Neil Jordan: Interviews

To Catch a Thief

115 To Catch a Thief Paddy Kehoe / 2003 From RTÉ Guide, February 21, 2003, 28–29. Reprinted by permission. Upstairs in the Clarence Hotel, Neil Jordan is singing to himself and leafing nonchalantly through a magazine which has his face on the cover. It could mean either of two things: he’s at ease with himself, or quite the opposite—he is trying to normalize what may be a slightly discomfiting prospect, an interview, begod. I tell him I had just seen The Good Thief at a press showing “Oh, you just saw it?” he asks. “Oh dear.” What’s the “oh dear” about, I ask. “I dunno. Normally people have to digest things.” His latest film is wonderful and mesmerizing and I tell him so. “Good isn’t it?” he says, almost diffidently. “It was very hard to make because it’s so much lighter than anything else I’ve done. And yet it wasn’t really light because it was kind of amoral in some way.” Soon he is in his stride, happy to tease over various aspects of his latest film, politely asking if he can smoke a cigarette. The Good Thief was inspired by Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1955 movie Bob le Flambeur. Like the original, Jordan sees his creation as a film noir which also moves towards the light and ends happily. “Normally I do the opposite , I start with more optimistic scenarios and go to blood and murder . In this case I started with a guy shooting up in a toilet of a club he shouldn’t have been in anyway at his age. I then move him towards the kind of ease where he can wear a monkey suit in a Monte Carlo casino.” The guy in question is Bob Montagnet, brilliantly played by Nick Nolte as a self-destructive American holed up in Nice. Bob is a heroin addict and gambler who becomes embroiled in two heists. The first involves the robbery of a collection of priceless paintings kept in a secret vault, while the second concerns the robbery of the Riviera Casino safe. In the fast-moving twists and turns of the action—you must be on your toes—Bob so engineers it that the second plot becomes his decoy 116 neil jordan: inter views for the first. Furthermore, the paintings hanging on the casino walls are generally assumed to be the originals, but Bob and his cohorts, know otherwise. The cohorts include Emir Kusturica as an eccentric security systems expert, young French-Moroccan actor Said Taghmaoui as Raoul, and Ralph Fiennes as a shady art dealer. The French-Turkish actor Tcheky Karyo (Nikita, The Patriot) plays the detective on Bob’s trail. The young Georgian actress Nutsa Kukhianidze is Anne, a seventeen-year-old prostitute who embarks ever so tentatively on a relationship with father figure Nick. Both actors play their parts with such intensity of feeling that all the time you sense a trail of disappointment in their back stories. Jordan compares Bob and Anne to two lost souls, one too old to be in this edgy, sordid quarter of Nice, the other too young to be there. Anne misinterprets Bob’s interest as sexual, but he has outgrown sex. “That was one of the reasons Nick was so interested in playing it, he wanted to play a person of failing powers, be it sexual or mental. Apart from giving her a place to stay for a while, all he can give her is a few lessons in survival . And it turns into a gambling lesson, which is a metaphor for survival in the world where chance and luck can put you in a dreadful place, but actually if you negotiate it with enough grace you can get through it.” The scene where Bob goes cold turkey is high melodrama, as he handcuffs himself to his bed to lie in a lather of sweat. “I think Nick’s been through that kind of thing. I don’t know his personal history, but he has battled with addictions in the past.” Jordan considers Nick to be a very interesting actor because he allows himself to be vulnerable, even frail. “Most actors don’t want to be seen that way.” How much did he actually direct Nolte? “If you’ve done your homework and you’ve got the actors right, as a director there’s often very little to do, you often stay out of the way. But sometimes actors can...