Franco-Canadian auteur Xavier Dolan (writer, director, producer, actor, editor, costume designer) is no stranger to the glamour of the film festival circuit, particularly the Cannes Film Festival. Some even refer to Dolan as a Cannes' darling. His films It’s Only the End of the World and Mommy did quite well, both receiving prizes, at previous incarnations of the film festival.

 

For his newest In Competition film at this year's Cannes, Matthias et Maxime, Dolan collaborated with post-classical composer and pianist Jean-Michel Blais to create a musical and visual experience that was thoroughly enjoyable and a nice change from the usual musical fare in cinema. Blais and Dolan, who both live and work out of Montreal, Canada teamed up to create a soundtrack that involves a lot more improvised tracks than either probably expected. For Blais, being his first experience scoring a film, he really enjoyed the fully collaborative process. 

 

I sat down with Blais to discuss some of his musical influences, how he first began tinkering with the organ on his own and how it was working with Dolan. It was a shame that his interview schedule was so tight because I easily could have gone on for hours discussing his score for Matthias et Maxime, his experience living in different cities around the world and simply film and music in all their forms.  

 

 

(Lindsay Bellinger and Jean-Michel Blais, © Lindsay Bellinger 2019) 

 

Thanks so much for sitting down with me. It looks like your schedule is back-to-back with these interviews, which can be exhausting. Your PR contact told me that yesterday you both were stuck in the sun with so many interviews. Anyway, we're here to chat about Matthias et Maxime, the new film from Xavier Dolan that is screening In Competition at Cannes. I really enjoyed your compositions and how they melded together nicely with the images. I read that you began tinkering with the organ at age nine and didn't begin any formal conservatory education until age seventeen. What did you do within those eight or nine years that shaped your musical upbringing?

 

Jean-Michel Blais: I met the best professor that I could meet whose name is Luz Le Boeuf. She's a woman who accepted me just the way I was and we improvised together a lot. I learned to structure and organize my ideas and write down music. And it's interesting because it's the same process that we went through with Xavier and the film, almost everything you hear in the film is first, second, third takes of improvisation in the studio, you know. So it gave me the strength to trust it and also know how to improvise and how to go straight to the point. Through that we went slowly into great composers and she was like, "I think that you deserve a full-time 'greater education' " and she prepared me to get into the conservatory (Trois-Rivieres Music Conservatory). 

 

At what age did you start studying with her? Was it shortly after you began playing around with the organ at age nine?

 

J-MB: I was eleven. 

 

So that means that from age eleven to seventeen you were a full-time student of hers? 

 

J-MB: Right, it was once a week. It was one hour and sometimes lasted to two hours. And sometimes we would not even touch the piano, we would just talk.

 

Wow, that's way different than the piano lessons I experienced as a child. 

 

J-MB: Or she would show me how my body and muscles worked or we would look at history books. It was like music history. 

 

Yeah, just music education and the history of music. Not like sitting for eight hours playing Chopin nonstop. 

 

J-MB: Yeah, not like interpretation and performing. It very much helped me to discover that I had this music inside of me, and that I should love it and treat it the right way and not lose the fire and the passion. 

 

Well, I was reading in some of the press notes that some of the soundtrack you wrote ahead of time and then you and Xavier shot the scenes incorporating your pieces into the film, which is the opposite of what many composers do. What percentage of the film's soundtrack do you think was written that way? 

 

J-MB: That's a good question. I know he didn't for the lake, for example, because he couldn't shoot the music. But one of the actors was telling me yesterday how this scene that we call "The Dead Leaves" where the character (Matthias) just walks and comes back. 

 

Yeah. 

 

J-MB: Well, this scene is so interesting because there was this very loud wind with all the leaves and pitching the music very loud in the street and he (Dolan) used one of my pre-existing songs that we changed after to something different, as a guide somehow. But the scene is so quiet and introverted, so I think that there is this very interesting challenge but some of them (the songs), for sure...I'm thinking of what I call "The Farm" is when he's (Maxime) looking at this paper drawing of a farm, so that's something that he played my track, using my music on stage while they were shooting. The same with this one called "The Solitude" which is sort of like a close-out. You have Matthias overthinking his life probably. But I think now the most important one, I realize, is probably the last one, I call it "l'appel", "The Call" when he's on the phone and he's called by life but also called by the phone and he's just there. And he did such a great one-shot acting job, Xavier himself, that after that when the sound designer came he played the music so loud that we're stuck with it and couldn't get rid of it and replace it so this has to be the track that is used. I said, "Okay" and I tried to replicate it for a long time and following a time-code and just play exactly the same thing and once I called Xavier I said, "I just can't replicate the same exact emotion, it's gonna be a robot so why not just trying to use the take you were using on stage?" And he said, "Okay, great so then we don't have to go to the studio anymore." I was like, "Well, maybe we'll still have to but we can try it." Then I realized that we could do it, and I was feeling super guilty because is it just by laziness that I just don't want to record anymore or is it by earnestness or honesty. Sometimes you don't realize that you have just what you need, right there. 

