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 ven in France, the opening scene of Lila Says, in which a pretty French teenager
asks, "Would you like to see my pussy?" has caused a bit of a stir.
Ziad Doueiri's film, based on a controversial 1996 French novel in which
an angelic blond mystifies a shy Arab boy named Chimo with her sexual fantasies,
manages to be explicit without actually showing anything. This might come as
a surprise for those familiar with the Lebanese Doueiri's career: Though
Lila Says is only his second film (after 1997's acclaimed West Beirut),
he was a cameraman in Hollywood for many years, working on Quentin Tarantino's
early movies.Doueiri's work is distinguished by a lush, fluid camerawork, placing him in direct contrast to the herky-jerky handheld style of most international filmmaking today. He shoots Lila in wide-angle close-ups that bring us close to her face while always keeping her background in focus, and the effect is decidedly unreal. In the director's hands, the lower-class setting of the film becomes a mystical place where anything is possible. That's not to say that it's apart from reality: The film is also full of casual references to September 11th, the war in Iraq, and the Middle East crisis; Al-Jazeera always seems to be on in the background. Those looking for political subtext, however, will be frustrated. As in West Beirut, Doueiri's characters see politics as something of a nuisance. "Between pussy and a free Palestine," Chimo declares proudly, "I'd choose pussy." — Bilge Ebiri Ziad, given a choice between pussy and a free Palestine, which would YOU choose? Hmm. Uh . . . [Laughs] Come on, surely you've been asked that question before! Not really. People are so politically correct today that nobody asks that. It's taboo to talk about both of them. When the word "pussy" comes out of my mouth, it's a lot different than when it comes out of the mouth of Lila or Chimo. And yet, your film straddles the line between adolescent sexuality and adult sexuality. We never really feel dirty watching it, or hearing Lila talk this way. We tried to push the dialogue to the limit without falling into vulgarity. I was always worried that maybe I was getting too used to the words. The producers and I had a tremendous fight about that; they wanted me to remove the erotic lines. And casting only added to my fear. Almost none of the girls who came could read the part right. It felt cheesy, sleazy and unnatural. I kept believing it was just a matter of performance. How so? Lila had to say, "Would you like to see my pussy?" as if she were asking "Would you like a cup of coffee?" It was about working with the actress to make sure she didn't deliver those lines in a vulgar way. This offhand, casual attitude towards sexuality for some reason reminded me of the way Quentin Tarantino's characters talk about violence. So I was surprised to then find out that you'd actually been his camera operator for many years. Whether Quentin has had an influence on me is a legitimate question. But I fundamentally believe that he and I make very different kinds of cinema. His influence on me is not his formula, it's other things — it's the way he was on set, the way he dealt with actors. He was always enthusiastic about what he was doing. He obtained the best out of his crew and actors because he was always a kid on set. He's a compulsive person, and his characters are very compulsive. And I'm compulsive, too, and so are my characters. The characters in West Beirut are very talkative, and so is Lila. You could probably draw some comparisons, but it's not intentional. Quentin makes American movies. And I lived and worked in America for eighteen years of my life, so some of the humor in Lila Says is American, even though the film is not an American movie. Could a film like Lila Says be made in America? I originally wrote it for the U.S. While promoting West Beirut, I discovered the Lebanese community in Dearborn, Michigan. I felt it would be interesting to have an American film told from an Arab immigrant perspective. They've done it about the Mexicans, the Irish and the Italians — why not the Arabs? So we started writing the script in English. That version was more politically charged — I wanted to explore the social consequences of 9/11. The producers who read it loved it, but they said, "Look, it has a lot of sex, a lot of erotica. Go do it in France!" So I had to tone down some of the political stuff and push it more to the background. I still think it could have been a great film in the U.S. Ironically enough, when the film came out in France, a lot of people looked at it and said, "This isn't a French film. This is an American film made in French." That's very surprising to hear. Well, the story has a very classical structure, which people think of as American. You have your character arcs, your plot turns, your resolution, your violent conflicts. Structure works. The distributor thought he could sell it everywhere in Europe, but not in France. How have Muslim audiences reacted to the film? I was amazed — they received it extremely well. It played in Morocco and caused a riot. People loved it. I think they liked the Chimo character: "Wow, this is one of us, and he's the hero of the movie. He's handsome. The gorgeous blond girl is after him!" In Lebanon, the film was number two at the box office. I've seen a lot of veiled women coming to the theater, too. I think people are responding to the sensuality, and also to the central character's relationship with his mother, which is very close and warm. What about the political angle? Well, the characters in the film have a fairly light-hearted way of referring to certain things, like, "the motherfuckers who blew up New York" and when they say of Lila, "this girl could cause a jihad," I think the audiences understand to take that lightly. Hearing Chimo say things like that, you understand he's liberal, he's open minded. Dramatically speaking, you just have to situate your character in his environment. His cavalier attitude to politics also reminds me of West Beirut. Even though your two films are very different in of setting and characters, there's a strange continuum between the two. Chimo feels like he could be Tarek from West Beirut a couple of years later. When you write, you always inject some of you in your characters. In West Beirut, I was remembering what it was like to be a teenager. For Lila Says, I tried to identify with the character. I thought, "How would Ziad Doueiri react in this circumstance, if a girl like this landed in his lap?" Have you ever known a girl like Lila? No. Never. I wish! I went to see Lila Says in a theater last night, and was surprised to see a lot of couples there, and some were even making out as if it were a date movie. Really? I didn't think of it as a date movie at all. Wherever we showed the film, a lot of adults came to see it. But I think maybe men are a little intimidated by someone like Lila. In general, the film appeals a bit more to women, maybe because it deals with the female sexual persona. I co-wrote the film with a woman, and discovered that the nature of Lila's fantasies is very female, even though most women would not say it in public. How are these fantasies female? I think mostly the mental process involved. When I started writing Lila, I decided to do something that was not primarily visual. I love films like Intimacy, or the work of Catherine Breillat, but I wanted to go in a different direction — to see if I could get the point acrossjust by talking about it. The audience wants to see: We're visual people, we're voyeurs. How often do you hear, "A picture is worth a thousand words"? I wanted to tell a story where a word is worth a thousand pictures. It seems that sex in cinema has been undergoing a resurgence in the last few years. Film can permit itself to have limitless boundaries. Forgive me if I get a little philosophical on you now, but I think September 11th broke a lot of taboos. The shock of it was so big all over the world that I think people now say, "Fuck it, I'll do what I want." It's not a conscious thing, but I think we're now open to more risqué subjects. n° 
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