The Blooming of ‘Rose’

When Belgian director Alain Berliner was in town in early October he was still reeling from the news that his very first feature “Ma Vie en Rose” had taken both the critics andaudience prizes at the Sarajevo Film Festival. He was amazed grateful--and unable to keep from thinking that such a joint honor might never again happen for him. Sony Pictures Classics opens the film on Friday at selected theaters.

The two prizes, however, suggest at once the accessibility and the artistry of his film, which could be translated idiomatically as “My Life Through Rose-Colored Glasses.” The life in question is that of a boy, 7 or 8, who lives with his family in an ultra-conformist suburb in which the houses all look alike and its inhabitants pretty much think alike as well.

In short, it’s not exactly the most congenial neighborhood in which a little boy, Ludovic, played by remarkable Georges Du Fresne, declares that he knows he’s really a girl. His steadfast insistence and his dressing up as a girl, not surprisingly, cause an uproar.

“I was working as a writer for TV films in France when a friend of mine told me about a woman, Chris vander Stappen, who wanted to write for the movies, and I told him to send her to me,” said Berliner, a stocky man of 34, sitting in the living room of his West Hollywood hotel suite.

“She showed me the rough draft of what would become ‘Ma Vie en Rose.’ When we got to know each other we agreed, first, that we would rewrite it together, and second, that I would direct it. What a wonderful subject, but how would a director be able to explain a question of gender to a 7-year-old actor? I tried to imagine the boy in Volker Schlondorff’s ‘The Tin Drum’--somebody who looked younger than he was, small for his age. I also decided to move up the ages of all the other children for contrast. But where would I find the right boy?

“We spent eight months in casting. One day a boy came to audition, but he was not right for the role. He said, ‘I have a friend in Strasbourg who might be just the boy you’re looking for’--and he was right!”

Young Du Fresne was 11, said Berliner, “but he looked younger. I just state that he’s 7 or 8 in the film; I’m always ready to believe everything a director has to say to me.

Georges is very mature and his concentration is amazing, better than mine. Ludovic is a great part for an actor, and I explained it to him as if he were an adult. I always tell actors what I’m doing.”

Du Fresne’s Ludovic is slight but not effeminate. In girls’ clothes, he can “pass,” but dressed as a boy he looks perfectly ordinary. Du Fresne has a knack of making Ludovic seem utterly normal in either gender.

(Toward the end of the interview Du Fresne and his father, Pierre, dropped by Berliner’s suite. Berliner translated a few remarks by Georges, who is poised but shy. “It was a great experience,” said Georges. “I did not know what to expect when I saw the film because it was shot out of order. I invited my friends to the premiere in Strasbourg. I was a little bit afraid of what they might think, but they were proud of me.”)

“It’s a little bit amazing to realize how much 11-year-olds are aware of,” said Berliner. “I don’t think there will be anything left for me to tell my 5-year-old son by the time he becomes a teenager. Lots of boys and girls between 9 and 13 have seen the film and thought it was very good. They seemed to understand what was happening. Children understand more than we think.

“Children are ‘in construction’--developing. Why not accept Ludovic as he is? Why not explore both your feminine and masculine sides? Nobody knows how Ludovic is going to end up.”

Berliner’s remark comes as a surprise because his film suggests strongly that Ludovic is a transsexual. A woman at a garden party makes a passing remark that she has seen a documentary on TV about transsexuals, a deft touch because it’s the only time the word is uttered in the entire film. Ludovic’s therapist later on tells him at one point he’ll have to grow before he can “change” without spelling out all that could entail.

Berliner, however, counters that in showing the film--it has already opened in France and made the rounds of the festival circuit--he has learned that “transsexuals see Ludovic as a transsexual, gays say that he is gay and straights say that he is ‘just going through a phase.’ The movie belongs to its makers until the moment it’s put on the screen. After that it belongs to those who see it.

“You Americans love to put labels on everything! We Europeans, I believe, are more accepting of sexual fluidity. For example, Chris vander Stappen lives as a man with a woman and with children. But I don’t call her anything.”

Berliner started as a punk-rock musician and gradually segued into writing movies for French TV. He has made three short films but resisted directing TV movies. “Most movies made for TV are like American movies of the ‘50s. The producers want an objective point of view, but I told myself, ‘If one day I have a chance to make a feature it will have to have a personal point of view.’ Otherwise I will not be interested. My idea of a film with a point of view is Terence Malick’s ‘Badlands,’ which is one of my favorites. It’s so good it could have been shot today.”

The point of view for “Ma Vie en Rose” would become that of Ludovic, who really does see things, at least at first, through rose-colored glasses, in the sense that he sees no real distinction between the world of his loving family and that of his beloved Pam, a sexy, glamorous TV star a la Pamela Lee, with whom he identifies. “Ma Vie en Rose” is highly stylized, with the seamless flow between Ludovic’s life and imagination expressed in rosy hues --until the boy’s world starts coming apart around him.

Currently, Berliner is engaged in shooting his second film, a part of the French TV company Haut et Court’s ambitious project “The Year 2000 as Seen by Ten Directors”--Hal Hartley will be America’s contributor--and there is the possibility of the films being released theatrically. Berliner will address the tension between Flemish-speaking and French-speaking Belgians that has been increasing throughout this century. Berliner imagines that on the eve of the 21st century, Belgium will be split in two, divided along lines of language.

“My main character, who is French-speaking, will be caught on the wrong side of the division--having spent the night with a Flemish girl! What I’m trying to say is that that when people are no longer engaged in a ‘real’ war we human beings still have to argue over something.”