- It would be super embarrassing [laughs]
as actors and director if we watch
and we're just like sobbing and there's like tears all over.
- Hi, I'm Florian Zeller.
- Hi, I'm Hugh Jackman.
- And I'm Laura Dern.
- And this is Notes on the Scene.
- I feel like a complete failure.
- What are you talking about?
Kate, you're not a failure in any way.
- Sorry.
It's just I never imagined he'd leave home.
- So this is a scene
20 minutes from the beginning of the film.
And so it's basically the parents trying to deal
with this mystery of having a son in pain.
And this is the first time, for years maybe,
that they are together.
We made a decision to go closer and closer.
And so that's the action, in a way,
in that scene is the emotions.
- You know, I mean, he's the one who asked me.
- Yes, the problem started with me.
- Of course it didn't.
- Yes.
He doesn't wanna live with me anymore.
I call and he doesn't even pick up.
- What's incredible about dancing,
well I guess literally and figuratively with Hugh Jackman
is every take was, you know, this delicious surprise
of their broken humanity.
And I'm just remembering there was one take
that was less open, but such an important teacher for me
in terms of my coverage.
You can't have two people falling apart.
And I felt almost embarrassed
to have been so vulnerable in front of you.
But here you chose the take where
we are so locked into each other.
But we did all kinds of, I was resistant,
I was overly emotional.
I mean that's what's so beautiful about exploring
and then how gorgeous to watch
how your director chooses the story.
- A few days ago I found this photo of him.
- I want to give some context here
on something that Laura did.
We were sitting opposite each other at the table
and there's this incredible moment,
which I think you did in rehearsal
on one of the first takes where you just shifted,
you were looking in your bag for a photo
of our boy when he was young
and she just shifted her seat to come around.
So there's an intimacy and a slight break
of the formality of a table
and that somehow cracked something open-
- Yeah. - -in the scene.
That was, I don't know if that was instinctive
but it was very sort of disarming and beautiful.
- When I look at that photo, I'm devastated.
- We're connecting over our worry of where he's at
and also reminiscing and feeling the pain of what,
of the joy that he had, a natural joyous kid who's,
that joy seems to have gone
and so we're connecting over that.
She looks at the photo a lot.
I think it cuts back to me for a bit.
I'm looking at the photo too.
You see that connection even when she's saying, "in you".
- I loved you so much Peter.
- And what's interesting is I am running
from all that I'm feeling in the earlier part of the scene.
But once the shift happens and you come in that tight,
there's no more escaping.
So this is the willingness that we both
had to be completely transparent with each other.
- [Hugh] Yeah. - [Laura] And I see it
so beautifully on your face too.
What you're saying is don't be so upset.
- [Hugh] Right.
- But, personally, that's not at all what I see you saying.
- If you knew how much I loved you.
- It takes a long time for the eyes to come up
because it's safer for us.
And what we're hoping is really come together over our son.
What is then revealed is all the pain
and that's so incredible the way you do that.
It's a beautifully written scene.
I just had to turn up.
- That's why the scene start with, in that moment,
with there was so much joy in our family, with pure regrets,
and that was one sentence that was so dear to me
when I wrote the script
and I really loved the way you did you, you said back then,
I mean to slightly detach from the whole sentence.
- There was so much joy in our family back then.
I don't know what happened.
- What I got, in that moment, looking into Laura's eyes
was little doubt
about what he has done about leaving her.
He can see and believe real unconditional love
that this woman had, may still have.
I so believe this love that she had for him,
that was so deep,
that, how could I do that to another person?
Why did I let it go?
Why is that not enough?
It makes me so sad to watch this,
to think that before they broke up,
I don't think any version of this conversation happened.
But this calm, truthful, naked, vulnerable admission
of love and the intensity of it.
- When you think about it,
there is so much joy in our family back then.
- So this is the first time we hear,
and she must go, in the film.
And I remember when we thought about
including music here
it was about trying to create like waves
and the idea was to create something
that was connected to the idea of being on the beach
with waves and basically throughout the whole film
it's the same few notes,
the same waves, growing and growing.
So I really liked the idea that
through that picture the music starts
and will overwhelm us throughout the film.
The destination of that scene was
to be as close as possible cause I knew that
what would matter here would be
what they would try to conceal
and not what they were saying.
And I knew that
to catch these invisible parts of their performance,
but also, somehow to have both
of them in the same frame.
This black space between the two of them,
so that you feel the presence, is already,
is also in the frame, but out of focus
and there is like a a connection and attraction
between the two of them
and they are completely together in the same moment.
And we completely forget that we are in a public space,
in the restaurant, at the beginning of the scene
we had like people talking, you know,
the atmosphere of a public space.
Everything is gone now.
We are just in the black hole of love regrets.
We don't know exactly what his is feelings at that moment.
It's layers of different things
and the fact that there are many things at the same time,
we can feel that he's about to embrace her or to run away.
I mean both at the same time.
- Right. - But the guilt is here
already as well.
- Yes it will. It will.
Believe me Kate, everything will be fine.
- You think so?
- Yeah. - We shot the whole scene
in one day and because we started very wide,
and we come closer and closer,
but step by step, these two last shots
we did them like in the 10 last minutes.
What was important for me is that
I think what you can feel in these performances
is everything that we explored all together, during the day.
So it was a long journey to catch that moment.
- I remember feeling
kind of elated
and so grateful and alive.
It was one of those scenes, you went,
that's a perfectly written scene
and I'm with Laura Dern
and I just can't wait to shoot that.
It felt timeless while we were doing it
and at the end of it
it felt, I felt elated.
I felt so grateful.
It's one of those days I'll never forget.