Dominique Abel (b. 1957 in Belgium) and Fiona Gordon (b. 1957 in Australia, raised in Canada) are Belgian film and stage directors, screenwriters and actors with five feature films to their credit. They are known and praised for their unique niche in contemporary cinema through their distinctive style of physical comedy. Their mix of slapstick, visual humor and whimsical storytelling is a heartwarming ode to the silent film legends while, in the meantime, they add their own personal themes and sensibilities.
At times, their films are minimalistic but all the more expressive with highly exaggerated gestures, visual storytelling, intricate choreography and precise timing, which makes them a joy to the eye. After several decades on the stage, they graced the screen with their feature films “L’iceberg” (2005, a.k.a. “The Iceberg”), “Rumba” (2008), “La fée” (a.k.a. “The Fairy,” 2011), “Paris pieds nus” (2017, a.k.a. “Lost in Paris”) and their latest screen effort, “L’étoile filante” (2023, a.k.a. “The Falling Star”).
Abel and Gordon—both on and off-screen partners—were among the guests of honor at the 39th edition of theLove International Film Festival Mons in Belgium last March to introduce their latest film, which is about a former terrorist who now works as a bartender at L’Étoile Filante and has been a fugitive in hiding for thirty-five years. His past catches up with him when a stranger appears at the bar.
“L’étoile filante” (a.k.a. “The Falloing Star,” 2023, trailer)
The following interview with Abel and Gordon was conducted in English and focused on their work as comedians, in front and behind the camera.
With each new film you make, you always seem to invent yourself story-wise and character-wise. Is that maybe the most important ingredient of your style?
[FIONA GORDON] We don’t even think about that. There’s something in the back of our heads that says we can’t do the same thing and must do something new. But we don’t do any character study; it’s just the situation and a lot of improvization—build the situations, build the characters.
[DOMINIQUE ABEL] We try to avoid repeating ourselves. Sometimes, we react to the problems we detect, as in our last film. Usually, we are more dramatic and think, ‘We’re maybe too dramatic while we should be only funny.’ And when we try that, it’s like, ‘Okay, it’s funny, but it’s not dramatic.’ This one is darker.
Since you do everything yourself, are youmaybeeven more critical of yourownwork?
[FIONA GORDON] We’re very critical. The first few times we show a film in front of an audience, we can feel when the audience is just stiffing a bit back, or when they’re not laughing wholeheartedly, and we think, ‘We could have gone much further with that because they really like it.’ But, of course, we can’t go back. Next time we’ll do this and that, but next time is always completely different. There are different solutions and you make new inventions and new mistakes.
“Paris pieds nus” (a.k.a. “Lost in Paris,” 2017, trailer)
Robert Wise once told me that the worst thing that can happen to a filmmaker, is when you screen your film for the first time to an audience and you get a bad laugh, like when they laugh at the wrong moment or when they’re not supposed to laugh. Do you keep that in mind too?
[FIONA GORDON] I don’t think that’s a problem for us because we’re clowns and laughs are welcome. But the quality of the laughter is important.
[DOMINIQUE ABEL] We don’t expect a sarcastic laugh; usually, we are trying to make people laugh through empathy…
[FIONA GORDON] …an empathy laugh, not a mockery laugh. But as a clown, that’s one of the first things you learn, and you don’t decide that. You try things out in front of an audience, they laugh, and then you try to cultivate that laughter in some way. But you can’t be funny in a way you’re not built to be funny. Buster Keaton learned very early on in his career that he was much better if he kept a stone face, while other actors like Jim Carrey are better when they have expressions. Each clown has his personal touch, but he doesn’t necessarily choose; that’s the way it works and he just follows it.
[DOMINIQUE ABEL] We also invite professionals when we’re editing, before we have all the sounds and the special effects, and they can determine how a scene can work much better and be funnier.
[FIONA GORDON] In the great burlesque period—the great physical comedy period—they were able to go back and forth more to correct things. Chaplin was able to spend a lot of money on going backwards, redoing and reimprovizing, and that would really be an ideal situation for people like us. But the economy of cinema doesn’t allow that.
You talked about an empathatic laugh, and that’s very interesting because in each of your films you have a lot of empathy for your characters. Is that crucial?
[DOMINIQUE ABEL] It’s because all of our films are about people who fall and get back on their feet. We always talk about resilience which is the basic of a clown. How he deals with his problems, how he puts them aside and tries to understand them through laughter.
[FIONA GORDON] There are different types of humor and one is not superior to another. Even sad clowns can be nasty clowns when they base their characters on their own strengths and weaknesses. It’s not a judgement on society, it’s more a representation of what you are in society. Like the jester of the king—he could say nasty things and criticize, as long as it was funny. So that’s another point of view in humor. Our sense of humor is more of an identification, with the little man, the underdog.
How do you collaborate when you write, rehearse and shoot?
[DOMINIQUE ABEL] We always talk about ideas, and when we start writing, we write separately. We send each other our pages via email, even though we’re sitting next to each other. But it creates some distance and you take the time to read what the other one has written.
[FIONA GORDON] Eventually it’s like a ping-pong between us where we send each other versions. Little by little it becomes one version; I take stuff that he has written and put it into mine, he takes stuff that I have written and puts it into his. When it becomes one, we pass it to each other, change things, and take off the changes that the other one did.
