Eric German interviews Jerome Salle, co-writer and director of Largo Winch, currently being shot in Malta

After all these years I still get tense when I do an interview. It doesn't show, but that's because I suppress it to get on with my job which I love. But in the case of Jerome Salle, I didn't have to suppress anything and interviewing him was a unique pleasure.

Intelligent and completely charming in a perfectly natural way, Salle had the gift of making me feel relaxed and comfortable the minute we met.

I didn't say anything at the time as I thought it more relevant to ask him about his career and Largo Winch, the big budget French film which he co-wrote with Julien Rappeneau, and which he's been directing in Malta.

But the subject emerged on its own later, when Salle told me: "There's only one way to do this job. I feel that the way to deal with a film, even a big one like this, is to create a happy set and a relaxed working environment."

It certainly makes sense when you hear of the miserable time some directors had while working with ego-centred actors or, vice versa, of the tense atmosphere on the set of a film directed by a dictator.

Such negative experiences affect everyone working on the film and they're very counter-productive since it's bound to show in the film. He told me that directing in Malta was "easy and our unit producer (unit production manager Malcolm Scerri-Ferrante) was very helpful".

The more I talked with Salle, the stronger my impression that it must be wonderful to work with such a film-maker.

He is very handsome and he has a very appealing personality. These, coupled with his charm and, presumably, his acting ability, were bound to make him a big star besides a director.

As I expected, Salle told me that many have made the same observation that I did. "But I would make a terrible actor," he told me as he laughed, "because I'm not an extrovert."

He started out as a screenwriter and in 2000 he wrote and directed Le Jour de Grace, a short film about a World War I incident concerning orders to execute a soldier.

Salle broke into the big time with Anthony Zimmer (2005), a romantic thriller starring Sophie Marceau and Yvan Attal who can be seen locally as the Parisian taxi driver in Rush Hour 3.

In France, Anthony Zimmer was a big success with critics and public alike, and Salle was nominated for a César for Best First Film. It was also released in the US.

Salle described it as a film which "looks like a thriller but which is a love story about two people who manipulate each other but who will do anything to earn one another's love."

It sounded like the kind of film in which the director had the difficult task of striking a balance between the thriller and love story elements.

"Yes," Salle agreed, "but that is also what stimulated me. Any movie, even if it's a youth action movie must have different levels if it's to work. I always need to work on different levels.

"If it's just on one level, say the action level, I get bored writing it and I get bored shooting it. That's what I was looking for in Anthony Zimmer and that's what I was looking for in this one."

Currently, Largo Winch is considered to be France's largest film production of the year. It has a budget of €25 million which, by Hollywood standards, is a medium range budget.

But with big Hollywood budgets, a lot of the money spent never ends on the screen as it goes to pay for gifts and the personal perks of its celebrity stars and, sometimes, even the director.

With European budgets there's no waste at all, so the audience gets much more value for its money. As Salle told me: "It's my responsibility to ensure that every euro ends up on the screen."

Malta doubles for Balkans

Largo Winch is a huge challenge for him because it has huge aspirations that Hollywood would normally make for twice the amount. The unit built a set at Malta Film Studios where a lot of the film was shot.

Other locations include a Hamrun government school which stood in for an orphanage and a police station in the Balkans; the Corinthia Palace Hotel restaurant, which doubles as a New York restaurant; Mtahleb which will appear on screen as the Balkans countryside; and a Siggiewi farmhouse and the airport, which also portray the Balkans.

Fundamentally, Malta doubles for the Balkans. Five speaking roles were given to Maltese actors and the unit employed some 350 extras. 

The story's launching pad is the death of billionaire Nerio Winch, whose body is found floating just a few yards from his yacht. This drowning appears suspicious because the victim is the founder and majority shareholder of the W Group, an empire employing 400,000 people around the globe.

The renowned businessman had no family. Who will inherit the group? This question panics the W Group's board. Without their boss and figurehead, they are incapable of ensuring the company's survival as it is already under attack from all sides on the world's financial markets.

However, they are unaware of Nerio's great secret, Largo, a son adopted almost 30 years earlier in a Bosnian orphanage and raised in total secrecy by a family of fishermen on the shores of the Adriatic. Presently, Largo is rotting in a prison in the depths of the Amazon.

Although he claims to be innocent, he's accused of drug trafficking. Could Nerio's suspected murder and Largo's imprisonment form part of a single plot designed to seize control of the Winch empire?

His breakthrough film was a small-scale project, so I asked Salle what led to his directing such a big production.

"Anthony Zimmer was smaller and shorter, though I had a big star in Sophie Marceau. It was quite a successful film, so in France it gave me a lot of power - no, I don't like that word..." I volunteered that in Hollywood he would be called a hot director at the moment.

"Yeah, exactly," he agreed. "It's always difficult to do a huge adventure movie in France because they're very expensive, but the first film gave me the opportunity to get the budget to do such a film.

