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Back in his dressing room, Irons reaches for his dog-eared, much-underlined copy of Josephine Hart's 1991 best-seller Damage, on which the movie is based. "Louis hates me using the novel like this,'' he whispers, meaning that Malle insists the actor's inspiration come from the script alone. '''Later there would be time for the pain and pleasure lust brings to love,''' Irons reads, a bit surreptitiously. He puts the book down. ''Those scenes had to be wild, really wild. These two characters are trying to get totally inside each other.'' Another low-tar cigarette joins the pile in the ashtray, and Irons adds cheerfully, ''We call them the f--- scenes.''

''How could Jeremy say that?'' protests Binoche when she hears her costar's comments. ''This film is not about eroticism or sex, it's about the obsession to be unified.''

Such differences plagued the production from the start. The very first day of shooting, when Irons and Binoche barely knew each other, called for a scene in which Anna leaves Stephen's son (Rupert Graves) in a Paris hotel and joins Stephen in the cobblestone street below. Their meeting culminates in a doorway tryst, Binoche, naked underneath her coat, wrapping herself around Irons' tall, gaunt body.

''That first day was one big argument,'' recalls Binoche, pulling her black turtleneck sweater over her mouth and nose. ''I wasn't prepared to do that love scene.''

''Juliette was wary in those early days and trying to protect herself,'' says Irons. ''We were men, wanting to see her body.'' To Binoche, who first made a splash in 1988's sensual The Unbearable Lightness of Being, it seemed that the men only wanted to see, not hear, her.

''I was so shocked that David (Hare, the screenwriter) and Louis and Jeremy discussed Anna without Josephine (Hart) or me,'' she says, biting her lower lip in fury. "Eventually I was invited to join them, but when I said I didn't think Anna loved Stephen, it was like a revolution, disaster! They thought, 'Oh, she doesn't understand her character.' I felt it was impossible for a woman to share these men's discussions."

Even Malle found his temper running short. As shooting progressed he grew increasingly exasperated with Irons' obsessional interest in his character and references to the novel. When the director finally broke down and shouted, ''This is my film!'' the actor shot back, ''Then what am I doing here?''

''I think Louis was perturbed by the breadth of my concern,'' Irons says, smiling. ''Jeremy is always a little tense on set,'' Malle says with a laugh.

In the relative calm of his editing room, three months later, Malle tries to put his finger on what made this film such an ordeal. ''Somehow you always end up leading the life of your characters,'' he says. ''Which is why this film has been so disturbing for all of us. Damage has produced extreme reactions in people. But that, after all, is what I wanted.''


Posted Jan 22, 1993 | Published in issue #154 Jan 22, 1993 | Order Article Reprints
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