'Colette' Director Breaks Down the Big Entrance Scene | Notes on a Scene

My name is Wash Westmoreland,

the director and co-writer of Colette,

and this is Notes On A Scene.

How on earth did you two meet?

Our fathers served together in the army.

Willy, married?

The wild days are done, eh?

On the contrary, the wild days have just begun.

(classical music)

The script for this film was written in 2001

by my late husband, Richard Glatzer,

and for 16 years, we dreamed of making this film.

So it means everything to me and to his memory

that I finally get to put it on the big screen.

The movie is about Colette, a writer who lived in France

at the turn of the century,

and her marriage to her first husband,

who claimed credit for her work,

who is known by the single name of Willy.

This scene happens at the beginning of the movie.

They're newly married, and it's really about

Colette's introduction to society,

as Willy takes her to the salon of Madame De Caillavet.

So there, from a wide shot here of a French street

that's actually the side of the Budapest Opera House,

and the camera moves in to a closer shot,

which is like, a frame within a frame of Colette and Willy

within the carriage, which is right here.

Throughout the film, we look for these frames within frames,

be there windows or mirrors that kind of contain Colette.

You're always wondering when

Colette is gonna break out of her containment,

which is really the main theme of the story.

What they're actually talking about

is a stain on the dress right here, a toothpaste stain.

(dramatic music) What is it?

I think it's toothpaste.

Let's have a look.

Even in the 19th century,

people have these kind of problems.

Traditionally, costume dramas, I think,

a lot of things are very beautifully presented

and we dream of the past as this perfect place.

It's actually an imperfect time.

People have bodies, people made mistakes,

people got stains on their clothes.

This is not your average costume drama.

(lady laughs) How are you, count?

Oh well, thank you. Oh, you rogue, Willy.

I see you brought us an orphaned relative?

Mm-hmm.

A secret love child?

Very good, very good.

No, may I introduce to you my wife,

Gabrielle Sidonie Colette.

So, here we have Colette being introduced

to two rather imperious salonites.

The camera keeps spinning around the circle of conversation,

so that we can see what Colette is seeing,

which is these people judging her,

looking at her, critiquing her,

and then, at the same time, if we continue,

we see Willy managing the situation

using his verbal dexterity, as Willy always did

to take over the room.

Delighted.

Well, astonished, actually.

We also see here what Colette is experiencing,

how she's kind of, intimidated by these people,

how it's not what she expected.

You can actually see color coming up in Keira's cheeks,

like feeling the embarrassment of the character

in this situation.

Keira, in this scene, really does seem like a 20-year-old.

She really has this sort of,

very youthful and slightly unsure way of moving.

[Woman] Where are you from,

you sweet thing?

Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye.

It's in Burgundy. Oh!

Is that where you got your dress?

For a reference, we looked to a movie

Coal Miner's Daughter,

and Sissy Spacek's performance as Loretta Lynn.

She goes from 14 years old to 40 years old

without a single day card.

You can just tell the change in time

from her, the change in her deportment.

And we just said, that's what we want to do with Colette.

This is one of the great scenes for costumes.

Our costume designer, Andrea Flesch,

was obsessed with the turn of the century,

and did a combination of clothes that she designed

inspired by pictures of clothes from the times,

and also, sometimes, we'd find bolts of material

actually from the time that we could make into clothes,

and then sometimes, we find these great pieces

that have just been in someone's closet

for a hundred years. (laughs)

Willy, married?

The wild days are done, eh?

On the contrary, the wild days have just begun.

[Pierre] Ah, Willy!

And here, we have Ray Panthaki,

who's playing the writer Pierre Veber,

and he was one of the writers, the ghost writers,

who would be writing books for Willy.

This is the first time in the story we hit this theme.

Very pleased to meet you. (classical music)

It's due on Tuesday. Alright.

In real life, Pierre Veber was a white,

and at the time I was casting,

there were several high-profile decisions taken

to cast white actors in roles of Asian people,

and I thought, well, time to do it the other way around.

In this film, I cast Asian actors

for historically white characters,

black actors for historically white characters.

I have trans people playing cis gender people,

have lesbians playing straight people.

It's like, let actors be actors,

but invite everybody to the party.

Interestingly here, as well,

we have chandeliers that are floor-mounted.

We wanted more like, a shadowy feel,

like pockets of light throughout the salon.

So Michael Carlin, the production designer,

had this idea of these floor-mounted chandeliers,

and we had about 20 of them throughout the salon.

So, these chandeliers give this beautiful visual.

You can actually walk through the lights.

Alright, just amuse yourself for the moment, Gabrielle.

(Pierre mumbling) (classical music)

This is a shot here.

We get a window into what she is feeling.

It's not what she expected.

In the village where she grew up,

she's the star of the village.

She was the star of her class at school,

the brightest, smartest.

It was her world.

She's now finding herself as a little fish in a big bowl,

and she feels overwhelmed.

So, we get from this very tight shot here

to a wider shot where you see she's just got

space around her.

She's just kind of, on her own.

She's just kind of, floating, and we feel her awkwardness.

But then, she notices something in a corner,

and comes close, it's a turtle,

or, as the British say, a tortoise,

with a jeweled shell on a silver tray.

The idea for this tortoise came from a book

by JK Huysmans called Against Nature, or À Rebours,

a symbolist book that was essentially against naturalism.

You poor thing.

(classical music)

You want the earth and the grass, don't you?

How Colette, coming from the country,

was very much about what was natural,

what felt natural to her.

And here, we see in this moment, this bond between them,

'cause they both feel completely,

woefully out of place in this salon.

I must point out at this juncture,

because I'm an animal rights person,

that this is special, gelatin-based paint,

and gelatin-based glue for the jewels,

and special handlers ensured that

the tortoise was comfortable during this process,

and no tortoises were harmed

during the making of this movie.

But the tortoise did give an incredible,

naturalistic performance, not a false note in there.

(classical music) So, here we have

my favorite shot in the movie.

Again, Colette is framed,

she's contained within these different frames.

It's a very Max Ophuls-influenced shot.

The Earrings of Madame de...

was one of the films we watched again and again.

Here, we see things in the background,

like the magician lighting a candle,

or we see the snake here,

but we don't see them clearly.

We're focusing on Colette.

We're focusing what's going on in her mind

as she's walking through the salon.

So, this being a long shot, I put things in front of her,

and things behind her.

The things got action in lots of different planes,

and that keeps the shot very interesting,

and adds to the density and richness of the world.

And of course, she's looking for Willy.

Eventually, she finds him, and this is the time

when we do rack focus.

And being Willy, he is flirting with another woman,

and Willy was very promiscuous.

Again, at the beginning of the movie,

this is setting up one of our stories.

What are the terms of this marriage,

and how is Colette gonna negotiate that?

So then, I think, the standard thing in this scene,

that, this would be to end on Colette's horrified face,

but instead, we have this moment here,

and this was taken from a book by Emile Zola called Nana.

He talks about this all-night salon.

At the end, they poured milk into the piano.

(woman singing) (classical music)

Inside the piano was actually black garbage bags,

so no pianos were harmed during the making of this movie.