latest features

Interview With A Werewolf

Filmink chatted with the lead werewolf from the Twilight films, Chaske Spencer

Feast from South East

India gets ready to showcase its best, brightest and most colourful at the Indian Film Festival kicking off in Australia this week.

The (Mad) Man – Part 3

In part three of our exclusive chat with Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men, we discuss the importance of casting in bringing his characters to life.

Filmink caught up with British director Anthony Fabian when he was in Australia recently and chatted with him about his new film Skin, a fact-based drama about a young girl who was born black to white parents during apartheid.

search the site

Enter your email address below to receive the weekly Filmink newsletter

Animal Magnetism

by Dov Kornits and Anya Weimann | December 02, 2008 13:11 | Edited December 02, 2008 13:14

French filmmaker LAURENT CHARBONNIER spies on a whole bunch of amorous critters in his highly successful documentary ANIMALS IN LOVE.

Avidly passionate about "the beauty of nature", French documentary filmmaker Laurent Charbonnier has long been drawn to small screen animal docos. "When I was young, there was a broadcast every Sunday on television about animals of the world, which I really liked," he explains of the genesis of his cinema debut, Animals In Love (Les Animaux Amoureux). "I don't know if you have to have a special character, but I always loved animals, and I've always wanted to film them with nice sound and nice colours. I started to shoot my first frames when I was twenty and decided that, when I was thirty, I would have made my first feature. I missed the mark, of course, because I'm older than thirty now, but I just love cinema."

Animals In Love is yet another stunningly photographed journey into the wonders of nature, made in the tradition of March Of The Penguins and Travelling Birds, the latter which Charbonnier worked on as a cinematographer for director Jacques Perrin. Innocently capturing the amorous sounds and songs made by animals building their nests and battling each other for sexual access, Animals showcases that, no matter what we believe, humans are not unique in their ability to charm the opposite sex through acts of courtship. Indeed, Charbonnier's journey through the amusing world of animals in love strikes a very familiar chord, as his subjects are broadly familiar on screen, displaying unexpected audacity, delicacy and determination in attracting and pursuing the opposite sex.

As a professional photographer and cinematographer, Charbonnier is a veteran lenser who eagerly plunged into feature filmmaking after his 53-minute television doco Tapage dans la basse cour. "For TV documentaries, you have a small, square frame, and you [film with] close ups," he explains enthusiastically. "For the cinema, you use cinema scopes - short lenses rather than long ones." In order to produce Animals In Love, Charbonnier recorded in detail courtship behaviours of a variety of species across fifteen countries over two years. "The only script was a list of sequences in a particular order, following the love sequences of the animals," recalls Charbonnier. "The first sequence was in the very beginning when the animals - male and female - start to stare at each other, and the second sequence was all the singing and crying. The third sequence was the battles where males fight, and the last one, the main one, was the parade and dancing sequence. There was no storyboard or anything like that."

“The only script was a list of sequences in a particular order, following the love sequences of the animals.”

As with other nature documentaries before it, Animals In Love is ambitious in its scope: it boasts 100 hours of original footage filmed over two years in fifteen countries, with the final budget coming in at nearly eight million Euros. "It's quite expensive," Charbonnier agrees. "But it's less than [the budget on] Travelling Birds, which was quite a bit more expensive. The money went to all the technicians. It was a two-year shoot and there was a lot of travelling." The original French version also makes use of the voice talents of top actress Cécile De France (Un Secret, Spanish Apartment), and involved a musical score from famed minimalist composer Philip Glass (The Hours, The Truman Show). When it comes to the crew on set, the director prefers to keep it simple, applying the old saying that less is sometimes more. "It depends on the scene, but generally [we have a crew] of eight to fifteen people, maximum, and sometimes as few as four people. I like small teams so we don't disturb the animals."

Laurent Charbonnier and his fellow French documentary filmmakers - such as Perrin (Travelling Birds) and Luc Jacquet (March Of The Penguins) - have found a niche market with their films, which have been box office hits internationally. "Producers are now trying to take advantage of this opportunity," he remarks. "Producers see that it works in France [and abroad], and they're investing money in this kind of film." Despite winning a César for Best Documentary, Charbonnier seems unfazed by his successes. "I've always wanted to make a feature, so it's not because it's trendy now in France that I'm doing it," he stresses. "That's the point I first wanted to make."

For Charbonnier, the reason behind the phenomenal popularity of documentaries released over the past couple of years is simple: people are fascinated by the overall cinema experience that lures them to catch a movie on the big screen. "Films are more spectacular, and the audience is more active. They have to go to the pictures and buy their tickets and watch the film - that's something they really want to do," he says. "In contrast, a TV documentary is seen by many people [passively]. It's just not like going to the cinema."

Animals In Love is released on December 4.

Share |