Interview: The Eight Mountain’s Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch
Adapted from the Italian literary sensation by Paolo Cognetti, The Eight Mountains is a decades-spanning portrait of two friends, Pietro (Luca Marinelli) and Bruno (Alessandro Borghi), and the Italian Alps where they grow up and reconnect throughout the years. The film won the 2022 Jury Prize at Cannes.
Felix van Groeningen is the director and writer of six previous films, including Beautiful Boy (2018) and The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012), which he co-wrote with Charlotte Vandermeersch. The Eight Mountains is his seventh film.
Charlotte Vandermeersch is a director, writer, and an actress in films such as Belgica (2016). The Eight Mountains is her directorial debut.
This is a really beautiful and rare example of how friendships can be sustained over a lifetime, particularly between men. What initially drew each of you to Paolo Cognetti’s novel?
Charlotte: The novel came to Felix, actually, twice. He had bought it because someone recommended it that he trusts a lot, like, “Maybe this is something for you.” Then it had just stayed on the nightstand, and then a year after, suddenly, you get contacted again, but really by the [Italian production] company who owns the rights. They loved his previous work. This novel is a big treasure for them because it was a bestseller and they were really looking for the right director. So they chose Felix and it was love at first sight when he read it.
Then I read it, too, of course. We were actually road-tripping through Italy with our son at the moment because we love Italy. We were going to drive south, but we got an invitation from Paolo Cognetti to come to the Alps, because he spends his summers and half of the year there, and since he heard that Felix had accepted to do the adaptation, he was like, “I am here if you want to,” and we were driving, and Felix said, “What do you think?”
So we just turned around and drove north again, and at that moment I was like, “Oh, I have to really read this novel now because I can’t really get there without having read it,” so we read it. You [Felix] were like, “Read it out loud! Read it out loud!” So I would read these parts of it out loud, and also the ending. The last few chapters are really beautiful. We cried together, and I said, “This is such a good story for you. I’m so happy.” It was a coincidence that we were together there as a family when we met Paolo. It was a beautiful summer. The introduction to the places there was incredible. Paolo opened up to me and was very welcome. We got introduced to this world, and we had been looking for a story to work on together, and I was like, “Maybe this is the right project.” I feel drawn to it, I really like the book, I think I could add something. If we want to write something, I would love to make this adaptation with you. But at first I didn’t have the time, so Felix started out by himself, and then I joined after a while and then we really hit it off with this book. It’s wonderful how—the immediate introduction there, understanding who this author is, meeting his friends who inspired this story, him taking us to his favorite lake which also became the lake in the film. We saw different lakes, a lot of different lakes, but in the end, you feel like this is the right one. It’s his one, it just makes sense. It was a very organic process to be drawn into.
Felix: I think we’re both moved by everything about it. Men in need of friendship, of course, but also the story with the father and the fact that, you know, this is a small story in a sense, but also big. It makes you reflect on the most essential things in life, whether that’s what I want in life, what is my instinct telling me or wanting from me, what am I rebelling against, what does friendship mean? I personally was very moved by the beauty, the purity of those characters, and had the need at that point in my life to spend time with people who were not cynical, who were not shouting, who were just very pure. And so this idea to go and make a film in those mountains really appealed to me and was one of the reasons I ultimately said yes.
Image courtesy of Sideshow and Janus Films
What do you think it is about Pietro and Bruno, two fairly lonely men, that they are able to sustain this friendship over a lifetime?
Felix: There’s something evident when they’re together. For me, it really became clear through making the movie and shooting those scenes with the kids [Lupo Barbiero and Cristiano Sassella]. Of course, on paper it was clear, and in the story, it was what it was: they’re compatible in ways, but then just to see it. I really felt it with the scene of the breakfast where Pietro comes down and Bruno is sitting there. It’s just so much, seeing that. Bruno’s not very mannered, but super sweet. He’s straightforward, he’s very much there. He’s bigger. For Pietro, there’s so much to look up to. He represents freedom and life and not being restrained.
Charlotte: Adventure.
Felix: Adventure. On the other hand, Pietro’s way more intelligent and well-spoken and has a sense of what is going on. But the curiosity between those two, when we’re shooting the scene, I’m super moved because, it’s cliché, but opposites attract and it’s all there and that’s the basis. And then they click very much on the physical level. They love to—
Charlotte: —to run!
Felix: To run and to jump and so they have something very much in common where they’re one.