"I've always wanted to do the kind of movie that I would have liked to see when I was 12 years old, a movie that my children would love to see. That was my first goal and I told myself that now is the time to do it.

"Perhaps in two years' time I wouldn't have such an opportunity. You never know what life will bring, so when the occasion arises you've got to take it and make the most of it.

"The only difficulty was that after we sold Anthony Zimmer to the Americans, I received a lot of scripts from Hollywood and some of them were very good. So I had to decide whether to go to Hollywood or to continue working in France.

"I decided to remain in France because in France I would have the final cut and I would never have that in Hollywood. In France, a director is guaranteed the final cut by law, so we're very lucky."

In Hollywood very few directors have the final cut, i.e. the right to decide what stays in the final print as it will be released and what goes out. As Salle said, usually "it's a struggle for control between the producer, the director and the studio".

The unkindest cut of all comes when a film is cut drastically after a test screening.

The audiences at such screenings consist of ordinary people picked at random and after seeing the film they fill in a questionnaire. If the major part of this audience wants changes, they usually get them.

Often, such audiences want a happy ending so if a film ended realistically, the studio may junk that ending and shoot additional footage to change the ending to a happy one.

Salle told me: "My premise of test screenings is just to know what the audience understands of my film. Does the audience understand what I want them to understand? Sometimes there may be a problem because I didn't do my job well.

"I want to be very precise so if there's something that I can change to make them understand what I meant to say, then I'll make changes. I'm very interested in that but I'm not interested to know what they like or not.

"If you use the test screening to give the audience what they're looking for, it can be very bad for the film. But if the premise of a test screening is to be sure that the audience understands the film as you intended it to be, then it's very useful."

Novels, TV and video game

Largo Winch originated as a series of graphic novels by Philippe Francq and Jean Van Hamme. They became so popular that they spawned a TV series and a video game that's also available in the US.

The TV series premiered on September 7, 2001 and ended on March 4, 2003. Salle described it as "very bad because of the terrible acting. I could never watch more than a few minutes at a time."

When I asked him why he was so interested in making this film, his reply told me that we had another thing in common, namely that our main interest lies in the film's human factor. Earlier in our interview, he told me: "For my first film I did the casting and I chose actors who were very human."

In reply to my question, Salle explained that: "Something interested me very strongly about the orphanage and the relationship between father and son."

Coincidentally or not, two years ago he wrote the screenplay for the film Trouble (international title: Duplicity) and this too was about a boy who grew up in an orphanage.

"Another thing that I found very interesting," Salle added, "is that when Largo Winch the orphan becomes a young man, he doesn't want this destiny that he has inherited from his rich adoptive father.

"In that respect it's similar to The Godfather when Michael Corleone doesn't want to become capo mafia but that's his destiny. Thirdly, I was interested in this film because it involved many cultures and various parts of the world."

The film has five different locations - Malta (for a shoot of just over three weeks), Sicily (two weeks), Hong Kong (eight weeks), and Macao. The leading actors weren't required for the Malta shoot which is unfortunate for they include one of the actresses I admire most, Kristin Scott Thomas.

She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in The English Patient, but she always gives superb performances, even in small scale films like Up at the Villa. Largo is portrayed by Tomer Sisley who does his own stunts in the film.

Contrary to my expectations, Salle didn't feel that there was an appreciable difference between directing a small scale film like his first one and a large scale one like Largo Winch, which also has quite a lot of action in it.

"I would say that it's always the same job," he replied. "The job of a director is to tell a story. If you don't know how to direct action there are technicians who will help you. For me, my job is how to tell the story and how to get the audience hooked on it.

"Action is easy to direct, the difficult part is to direct actors, to get them to convey to the audience the emotions that you're looking for. The action is a sweet for the audience but for the film to work, you must have a good story, interesting characters and the right actors.

"The latest good action movie from Hollywood is The Bourne Ultimatum. But why is it very good? It's because there's Jason Bourne's search for his identity. The action is the means to that end."

I wondered how he had chosen Malta as one of the key locations.

"I didn't know about Malta. I was looking for a location in the Mediterranean. We have an underwater scene at the beginning of the movie so we came here to see the tank. We realised it was a great place to work in because you have really good crews and you're used to working on movies.

"We decided to find different locations in Malta but there was one location that we couldn't find here and for that we went to Sicily. What was impossible for me to find in Malta were large landscapes because you have a very built island."

Before the interview I did some research on Salle and his films. I found tons of information on Anthony Zimmer and mentions of his work as a screenwriter. But I found absolutely nothing on him. One site even pleaded for information on him.

Salle laughed heartily when I told him. "I'm very discreet," he told me. I have a very normal life. I hate nightclubbing. I have four children from two wives and actually, I'm here with my children.

"So far I've managed to keep my professional and private life separate. It will be more difficult when Largo Winch is released because it's going to get huge promotion.

"Last month I was in Vietnam and it was a pleasure to talk to the press. There's never any problem about talking to the press about my movies. But I'm very careful about my private life."