Raúl Ruiz in Rotterdam for the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Photo portrait by Fabrizio Maltese for europeanfilms.net. All rights reserved.

Prolific Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz, who lives in France, presented the director’s cut of his latest film Klimt at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), in which American actor John Malkovich stars as the titular Viennese painter. Billed as a ‘phantasmagoria’ rather than a straight biopic, the film is a visually exciting exploration of the decadent world of fin de siecle Vienna.

We met with the director in a quiet corner of the Doelen building where the IFFR festival takes place. Wasting no time, the director quickly explains how the film came abour: “The film started with an idea that Austrian producer Dieter Pochlatko had about making a film about Klimt, someone whom he had been interested in for a long time. In fact, when I came aboard, the project was already three years old. I asked if I could re-write the script and they agreed and soon we found some financing abroad, in the UK and Germany. I wrote the script in French and the film was to have been in German, but when John Malkovich, certainly the best possible choice to play Klimt, came on board, we were ‘condemned’ to do the film in English. I had worked with him before on several French language films [Le temps retrouvé/Time regained and Les âmes fortes/Savage souls] and his French is perfect despite his accent, but in German he would have lost too much of his force so we decided to do it English.

“For the rest of the cast, Klimt being a European co-production, it was decidedly more difficult to find the right actors than normal, as each co-producing country has its own rules with regards to demands that have to be accommodated in order to be eligible for the money that the co-producing country brings in. It is of course possible to follow all the casting rules [imposed by the co-producers] but at the same time it is also a bit surreal. I have some of the most well-known German actors in the film who are virtual unknowns elsewhere, and the same can be said of the French and English actors. It is a shame that these very talented individuals have to pass through the Hollywood star system to be recognised elsewhere in Europe [such as, for example, Penelope Cruz]. I preferred to choose the better actors rather than the most well-known, even if this is perhaps a handicap for [marketing] the film."

Ruiz continues to muse on the differences between European and Hollywood films: “I do not have something against American cinema per sé, but there is one thing that really bothers me, which is the presupposition that their films tell universal stories. Cinema is not universal. If one wants to make a film that particularly touches and inspires the Dutch people, for example, it should be about things relevant to them and deal with them. It does not necessarily need to be made by a Dutchman – in fact, I could make it – but it should be about them. The reason I often jump from one genre or type of setting to another is that I fall in love with the setting; with Klimt I fell in love with the Vienna of that time and wanted to tell a story set there. In order to be universal, a filmmaker should be very specific about the culture he portrays.

“Vienna is of course one of the cultural capitals of the world: philosophy, literature, painting, music, expressionism. The time portrayed in the film was one of the highlights of Viennese culture, which had burst onto the scene very quickly and in which the first seeds of decay were evident almost straight away, since such brilliance rarely lasts. So in the film we have Klimt, his private life, the world around him in all its splendour but in the background we something malignant that quietly gains prominence, something contagious. It was our goal to make that shine through in the life of Klimt. The screenplay that I originally wrote was too rich [in material] and had to be cut down in order to make it work within our budget, though!”

Note: this interview was originally conducted in French and has been translated into English by the author.