Charlotte: They share their energy. They don’t have to talk about it. They just understand. “Let’s build the dam, yeah. Let’s throw the rocks, yeah.”
Felix: And then obviously over the course of their lives, the dynamics change completely. But there's always this, I guess in a different form, but there’s always that juxtaposition of where they are in their lives that is appealing to the other one, to spend their time with the other one, to reflect about their own lives, or to share what they think about what would be good for the other one. And so to be able to help each other, also, to be interested in each other and to help each other, to a certain point.
I thought that dynamic was really interesting, especially because I read that the actors were initially flipped in their roles, and so for Pietro to be really unsure of himself in the beginning and Bruno is very self-possessed, but then over the course of the movie, they meet and depart in their ways. How much of that did you see as the writing or while you were directing being moved by the actors in their roles?
Felix: A lot of it came from the process of casting, which is a big part of directing an actor or realizing what is working to make a character on paper work on screen. I guess we just allowed it to become more layered, to not make the most evident choices, and to use the person’s energy to make the character richer. To use the person’s real life energy to add an opposite layer to the character that made it richer.
Charlotte: We certainly discovered that if you cast the character in too much of a literal way, someone who is more of an intellectual and someone who is more of a farm boy. The mountain boy, born and raised there, has to have a poetry to him. Something that is aching to have some kind of artistic—maybe there’s an artist inside, he would have wanted to be a writer, maybe. He will never be that, but that’s what he really loves and Pietro admires. There’s poetry in him, and in Pietro, too, there’s something wild and untamed and he doesn’t know where to bring it. How? But then you start traveling. He wants to live a real life, but how to do that? You don’t want to be locked up in the city, but just wandering around all the time and being by yourself doesn’t really bring that out. And how can you share your love, actually? In a way that is nurturing yourself and someone else, or several people? So the casting process was essential to find two guys who would share this wild soul and have something very opposite at the same time.
Image courtesy of Sideshow and Janus Films
In another movie, silence between men would seem like a negative thing, but there’s actually quite a bit of silence in this movie where the characters are not speaking and it’s really lovely. They’re sitting together, they’re looking out at something else together, and I wanted to ask about your use of silence as a positive in the film.
Charlotte: We wanted silence to be just as important as what is being said. So this is also part of the casting process, right? When you put two people together and it makes sense that they’re silent together. I always realized the people I like to be with most are the people I like to sit on the bench with and look around and not say anything and feel comfortable doing that. And this kind of comfort in just being is what we looked for. And this element of silence, of being where you are, enjoying the elements, walking, physical experience. It’s tough to be in the mountains, it’s tough to go somewhere, it’s always tiring. Just to give all of the elements—the wind, birds, anything, sometimes it can be very silent up on a mountain suddenly, and suddenly not at all. You hear lots of things. It depends on the wind, what it brings to you. And so how can you show in a film the way the air is thinner, feels thinner when you’re there? You try to do that through sound and give silence its place, so there’s also this sensory experience. It was always very important, so we tried to do it in the sound and the image: give space, make frames where there is space, where you see a small person and the towering mountain, or two people being caught in the 4:3 ratio, maybe, so it’s tighter. And we wrote a lot of “silence” in the dialogue. There was a lot of silence, always. It was not a dialogue of reacting to each other, it was a dialogue of trying to find the words, always. This is also like every dialogue in film, that’s the basis: “Okay, we’re here. How do we communicate now?”
Felix: Yet you constantly feel from both of them that they long for this connection, but they’re stuck in themselves.
Charlotte: So the silence is always the tension between yourself and the other or between yourself and the environment. The communication without words but also the impossibility of feeling powerless.
They have that moment where Bruno is talking about this word for sadness, which translates in English to “it seems long,” and by the end of the conversation, Pietro says, “I might not come back,” and Bruno can’t respond to that. He doesn’t know how to articulate the sadness of that.
Charlotte: And he smiles, and he understands. He’s just going back to his cows. But that’s what it is: you want to respect your friend’s choices even though it means distance and long lonely times sometimes. And that is what friendships over the course of a lifetime do. You come together, it’s as if it was yesterday. The joy of meeting up again, the joy of sharing this life, having known each other as kids. And then saying goodbye every time. The pain of this departure. Because you can love your friend as much as you love your partner in life.
It reminded me of the Rilke quote: “I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.” How did your relationship with each other help you to articulate that dynamic between wanting to be with a person and also wanting to protect each other’s solitude?
