Filling the Void: Robert Lepage and Pedro Pires talk about Triptych

While attending the 38th Toronto International Film Festival Trevor Hogg had an opportunity to chat with Robert Lepage and Pedro Pires about the making of Triptych…

Robert Lepage

“The thing is that my theatre background is very filmic,” remarks Robert Lepage (Le Confessional) who along with co-director Pedro Pires (Yo-Yo Ma Inspired by Bach) adapted his 9 hour stage play Lypsynch into a 90 minute film called Triptych.  “They’re all screaming to become a movie.  Once you want to bring them to film it’s a radically different evolution; that’s where Pedro comes in and is very useful because he does everything.”  In regards to the creative collaboration with his colleague who handled the editing and cinematography, Lepage states, “I’m the restaurant owner and he’s the cook.”  Pedro Pires quickly points out, “I am the cook but I also have a couple of recipes of my own.” When it comes to multi-tasking, Pires observes, “Steven Spielberg [Lincoln] and Stanley Kubrick [Paths of Glory] said that the better way to learn to make a movie is to make one and to do everything.  You will learn faster than if a hire a lot of people.  It will be rough and maybe it won’t be a masterpiece but you will learn.”

Pedro Pires

Triptych which screened at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival tells the interconnecting stories of two sisters, a schizophrenic bookseller, and a jazz singer who loses her voice because of brain surgery, and the discontented German surgeon who performed the operation.  Some clever transitions involve a MIR scan dissolving to the image of the brain on the computer screen and an operatic song which becomes the voice of a young girl taking singing lessons.    “That’s part of Robert’s work in theatre and film which is to have those sophisticated transitions,” believes Pedro Pires.  “A lot of stuff was unplanned,” admits Robert Lepage.  “What I found to be interesting is that you shoot all of this material and have all of these great transition ideas and you do them.  ‘They’re cool and nice.’  But then there are these extraordinary things in the material that you don’t expect and suddenly they’re close cousins.  You say, ‘This goes here.’  Usually, they contain the essence of the film.”

Much of the colour is drained throughout the film.  “It’s a question of personal taste for me,” notes Pedro Pires.  “Maybe I’m too sepia guy.  I like that kind of palette and it just worked out that way.”  The look was inspired by the Italian Renaissance such as the frescos in the Vatican and the works of Caravaggio.  “Triptych is a religious painting reference,” explains Robert Lepage who often makes use of religious imagery.   “We come from Latin cultures which are extremely embedded in the whole Catholicism.  The characters often in my plays and in this film have spiritual gaps.  You have a brain surgeon, frescos and questions about faith and what are the consequences of the soul.”

Ghostly visions of the two sisters Michelle and Marie as children heighten the sense of a disturbed mind recalling the past.  “Michelle is supposed to hear voices,” says Pedro Pires.  “But we added that visual extrapolation to give more depth to the character.”  Robert Lepage was proud of the end result.  “There are a lot of dark dead ends suggested and you think, ‘It’s going to be one of those dark films where she is going to commit suicide.  The other one is never going to get her voice back and this guy is going to finish as an alcoholic.’  They all eventually found within their little realities the solutions.  You’re trying to find the key the construct and it’s lets take the pitch down a few notches and you’ll find your father.  You always expect these big answers.”