vendetta director James McTeigue for US$10 million reshoots.
The story serves as a cautionary tale for European directors attracted by the bright lights of Tinseltown.
Bier, whose After the Wedding will be screened at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, admits that she was initially wary after being asked to film DreamWorks' Things We Lost in the Fire.
The movie, starring Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro, is her first English-language production after a trio of acclaimed hits that included 2004's Brothers and 2002's Open Hearts.
'You come with all your European prejudices, the fear that they will crush you into the mainstream, but the reality has been different,' Bier says.
She says she was encouraged to take artistic risks. 'At script meetings they have said to me, 'Please remember that we want this to be edgy'. So my prejudices have certainly not been fulfilled.
'[American Beauty director] Sam Mendes has been producing and he's been wonderful. DreamWorks have been remarkably open and eager to make a personal movie.
'The only thing that's different is that everything is bigger. There are more cars, more entourages. I've been laughing about that quite a bit,' she says.
But the bigger budgets and more elaborate sets don't intimidate the 46-year-old mother of two. 'I don't feel pressure,' she says. 'I made a conscious decision not to let it overwhelm me. Filmmaking on a big production is all about decision-making. And the best way is simply to make your decisions and go on, and not get caught up in worrying about whether you've made the right choice.
'If you allowed yourself to do that you'd never get anything done.'
As well as directing her first English-language film, Bier will soon see two of her Danish movies remade by Hollywood: Brothers, her post-September 11 war drama set in Afghanistan, and Open Hearts, a Dogme drama about the romantic entanglements of two couples involved in a car crash.
'It's a weird feeling,' says Bier, who isn't involved with either remake. 'I don't know how it feels exactly. It's a bit like your baby suddenly being adopted by some other parents. But if the stories can survive in a different shape then maybe that's a good thing. Maybe I need to tame my possessiveness.'
The Oscar nomination for After the Wedding made Bier one of a small number of women who have had feature films nominated for an Academy Award, in either the best feature film or best foreign-language category. She says it's harder for female directors in the US to pursue their careers and have a family.
'In Northern Europe we have a tradition of child care, of enabling women to have a career and have kids,' says Bier. 'I don't think the film industry discriminates against women as such, but it's simply that if society doesn't help in a real way, then a lot of talented women are going to make the decision not to pursue a career.'
But Bier is adamant that talent harnessed to ambition enables the cream to rise to the top eventually.
'I have a hard time with people who complain and moan, or people who say that everything not happening for them is everybody else's fault. Usually it's not the case. You can usually make it work.'
Bier's films explore the intricacies and contradictions of human behaviour within a family context. After the Wedding is in the same mould, the story of an aid worker in a Mumbai orphanage who returns to Denmark on a fund-raising mission only to be confronted by a secret from his past.
'All my movies have been about families because I think families are so much in the makeup of who we are,' Bier says. 'Whenever I hear people say things like, 'I haven't spoken to my father for 15 years', I'm amazed. Because I'm sure that on some level that person is going to suffer from some kind of trauma.'
Having come relatively late to filmmaking (she was in her early 20s before she decided she wanted to direct) Bier says she will continue as long as she remains passionate about movies.
'The passion is what gives intensity to the work I do,' she says. 'I've done commercials before where my heart wasn't really in it and the end product has been crap. The moment the passion goes away I'll have to do something else.'
After the Wedding screens April 9, 12.30pm, Hong Kong Cultural Centre