Charlotte: I’ve had a hard time with a very good friend when she became distant. That really hurt me very much earlier on in my life, and I made amends with my best friends with whom this happened, but I guess we were so close that we just needed distance at times to just grow up. Sometimes you get to be symbiotic and things explode, because it’s very hard to be really honest with each other and so things just get ripped apart because you don’t really find the words to do that softly. You know, we have our trajectories.
Felix: We’re a couple and we’re friends and we have a child together and we each have busy lives separately, so I guess this movie was for us what the house was for Pietro and Bruno. More than one summer, almost two years. And I think we really needed that. Since the movie’s done, we also had to say goodbye to that, too. Making a movie is like being together 24/7, and I guess that’s good for a period. I had a hard time when Charlotte was, again, going her way and I’m going my way and I felt a solitude and a sadness about that. But having had the experience, you cherish that and it helps you move forward and to let somebody go, knowing that you did live it and that you can maybe one day go back to it, if life decides that for you or you decide it together. But I guess cherishing what’s there and respecting that the other needs their space.
Charlotte: But it’s also just respecting the nature of life. Things change continuously, and that’s a challenge for all of us. We can’t go back, although in spiritual ideas, time is a circle and there’s no such thing as time and it’s an illusion, but you know, we’re stuck in this illusion where it does feel like you can’t go back. And when people die, they’re really not there, and that’s very hard. So just accepting this in every little thing in your life, every department, every goodbye, but also the big goodbyes, accepting the nature of life that things come and things go. And as we are still alive, what’s good and when it’s right will come together again, and have faith in that. And if things need to end, they will end. Also very difficult for me personally. Accepting that things do end. Friendships end, people die, relationships end. Yeah, we were wondering if we should end our relationship during this process but we are happy we didn’t. [both laugh] But we did open up to the idea. Before, we were clinging to the idea that we needed to be together, or there’s no possibility to not be together, and then at a certain point you go, “Maybe, we’ll see, you know. Let’s have faith in the process and what’s better will happen and we’ll always be friends.” I believe that. We’ll always be friends. I’ll always love you, in any form.
Felix: [sings] And Iiiiii will always love you… [both laugh]
Charlotte: But we are still a couple, and we’re happy about that.
Image courtesy of Sideshow and Janus Films
Charlotte, you mentioned that when you’re in the mountains, you’re trying to capture the various elements. How much were you responding to the elements to dictate where you were going with the filming?
Charlotte: Up front you make a plan. You say, “We’d like bad weather for this. We’d like rain for this. We’d like wind for this. We’d like mist for this. We’d like snow for this.” And then there’s the reality of understanding that you are not able to control any of this, so how are we going to respond to what we can get from nature? So there was a lot of Plan A, Plan B, and we had this schedule of “In case of good weather, in case of this, in case of that,” with all these variables, and so that was a very big challenge to put together.
Then the light, that really amazed me. I had never shot a movie, right? Only worked as an actor. I had no idea about the importance of light and timing and knowing the place you’re shooting. When you’re shooting outside. Our Director of Photography, Ruben [Impens], he was always checking where the sun comes up, at what time it will be where, exactly, and then you hope there won’t be clouds covering the sun because you want this light. So every night, every week, we would just go for the next three days where the weather forecast is kind of accurate. You go and make your plans, so everyone will stand by, always ready to change the plans. And we made it a priority to be in the right time at the right place, just for the light. That was our main guide. Light and weather circumstances. And then when you thought, “Okay, everything is set for this scene,” then maybe things would change, then you need to be very flexible in the moment. Turn around, shoot something the other way. “Oh fuck, the light isn’t good. How are we going to do this?” You have a dream of the scene with the light coming from behind them and then suddenly you can’t do that anymore. And I would be more like, “Oh no, God.” And then Felix and Ruben would be very mature already, having shot six films together, able to quickly, “Okay, let’s take the camera and try to find the next solution. Okay, we’re going to do it here.” So I would have to reprogram while they are already experienced enough to accept, “Okay, our initial plan is falling to pieces. This will work, too. Let’s just go. It’s a little less beautiful, it’s fine. As long as the scene is good, the actors are there.” And that taught me a lot about filmmaking and its concreteness in reality.
