GALO: Music obviously plays a huge part in the movie — Didier plays banjo in a bluegrass band and Elise becomes a member of the band when their relationship starts to get more serious. Did the actors actually play their respective instruments? Were the performances live on camera?

FVG: No, we recorded all the music upfront and then only the a cappella stuff was recorded live on set. The rest is playback. But a lot of the songs were recorded in one go, so that added to the authenticity. I didn’t want to take the risk of doing it all live on camera. To do it on the set with so many people waiting and so little time, I didn’t want to take the risk. I didn’t see the profit of it, and you never feel that it’s played back. All the performances are real, they’re done by the actors, but we had another banjo player play back for Johan. He’s a good banjo player, but he’s not the best. And we wanted the best. [Laughs]

GALO: The music is excellent in the movie, and I think that, on top of several other things, is what makes it so great. And it does give the impression it being performed live. How did you achieve that?

FVG: The sound mixing was really important, and we had great people working on the sound. They played back all the recordings in the venues where we were performing and re-recorded the songs to how they sounded [in those places]. It sounds really technical probably, but that’s what creates a live atmosphere and why you have the feeling that it’s a live performance.

On the other hand, in editing, you have to choose the right parts. If you see that parts are not lip-synced, you throw them away and take another part. That’s also very important. [Laughs]

GALO: The structure of the film consistently shifts between past and present. I read that was something that came together during the editing process and is different from the script’s original concept.

FVG: It was always the idea to go back and forth, but it was conceived in a different way. During screenwriting, we had three storylines developing together at the same time. But we realized when we watched the first cut that — although I had worked very hard on the script, and the idea was to have fluent transitions — it was a lot of times not fluid enough and was too constructed. The idea behind it was too cerebral.

So, at one point, my editor [Nico Leunen] said, “Let’s rethink it,” and it was amazing when we took that step and saw all those new possibilities on how to tell the story and cut out the explanation of things. I really rediscovered how some scenes could work and become stronger, and how happy scenes actually made me cry at some points and it became the emotional rollercoaster that I wanted.

GALO: How did you decide how to piece certain scenes together?

FVG: One thing my editor decided upon was the evolution of the band being pretty important. Without needing to explain, you feel where you are in time because of that. [The film] starts out as just a bunch of guys playing together and at the end they play at this huge venue. So, he said, “Let’s not mess around with that chronology, and for the rest let’s try anything.” And so we stuck to that plan in the beginning, and we eventually didn’t stick to the plan anymore in terms of cutting in the chronology of the band. Sometimes you have to break your own rules. [Laughs]

And then it was pretty much trial and error, just trying things. One of the beautiful transitions to me — it’s obvious in ways, and yet we didn’t think of it during screenwriting — you only see their [Elise and Didier’s] initial encounter after a huge fight, and it makes it so beautiful. What you get is it talks about what they long [for] — they long to go back to their first curiosity for one another, their kindness for one another, their appreciation, but they’re so stuck in those other feelings that prevent it. You not only see two people falling in love, you see two people thinking about re-trying to fall in love.

GALO: You’ve said that during rehearsals, you and Johan explored other sides to the character Didier that Johan didn’t need to explore on stage. What are some of the big differences between the Didier on stage and the one in the movie?

FVG: On stage, his character was in a certain kind of mood and he stayed in that mood for two hours. His mood was close to what he’s playing at the end of the movie when he has the rant. He’s playing a guy who’s just in rage and very angry, and for an hour and a half through the theater play it was shouting, shouting, shouting. And in between those rants, you felt why he had become that way, whereas in the movie we do the opposite. We see him as a very passionate guy, very eloquent and very positive in a way. We see him shifting toward the character he becomes in the theater play. So it’s just the opposite [in terms of] seeing the character evolve.

GALO: Didier is obviously a very opinionated individual with strong worldviews. Did you write any of yourself into the character in the adaptation?

FVG: No, he’s very close to Johan in real life. It’s not a coincidence that he made this play and that Didier’s the lead role. Didier’s a little more childish than Johan is, but he has the same energy and the same urge to talk about a lot of things, to be in the center of attention, to have an opinion on everything. He’s not that frustrated, certainly not at this moment. Well, maybe not yet. [Laughs]

The things that I added personally were more features that I’ve seen from family members of mine — the fact that he’s very handy and the way he lives (he builds his own house). I thought that was important for this character. It wasn’t in the theater play. He takes on life, he has no fear of doing it all by himself. He’s somebody who believes in the fact that you can take your own life in your hands. I wanted to show that just by him doing it with his hands.

For information regarding screenings in your area, visit http://tribecafilm.com/tribecafilm/filmguide/brokencircle

Cincopa WordPress plugin

Featured image: Film director Felix Van Groeningen of “The Broken Circle Breakdown” distributed by Tribeca Film. Photo Credit: Hans de Greve.