European Films

 

Luxembourg actor and 2007 Shooting Star Jules Werner trained at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and has worked in the theatre and cinema both at home and abroad. He had bit parts in major international productions shot in Luxembourg, including Greenaway's 8 ½ Women, Radford's The Merchant of Venice and Garbarski's Irina Palm. His first starring role in a feature film came with local director Paul Kieffer's feature Nuits d'Arabie (Arabian Nights), in which he plays a love-struck train conductor. The film premiered in Luxembourg on Friday. Boyd van Hoeij, the editor of european-films.net, met with the actor before a long night of filming on the French-language feature last winter.

The soft-spoken actor continues: "In my age group there are simply not that many actors in Luxembourg and for international co-productions they have a quota they need to reach to qualify for tax breaks, so even if the description of the character is nothing like me, but the age sort of matches, it is still likely to be proposed to me, which is odd. I know a lot of actors would be happy to work at all and I don’t want to sound ungrateful for the opportunities I get, but if it reads '28-year-old big, fat guy' and they call me, I would be completely miscast, so that is kind of weird. I would say that is the downside of Luxembourg. But getting noticed quick is great!"

 

Werner, though educated in the UK, has had small parts in several big international productions that were at least partially shot in Luxembourg. Is there a difference he notices with his work with the big and experienced directors as opposed to the young Luxembourg directors in whose ambitious short films he also stars?  "When I did the Peter Greenaway I was so young and so nervous and it all happened so quick that it was over before I knew it. I was too young to actually enjoy the work, so that experience was kind of lost. But I don’t think there is necessarily a difference between the experience of the director and being more or less specific in their demands. Radford, on The Merchant of Venice, gave me a lot of freedom. He’d asked me to find some suitable passages from the Bible for my role and he liked what I had found and that was it. Max [Jacoby, who directed him in the award-winning adaptation of the Ian McEwan short story Butterflies] on the other hand, was very specific. Nothing really complicated but he was very specific about what he wanted. And Fred  [Neuen, his cousin who is also a promising young film director] is really easy to work with because we have known each other for so long".

 

For the role in Nuits d’Arabie, the actor could count on a similar kind of relationship with the director: “I’ve been very lucky until now, because with Paul Kieffer I also have this really easy relationship. He gives me notes sometimes in songs. He’ll give me a song title and say: that’s what I want. [Laughs.]  And we’ve got a history together, as well: we’ve done three shows for the theatre before this film, and after you’ve worked with someone several times then just a little sign is all you need to understand what is needed. With the first big part in a feature film I have been very lucky in that respect, because there is no added pressure of needing to get along with the director. It’s all easy and we are having a lot of fun, but we also both now exactly in which direction we’re going”.

On Georges, the character he plays in Nuits d’Arabie, Werner can be short: “He’s basically a nice boy. [Laughs.] He works for the CFL, the Luxembourg train company, checking tickets on the train. He’s quite popular with his colleagues, and he’s very nice with his clients too. He’s the guy who’ll let you pass once without a ticket. He’s also in a relationship that’s very nice, so everything is very nice; he hasn’t really anything much to complain about. But at the same time, it is very clear that there is some excitement missing in his life. He bumps into this Algerian girl [played by Sabrina Ouazani, from L’esquive / Games of Love and Chance] a few times on the train and helps her when she’s been beaten up and then protects her like an older brother would. And their relationship kind of develops from there. There is a telling line where he sums up the distance he travels by train: 300 kilometres per day, five days a week, 46 weeks a year. So he’s been around the world ten times but he hasn’t seen anything – he hasn’t left Luxembourg. He has some self-pity because he laughs at it himself, but at the same time he doesn’t seem to be thinking about these things and that he’s missing something. The Algerian girl kind of opens up the possibility of something else, something from out there and he becomes extremely obsessed with what could happen".

 

When asked if he thinks Georges is a typical Luxembourg guy, the actor replies, without hesitation: "Yes – I think so. It’s mainly petit bourgeoisie and that’s kind of international but you do have that a lot in Luxembourg. He’s very typical in a way and also has these comments about Portuguese people, and they’re, they’re not racist but they are kind of dodgy. That’s how a lot of people are around the world and it’s probably a class thing as much as anything. But that is what gives the story its universality. And then there’s just the dream of something else…"

 

Also because of his education at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (that also has Ewan McGregor and Orlando Bloom on the alumni list), the actor has a lot of theatre experience as well, a craft that is related to film acting but not quite the same. Werner explains: "What I really love about film is that you don’t actually have that much time to think about it, talk about it or analyse it. It is a really quick way of working – and then, obviously it depends on who you work with because you do have directors who do big kind of rehearsal sessions before filming. When I was younger, I would have a particular way of learning my lines, and think about my movements and things like that, so that you kind of have a proposal when you arrive on set. But then you arrive on set and it looks nothing like what you’d imagined it to be: you’d imagined you’d be standing and suddenly there are some chairs and it has been blocked and lit and everything has been arranged for you to do it there. So basically, you have to arrive on set, see what it all looks like, work things out while you’re there, go through the lines with your partner and then just do it. So you’ve got two three rehearsals, two or three takes, and then you go home and there is nothing you can do to change any of that. In theatre, the first time you do a scene you go by your instinct but then you spend six weeks trying to find that first instinct again. In film you just have to go with it, which is kind of fun and very satisfying. You make bold choices as well, you kind of have to, er, profiter du moment". 

 

Still, Werner is nothing is not enthusiastic about acting on stage: “The good thing about theatre acting is that it’s like a long stew, or a big pasta sauce that just goes and goes for hours. It is very filled, and deep, but you can, sometimes, lose that spontaneity". As for a theatre role he’d love to play on film, the answer is easy: “I’m a big Shakespeare fan, so it would have to be whoever in Shakespeare. For example Julie Taymor’s Titus is a great example of marrying theatre and film. You have everything that is good about film in that film, and everything that is good about theatricality, so that is a perfect example of what I’d love to do one day. MacBeth I’d love to do. And one day Titus, but I’m far too young for Titus now!”

 

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