#488 – Cut/daily Meets... Editor Olivier Bugge Coutté

I loved Sentimental Value and I loved the way it was edited.

The film has such compelling performances, crafted with real nuance, discipline and soul.

Olivier Bugge Coutté edited this film brilliantly alongside long-time collaborator and friend, Director Joachim Trier. If you've not seen it yet, make time for it. It will stay with you.

Art of the Cut also has a wonderful conversation filled with insights on Olivier's approach to editing that's also well worth a read.

Given the number of bonus questions I asked this time around, hopefully you can tell how much I loved the film.

The film feels like it has an old soul in it. Part of that comes from the observational moments of beauty - the shadows on the wood, the story of the house, the unspoken moments of pain and friendship in a look.

But all of that really comes down to a balance of pace within the shots, the scenes and within the whole structure.

How do you navigate that pacing of a moment to maximise the emotion of it, whilst staying cognisant of the overall narrative arc of the film? Is it all instinct? If so, how have you honed that gut feeling?

That's a really, really good question, but that's almost impossible for me to answer.

Because that's all a question about who you are as a human being and as an artist.

What are the things that touches you and where do you see an artistic and poetic value?

It's not instinct, but it's a sensibility to the material that Joachim shoots. And I'm very used to his material. And for me, it's some of the most beautiful material that I can get.

And I feel we have very much the same tone and approach to the beauty of a shot, the pace of a scene, where to leave dialogue wordless and where to pick up the pace again. And that's a very individual sensibility that I have developed together with Joachim.

We both enjoy this process very much and recognize when we see it, we always laugh at the same jokes in the film. And we have the same feelings, when a pace needs to be picked up or a moment needs to be extended, or when words need to be taken out.

One of the most striking - yet really refreshing - aspects of the editing is the hard cuts to black when a scene is done.

You've said that "I try to enter the scene at a moment where you ask yourself a lot of questions, so that you are deep inside the scene already. Then try to get out at a peak moment. So you're left with the emotions when you leave the scene, or questions if it's something that has to do about driving the story forward."

How do you find those places?

Some of the cuts to black were already written in the script, and while they may not have ended exactly where they were originally meant to, the idea of cutting to black was already proposed by the script.

Joachim's scripts rarely have a structure where scenes follow scenes in a classical way. So in order to tell the audience that you shouldn't expect all the scenes to be just set up and pay off, cutting to black is a great way to reset time and space. You can go and cut to black, you can cut to a historical moment, you can cut to a dream, and you've got your montage.

And people will accept that it doesn't necessarily link directly to the scene that came before, but in the overall structure, it will drive the film forward. It allows you to go in a completely new direction.

I like when art asks a lot of questions. I like it when the audience, as a viewer of a painting would, has to work on what’s going on in front of them, when they don’t have all the answers immediately. They should be able to look at it, leave the room, come back, look at it again, and be able look at it over and over again.

It’s the same with when you cut the scene. You shouldn't be told everything all the time. I love the situation when you are lost in a scene and you have to work to discover what exactly is the interpretation of this moment.

And that can be physically when you open up the scene. I don't know where I am. I'm opening up straight on a face of Nora. I can see that she's in panic, but I don't know if she's acting inside of a theater play, inside of a film, or if it's her real emotions.

I also like when a scene doesn't give you the answers. It raises a lot of questions in a psychological way. It can describe the relationship between the two persons, but it doesn't resolve completely at the end. It just leaves.

That allows scenes to compel questions about the audience’s interpretation, and how it resonates in them psychologically. It also gives a momentum, in the sense that the more questions a scene can ask, the longer the film as a whole will keep the audience engaged. You can wait to give them the final answer until just before the end credits.

What kind of coverage did you have in the film? What did your dailies look like?

The film feels like it has both a very designed moments - after Rachel leaves the film, the house is so dominant in every frame - and then for some of the conversational scenes, lots of different fluid angles - I'm reminded of the shot of the two daughters sitting next to the bed and we just see the tops of their heads - but that shot is only used for one turn of a head (as far as I remember).

Can you talk us through how you cut some of those moments?

Joachim doesn't shoot a lot of takes. Maybe three to five, but he does use a lot of angles. And I often end up not using all the angles.

For instance, in the scene with the two sisters where Nora reads the script for the first time, there was a tracking shot coming in from the side that should end on her face when she finally realizes what the script is about.

But we didn't use that because the presence between the sisters is felt much stronger in the shot that is close to them when they are almost looking at each other. I like very much when a shot is at its most powerful emotionally, in order to minimize the use of it.

Like that shot of the sisters from the back of the bed was, also a shot where the whole scene and the whole discussion between them before she gets on the bed had played out, but it becomes so powerful and gives us so much feeling when you only use the shot for a brief moment.

That way, it sticks out and becomes so powerful.

I love it when a really good actor or actress can play out a whole range of emotions, moving from one emotional point to another, all within the same shot, then I really don't want to cut.

Then, I prefer to stay on one shot and just watch everything as it plays out. 

You've said here that you removed much of the Rachel leaving sequence - when cutting a sequence back, how do you discern the parts that can be removed to strengthen what remains?

That's hard to say in a general way. It's very much up to how the scene is built.

Sometimes it's great to cut to the moment in the scene where the decision has been made. And you try to follow the people when they execute the consequences of that decision.

And sometimes it's the build up to that decision that is the most interesting, and then the consequences are not as interesting, so it's hard to make a general rule.

It depends very much on where the sequence is in the film, and whether you're building up the psychology of a character, as you might be more towards the beginning of the film, or if it is at the end of the film, where you're more looking at the consequences of the decisions that have been made.

But in general, my experience is that the audience needs much less setup. In general, they often understand what's going on without you having to explain how you got to this point.

There are quite a few different 'needle drops' in the film - all from really eclectic eras and styles - how do you work with music and score in the process of your edit? When do you know it's the right time to use a specific cue?

Joachim has a great taste in music, and he's also a DJ, so at the beginning of the editing process, he's always providing me with a big pool of music, easily between 50 and 75 tracks of various kinds - classic, 70s, disco, 90s, whatever. Loads of different music.

Sometimes he has a specific idea for a piece of music. And sometimes we just experiment. Sometimes the music is descriptive of the person that you see in the sequence. Like Joy Division is the music of Gustav's era in the 90s. Sometimes it's more of a feeling.

When we put Dancing Girl at the opening of the film, it felt so right. It reminds me of all the films that I loved in American cinema of the 70s. When I hear Dancing Girl, for me, it evokes the same feeling as when I hear Simon and Garfunkel over the opening of The Graduate or Harry Nilsson at the opening of Midnight Cowboy.

It's all a part of that playfulness that I hope Joachim and I still have, and the desire to build scenes in an entertaining way.