[DOMINIQUE ABEL] When we have the story we want, we invite our friends—the main actors—and we shoot everything with a little camera. Our writing is always an idea or a suggestion for a physical comedy, so we have to check if the idea works with the actors. That depends on each clown; sometimes an idea doesn’t work for that particular clown, or another clown is improvizing something that is better than the idea. Then we add those ideas to the screenplay. The closer we get to shooting the film, we invite other people like the DOP and costume designer, and still find and change things until the day we start filming. When people see our films, they often say, ‘Oh, there’s a lot of improvization!’ Yes, that’s right, but that all happened before. When we shoot, we don’t have time to improvize—or at least not a lot.
[FIONA GORDON] The challenge afterwards is to maintain the same spontaneity and freshness that we had when we improvized. It can become mechanical after all the rehearsals, and we like the sort of rough side—when you improvize for the first time, you sometimes surprise yourself by what you can do, and later on, you’re not so surprised. But it still needs that sort of glint to the eye, like, ‘Ah, this the first time that I’m doing this.’
How can youmake sure that this spontaineity is still there,even though you may have rehearsed it many times?
[FIONA GORDON] Theater actors know how to do that because they repeat it over and over again and it has to be new all the time. Cinema actors don’t have that training and that habit, so it’s more difficult for them.
[DOMINIQUE ABEL] We have friends who worked with Peter Brook and they were rehearsing the play “Waiting for Godo.” The day before they opened, he told his leading actors, ‘Okay, it looks great. Now we will switch the characters that you play.’ And they had to play the other character. That was an enormous challenge. The play on opening night was not perfect, but there was an incredible energy.
[FIONA GORDON] As a clown, you need their routine, you need to work them out, but you can’t loose that freshness. I have seen rehearsals of Jacques Tati, and sometimes you’d say, ‘Mmm, the rehearsals were rough, but they were more lively than his final result.’ Of course, he was a genius, so he made it a machine that worked very well and that was very well-oiled, but he also had that problem of holding that spontaneity.
When did you first realize that you could make people laugh?
[FIONA GORDON] It’s funny because when I was in school, I wanted to be a serious actor. I wanted to do Lady Macbeth and Juliet. I wasn’t that good at it, but when I got in front of the class and made a little joke, that usually worked.
[DOMINIQUE ABEL] I didn’t know what I could do, but I was always attracted to comedy and those funny characters. When I was about fifteen, a friend of mine suggested to do it professionally because I always made him laugh. Then I studied science and economy, and after four years at the university, I decided to move to Paris where I found that the clown was still in me.
And when you became a team, comedy was the most natural thing to do?
[FIONA GORDON] Yes, and we try. We still try. We still feel that we haven’t done the completely physical comedy film that we would like to do. Try to amuse the audience with very little. We haven’t been able to do that yet [laughs]. When you’re financing a film, you need to present something, and you don’t get a blank check to make people laugh. When you show the script, it doesn’t always encourage a kind of cinema that is non-narrative. I don’t know we’ll ever reach the point…
[DOMINIQUE ABEL] We did theater for twenty-five years and we were never good in doing sketches. Some clowns are, but we need more time and like to know the story and the setting. That’s perhaps why we may never reach that point.
Love International Film Festival Mons
March 12, 2024
FILMS
L’ICEBERG, a.k.a. THE ICEBERG (2005) DIR – SCR Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Bruno Romy PROD Dominique Abel CAM Sébastien Koeppel MUS Jacques Luley ED Sandrine Deegen CAST Dominique Abel (Julien), Fiona Gordon (Fiona), Lucy Tulugarjuk, Philippe Martz, Bruno Romy
RUMBA (2008) DIR – SCR Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon PROD Charles Gillibert, Nathanaël Karmitz, Marin Karmitz CAM Claire Childeric ED Sandrine Deegen CAST Dominique Abel (Dom), Fiona Gordon (Fiona), Philippe Martz, Bruno Romy, Clément Morel
LA FÉE, a.k.a. THE FAIRY (2011) DIR – SCR Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Bruno Romy PROD Charles Gillibert, Nathanaël Karmitz, Marin Karmitz, Valérie Rouy, Elise Bisson, Marina Festré CAM Claire Childeric ED Sandrine Degeen CAST Dominique Abel (Dom), Fiona Gordon (Fiona, The Fairy), Philippe Martz, Bruno Romy, Vladimir Zongo
PARIS PIEDS NUS, a.k.a. LOST IN PARIS (2017) DIR – SCR Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon PROD Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Charles Gillibert, Christie Molia CAM Claire Childeric, Jean-Christophe Leforestier ED Sandrine Degeen CAST Emmanuelle Riva, Pierre Richard, Dominique Abel (Dom), Fiona Gordon (Fiona), Emmy Boissard Paumelle, Céline Laurentie, Philippe Martz, Bruno Romy
L’ÉTOILE FILANTE, a.k.a. THE FALLING STAR (2023) DIR – SCR Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon PROD Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Christie Molia CAM Pascale Marin ED Julie Brenta MUS Dom La Nena, Rosemary Standley CAST Fiona Gordon (Fiona), Dominique Abel (Dom/Boris), Kaori Ito, Philippe Martz, Bruno Romy, Mélanie Depuiset, Jimmy Assandri, Bertrand Landhauser