Felix: We started to shoot at the beginning of the summer. And then we had different blocks. We had a block at the end of the summer, and then we went to Nepal, then went back to Italy to shoot winter scenes in two different blocks, which was amazing. And it was more or less chronological with the story, not entirely, but it was in big chunks. And what it allowed was that we were able to evaluate as the story was moving along. We could pick up things next block often if it wasn’t working in the first cut. And we did learn a lot about shooting in mountains along the way, and we were able to adapt and just make it better and realize when the winter was coming how hard it was going to be and what we had to make sure we’re doing or weren’t doing. It was incredibly luxurious to be able to shoot the movie that way and it happened by chance, by the nature of the story, and by choices that were made along the way. But it also really defined how things started working and it definitely made it better because we could evaluate and raise the bar.
It came out wonderfully. How did you think about moving through time? We get the childhood of the characters, and this brief moment of adolescence, and that moment is abbreviated, but even that interaction between them when they see each other as teenagers conveys a lot about their connection.
Felix: That little scene really sets up this idea that they’re not really talking a lot and that they cannot say everything to each other.
Charlotte: It was clear from the beginning that the idea was not to go backwards in time. To have time move on relentlessly, what we were talking about before. To give you the experience watching it, the longing for youth or the longing to be able to go back and maybe change things, but you can’t, together with them, and in your real life you can’t. We fought during the writing and also in the edit. We thought it was really important that you would see the way they meet, have just a hunch of them separate, the lonely boys, and then how they meet and how they take off together. Often it was suggested we cut this all the way and we just start with them as friends. We really defended this because we wanted to have this pure vulnerability, the seed of something, and then take it further.
The moment it jumps to adolescence, it’s a bit of a shocker, maybe. Suddenly he’s [Pietro] lying in his bed and the bed is too small and his feet are longer and he’s alone. Time just passed by and he lost his friend. You feel so uncomfortable within yourself and uncomfortable to communicate about yourself. It’s so difficult, and he’s stuck. So when they meet, it’s a scene in the book, and we always thought it was the essence of that moment in your life where it’s impossible to say more than… You want to tell someone, “I love you. Where are you? I miss us.” But you’re friends, it’s not like it’s anything romantic, but you can’t, you don’t know how to. And then you jump forward again.
And actually it’s funny, we didn’t even really cast the boys and the men to be the same physically. We just thought that if the core of them makes sense then you would believe it and you do. We never had any remarks about that. Although none of them really look the same. So there’s something that really just takes you along, and it is different. You jump to a different era in life, a different phase, and it is different, and you are different, and suddenly you have a beard.
So there’s something we thought that was exciting in taking time and then suddenly cutting and then you’ve lost that moment. It’s gone. And you’ve lost the moment and you discover that he hasn’t talked to his father in ten years, and actually he discovers it himself. Time has flown by and he’s been doing what? Nothing. Working and living. Thought he was living a fun life in the city, but then he’s like, “Fuck, what am I doing?” And that’s how life often is. The moment you realize stuff, the years have gone by. And you’re like, “Why did I have to take so long to realize this?” But that is what happens to us as people. It’s just the way it goes. You can’t force anything. You have to really realize things and then you can make a change. It takes a while sometimes.
So yeah, the editing is part of our own… it’s as if it’s a mirror of the way you experience time in your life and how quickly it passes and how slow some moments also can be. Like you can be stuck in it, things can be really slow, and then it’s gone.
Courtesy of Sideshow and Janus Films
There’s this profound idea of the eight mountains in the novel, but I love that in the movie they’re drunk when they talk about it. How did you decide to juxtapose this moment of revelry and reverence?
Felix: We knew it had to be part of the film, but it was all over in the script. It wasn’t working.
Charlotte: We tried it everywhere.
Felix: It was too serious.
Charlotte: It came across as kind of preachy.
Felix: And then we didn’t do it between Pietro and Bruno, we did it with Pietro where we see how it’s first told to him in Nepal by his girlfriend to tie those two together, but then… All of a sudden it was clear during the shooting. We did a little improvisation. We were already in the shoot when this idea came up, and then we planned it as the last scene of the second block late at night as an addition to this other scene. All of a sudden it’s clear, “This is the way it’s going to work.” Because it’s very funny and it will come across. It’s this moment where these guys who have a really hard time being open with one another, while they’re always honest, where it’s just a little more easy.
It’s so real to how people actually talk when we’re drunk and saying these profound things.
Charlotte: It’s true.
Felix: Also process.
Charlotte: Yeah, it was during the shoot when Felix was like, “Let’s try this. Let’s have them improvise it. Drunk.”
Felix: It was amazing. They played it so well.
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