The Wonders of Editing: An Interview with Mathilde Bonnefoy and Tom Tykwer
Rent from DeepDyve- The Wonders of Editing: An Interview with Mathilde Bonnefoy and Tom Tykwer
Editor Mathilde Bonnefoy and Director Tom Tykwer have collaborated for more than a decade on films such as Run Lola Run (1998), Heaven (2002), and The International (2009). Their artistic relationship has been defined and enriched by their respective backgrounds: Bonnefoy is a native of France who moved to Berlin soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Tykwer was born and raised in Wuppertal, Germany. Both speak multiple languages: Bonnefoy is fluent in French, German, and English; Tykwer is fluent in German and English; and both have also worked in Italian. Their artistic partnership has produced films with an international flavor: Heaven, for example, based on a screenplay by Polish writer and director Krzysztof Kieslowski, is set in Italy, with dialogue in both English and Italian; and The International takes place in Germany, the United States, France, Italy, and Turkey, with dialogue in English, German, Italian, and Danish.
Bonnefoy, who also directs, initially thought editing might be akin to directing, so she pursued that route first. Tykwer and Bonnefoy met in Berlin in the mid-1990s when the latter was an editing assistant and one of the first people in the city to learn the AVID editing system. The two quickly joined forces for the breakthrough hit Run Lola Run. Tykwer had already shot two features as a director, and in Bonnefoy he found a partner with whom his artistic perspective and working methods were in sync. They were drawn to projects that challenge audiences to imagine alternate realities, from a central narrative that plays again and again until it reaches a satisfactory conclusion (Run Lola Run), to a stratospheric exit that allows for the impossible escape of two ill-fated lovers (Heaven), to the tension between morality, vindication, and the conventions of the action genre (The International).
On 24 May 2008 in Berlin, where Bonnefoy and Tykwer were engaged in postproduction work on The International, Heather Addison and Elaine Roth discussed the role of the editor, as well as the dynamics of a long-term creative relationship, with Mathilde Bonnefoy and then were joined by Tom Tykwer. The interview was conducted in English and later revised to clarify the spoken language.
Mathilde Bonnefoy on Editing The International (2009)
: Maybe we could talk about The International.
It’s a thriller. It’s a genre film with a specific moral stake that is outside of the genre, I would say.
Do you feel like this is the first genre film that you’ve done with [End Page 45] Tom Tykwer? Because it seems like most of the films are not specifically in a particular genre.
It’s maybe our first film that goes so clearly in that direction. That’s true. It’s about an Interpol agent played by Clive Owen, who tries to bring to light the immoral and illegal dealings of an international bank and who has a hard time doing so. He is assisted in his search by a character played by Naomi Watts, who is the assistant to the New York— Manhattan—D.A.
At what stage do you become involved? Do you read the screenplay before the shooting begins? Are you on the set during the shooting? Do you participate in conversations about what the film is going to look like: the set, the props? How much do you collaborate with the other people?
The role of the editor is to come in after the shoot, of course, but I would say that most people read the script in advance, and this is something that changed in my relationship with Tom because the first film we edited together was Run Lola Run, and I actually started working without having read the script. And I liked that idea so much that on the next film I kept it, and I didn’t read the script until after we started because I liked the idea of just discovering the film in the editing room.
Since then, we have started to exchange thoughts about films that he wanted to...
