Olivier Assayas on Cold Water, His Breakout Film, Restored at Last

Olivier Assayas was on the phone last month discussing Janus Filmss recent 4k restoration of Cold Water (Leau froide)—his daring, deeply felt 1994 coming-of-age drama—which was finally about to reach American shores. He let go a sigh of relief.

“Its really thanks to Criterion and a lot of people in France and in the U.S. that we managed to save the film and restore it,” said the director, best known (at least by stateside audiences) for his recent dual collaborations with Kristen Stewart in Personal Shopper and Clouds of Sils Maria. Assayas added that the current version of the film, originally shot on 16mm and restored via digital post-production, has resulted in “something thats much brighter and with a lot more detail than what the original film print had. We have better sound, better image. Its kind of a new film—but its been a long road.”

After screening at an Assayas retrospective at the Austin Film Society and serving as the centerpiece of a SXSW conversation with Richard Linklater,Cold Water officially opens at Manhattans IFC Center on Friday, April 27.

The piece was initially commissioned as an hour-long television film for the series All the Boys and Girls of Their Age (Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge), which tasked nine filmmakers—including similarly bold cinematic voices like Chantal Akerman, Claire Denis, and Olivier Dahan—to make movies about their teenage years, using the music they were listening to at the time. But Assayas was not compelled by the idea of directing an hour-long TV movie on a barely there budget, which would air on television once. What if he made a feature instead—something with real staying power?

The result—a 90-minute, semi-experimental film that features an unforgettable dusk-to-dawn party scene at an abandoned country house—opened at the Cannes Film Festival in May of 1994 and traveled the world, where it screened at most major festivals. “Everybody was kind of surprised when the film was finished and they kind of liked it,” Assayas said. “They thought it would be unwatchable or boring or whatever—no one had any high expectations for the longer version.” Yet for all its early, out-of-the-blue success, Assayas has since lamented the series of unfortunate events that prevented the films wider release—until now. Its sales company went belly-up; its French producers went bankrupt; and its expensive soundtrack required serious renegotiation before the film could see the light of day again.

Loosely drawn from the directors rock music-soaked youth, Cold Water traces two star-crossed teens, Gilles (Cyprien Fouquet) and Christine (Virginie Ledoyen), living on the outskirts of Paris as they naïvely navigate their dual desires for societal and familial escape. Their ill-fated romance, and frequent bouts of rebellion, unfold to an iconic soundtrack meticulously curated by Assayas and featuring the music of Nico, Bob Dylan, Roxy Music, and Leonard Cohen.

Even though ill-managed music rights were largely responsible for the films long-delayed release, Assayas insisted that including original music was pivotal to capturing the period. “For the music I was listening to, you had, like, three shops in Paris selling the records. You fantasized about the music before you accessed it,” he said. To keep up with the American charts, Assayas recalled trawling the pages of British publications like NME at the newsstand. “I would read about the new albums and new bands and dream about them before I could actually hear them . . . The one way you could listen to music was on this English-language radio transmitting from Luxembourg in English.” Echoing one of the films early scenes, in which Gilles and his brother jump through hoops just to hear the infectious opening chords of Roxy Musics “Virginia Plain” (a defining moment on the 1972 summer charts), Assayas remembered, “You could tune in to it in France—as long as you had the right angle and the antennae was in the right direction.”

Fouquet and Ledoyen light up the screen with their unvarnished realism—even though Fouquet, as Assayas said, had never acted before. “Looking back, Im extremely happy I found Cyprien, who is such an embodiment of the person I was when I was his age,” he said. “Its kind of disturbing sometimes.”

Ledoyen, on the other hand, had some experience from years as a child actress. Though he wanted to cast relative unknowns, and was concerned that Ledoyen might prove a bit too “preppy” for the character he envisioned, Assayas could not deny her ability to play a psychologically complex, mature-beyond-her-years female lead. “Virginie was amazing,” he said. “Every time I happen to watch the film again, I thank God I could capture whatever Virginie was at that age. She had such an incredibly magnetic presence.”

Its not lost on Assayas that his current on-screen muse, Kristen Stewart, possesses a similarly magnetic aura: “I think theres something very raw and very honest [in their performances]. You know, its completely unconscious, but Im sure when I was filming Kristen, it was also inspired by working with Virginie.”

Given the films minimal budget and four-week shoot, certain scenes were hardly kept true to the 70s. One clearly takes place in a 1990s supermarket, “and no one cares,” Assayas said with a laugh. Even so, he continued, “I think there is some sort of poetic autobiography in this film. The conflicting emotions you have when you are a teenager. Its a violent moment in anyones life . . . I think [the film] deals with teenage fears, teenage dreams, fantasies, in a way anybody whos gone through that age can understand, hopefully.”

Now, as his growing American fan base experiences this long-lost breakout for the first time, Assayas said that hes found himself renegotiating his own relationship to the film, an early portent of his works distinctly out-of-time appeal. “I look back at that film and kind of laugh—I couldve made it in the 1970s,” he said. “I think the line will blur—the more time passes, the more the line blurs and the more this film belongs to the 70s, in a strange way.”

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