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One of the first things you learn about plants is that they can only thrive in certain climates.
As an interview subject, the Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner is the same way.
A sortie into a greenhouse reveals its much too hot and humid to think straight in.
(The garden is free on Fridays, a boon for journalists and schoolteachers alike.)
I must apologize, Im like an old lady today, Hausner says.
She is aspirational in her directness.
In 75 minutes of conversation, this is her only moment of self-deprecation.
If youre wondering why this interview is taking place at a botanical garden, well, so is Hausner.
Except as it turns out, the director has no strong opinions about plant life.
Plants are like pets, you feed them and they are nice to you, she says.
She does not care for pets, either.
(At Cannes, one critic dubbed itanti-horror.
Its saying, even if we all have been changed, its not so bad, she shrugs.
In her movies, nothing we do ever comes purely from ourselves.
As an American moviegoer, there is little shame in not having seen a Jessica Hausner film before.
Her work is not very popular at home either.
Austrians are educated to love opera and theater, she says, not arthouse cinema.
Her sense of humor, however, she pegs as very Austrian: Its dark and dry.
A lot about dying and death.
Theres a heightened, distant quality to Hausners movies.
Her frames often cut actors off at odd angles, and performers speak in spare, weighty tones.
She matches this uncanny vibe with color schemes that would make Wes Anderson drool.
Hausners sister Tanja does her costumes; sometimes, Jessica says, We giggle at the humor of it.
She looked very 1970s, Hausner recalls, But it was also clear that it was from nowadays.
She wants her characters to feel slightly removed from the specifics of time and place.
Im trying to make films that feel more like fairy tales, she says.
To Hausner, naturalism is the province of narratives where characters have concrete desires.
Thats never been her interest.
I dont show the part of life where we can decide what we want, she says.
I show the other part, where we are influenced and manipulated by the society we live in.
Then, at a celebratory dance, she tumbles to the ground.
No miracle after all!
Christine gets back up, but the mood in the room has irrevocably shifted.
Chastened, she sits back down in her wheelchair.
In Hausners version, the pair are not star-crossed lovers.
Here Henriettes fate is less a grand gesture than a deadly case of inertia.
She goes along to wait for the right moment to say no, Hausner says.
But she misses the moment.
InLittle Joe, Alice (Emily Beecham, Cannes Best Actress winner) is similarly on her own.
Theres little sisterly solidarity to be found in her work.
All my films are focused on being alone, she says.
This is a separate quality fromloneliness.
To be alone is not judging, its a basic condition.
You still can be happy or have friends, but youre alone.
If youre lonely, you pity yourself.
You think,Oh, Im so lonely.
But of course, he adds, he would never judge her.
Ben was very much in favor of working on those double-sided sentences, Hausner recalls.
Because, where are those true feelings?
She sees human interaction as an unending series of lies, but this, too, shes okay with.
If you say the truth all the time, it could be horrible.
In a relationship, you have to lie.
Otherwise, you cannot stay with a person for more than half a year.
Hausner says this all very matter-of-factly, and her cinematic gaze operates at a similarly nonjudgmental remove.
The films all talk about our wish that there would be some God or some happiness or some love.
That is why we invent those words, she says.
But what is a happy life?
Happiness is on my iPhone, a picture of the beach.
I dont know what happiness is.
If you take a closer look, it vanishes.
Hausner accedes to my own social pressure: I dont want to spoil your idea.
We venture upstairs and find ourselves in a room full of immaculate bonsai trees.
I like Japanese bonsai, she says cheerfully.
As it happens, Hausner is telling the truth.
The more films I make, she says, the more stylized everything gets.