 

Right, some things are just serendipitous events. 

 

J-MB: So we're like, "We're just going to use it." There is so much before. I'm glad that you're pointing out my musical education because if I'm able to be by Xavier Dolan and we listen to some music, it was some Schubert mainly. There is a Schubert motif that I got struck by, that I really loved and that we decided to use as a theme that transforms. 

 

Was that the Schubert musical theme that I heard at least four or five times throughout the film? I was keeping track of when I kept hearing a similar musical melody.

 

J-MB: Yup, that's from Schubert. And again, if you read a bit about Schubert's emotional life there is so much relation to do with his life and I guess the character's life. This movement is a theme in variation as music in film is often a theme and variation, so this theme comes back over and over like an obsession. Maybe in a way how I am supposed to figure out this new thing in my life, which angle should I take to excel  and make it a part of me? And I think that it probably replicates some of the character's reflection. 

 

Did you find that you were inspired by many other composers and musicians for your soundtrack, not just Schubert? 

 

J-MB: Depending. This whole Lake track, there is a lot of Debussy, Ravel and all those impressionists and a little Chopin and Liszt studies in it. But also this alternation between two chords, major, minor. I take a lot from minimalism so there is Philip Glass too, just in the choice of harmony. And probably some Angelo Badalamenti with the Twin Peaks theme; he was just messing around with two keys, so there is something around there. So it was all this together and the presence of Xavier beside me. The fact that we're rolling now...it's funny because I never thought, the whole way through, that the music that I was improvising would be the one that would be used, so it's as if even the process is improvised, if you know what I mean. 

 

Yeah, I think I get it. Did any of the actors have access to your music tracks before shooting, so they could get familiar with it and rehearse with it in mind?

 

J-MB: I don't know but I don't think they did for rehearsal. I think that he (Dolan) would play it during the shooting probably to preserve some sort of a...

 

Authenticity or in-the-moment emotions? 

 

J-MB: Yeah, and I was there once when he shot it. 

 

Which scene was that?

 

J-MB: It's called "La Solitude", the solitude. That's when you have Matthias in the kitchen. He's there and he's framed, kind of like a hole-in-the-wall. There are some women talking and he just zooms out, and to me it just looks like a Dutch painting; it's beautiful. And this scene when I was there, he just pushed play and the music he played was what we just recorded a few days before. I didn't know about it. Imagine, I was feeling like, "Oh my god," because I know that it's improvisation. I wanted almost to stop them and say, "This is not the music it's going to be" and it ended up being the final music. 

 

Well, since this is your first experience scoring a film and knowing that Xavier Dolan is a hugely popular and beloved filmmaker, especially here in Cannes, can you discuss a little bit about how you two teamed up for this project?

 

J-MB: I mean we are from the same city. I'm a five-minute bike ride from his place. So I think that he just...I think that people in my province in Canada know me and so it's my music. I'm an artist before, I'm a full-time musician since a few years now so. I quit for about ten years doing music and then I came back. Then I released some albums. He heard some of it and loved it and called me.

 

Oh, that's quite a comeback especially with Xavier Dolan hunting you down to work with you. That's big.

 

J-MB: I guess so. 

 

So do you have any new film projects on the horizon, maybe working with Xavier again?  

 

J-MB: I would leave everything to work with him again. It was such a rewarding and great and funny experience. And I would love to do other soundtracks, for sure. But there is nothing now but I will just wait. I think that I have to come up with a new album because I have things to say, and I'm touring a lot. My dream would be to have a mixture of an album EP featuring singles, touring and soundtracks so not just being a soundtracker. You know, my great example is Ryuichi Sakamoto. 

 

Oh man, I missed seeing him perform at Berlinale last year. 

 

J-MB: He's everything. He's genuine, an activist, simple, and can play from very minimal like contemporary music to very catchy pop. 

 

Sakamoto acted as well, so perhaps we'll also see you acting in one of Xavier's later films. 

 

J-MB: Yeah, ha.

 

Congratulations, again, on the film and your musical contribution to it.

 

J-MB: Thanks. 

 

 

(Still from Matthias et Maxime, Gabriel D'Almeida Freitas and Xavier Dolan)