On December 5, the IndieWire Honors Winter 2024 ceremony will celebrate the creators and stars responsible for crafting some of the year’s best films. Curated and selected by IndieWire’s editorial team, IndieWire Honors is a celebration of the filmmakers, artisans, and performers behind films well worth toastingIn the days leading up to the event, IndieWire is showcasing their work with new interviews and tributes from their peers.
Ahead, “Emilia Perez” director Jacques Audiard tells IndieWire about the many qualities that set our Spotlight Award winner, Selena Gomez, apart from the crowd.
“She Spent So Many Hours in the Spotlight”* or, Selena the Oxymoron.
First, I must confess that before I knew Selena, I did not know her. What I mean by this is that before I really got to know her, i.e. face to face, I was completely unaware of her fame. I had no idea how many “followers” she had. But in New York, I was surprised by how nervous the young interpreter who accompanied me to my first meeting with Selena was.
-You don’t know her?, she asked me.
-No.
-Not at all?
-Should I?
The interpreter, too stunned to reply, nervously fidgeted with her bag.
Now I need to go back a few months, to when I was looking for an actress to play the part of Jessi. I had seen very few of Selena’s films: “Spring Breakers” and, more recently, a Woody Allen film. That was it. It was Gloria (14 years old), the daughter of a dear friend, who mentioned her name to me one day.
-What about Selena Gomez, do you know her?
-Not really.
-She’s amazing, I love her. She’s an icon.
-An icon? Did you just learn that word?
Gloria shrugged, took out her phone and typed “Selena”— not “Selena Gomez,” just “Selena.” A million photos immediately appeared: a young woman with brown hair, pale skin, a dark gaze, and a little girl’s smile.
Don’t ask if I’m on social media, just watch my films: it’s obvious that I’m not. Or look at my recent passport photos: my spectacles, my bald head, my gruff face. If you ask me, a guy like that doesn’t belong on social media, so it’s not that strange that he doesn’t know Selena Gomez.
New York. Back to our morning appointment in a bar. The reason for my interpreter’s anxiety is before us: bundled up in a coat, barely awake, absolutely normal and totally charming. Selena. She politely tells me how much she likes those of my films that she’s seen. I foolishly act humble:
-Oh, come on, let’s not exaggerate, etc.
-If you want I can tell you how bad they are, or I can say nothing at all, she coolly replies.
From that moment on, in my book it was a done deal. It was her. After fifteen minutes, I shyly spoke as if I were asking for a young woman’s hand in marriage:
-It’s going to be you, I want to work with you.
The problem with shy people is that you can’t hear them well and you’re even less likely to believe them. When a few months later my producers called her about the contracts, she was so surprised that she replied:
-Oh, I thought he’d forgotten all about me!
On the set, Selena is a living oxymoron, a daily contradiction: strong, fragile, determined, indeterminate, present, absent, sick, healthy as can be, chatty, quiet, etc. A string of commonplaces, you’ll tell me, and yet all that is true, the “Emilia Pérez“ crew can bear witness to it. One thing I still have trouble understanding: how could someone who works so much, who has worked so much, who has “spent so many hours in the spotlight,” still be filled with doubt? How could she be so talented and so insecure, so vulnerable?
If I go a little deeper into this question that can’t be answered, this mystery, I am returned to that moment in the café in New York when everything became clear: What did I see in that face, in those expressions? What did I hear in the tone of her voice?
Though I couldn’t yet articulate it, at that moment Selena was taking her place in my portrait gallery of women, next to Mouchette, Monika, Myriam Hopkins, Louise Brooks, Marion Cotillard, Emmanuelle Devos…
Selena comes from Selene, the Greek goddess of the moon, that poetic place of which so many of us dream.
*I’m referring here to Philippe Garrel’s beautiful film “Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights.”
Read Selena Gomez’s full IndieWire Honors profile.
