An Arctic drama starring Juliette Binoche, which tells the story of two stubborn women drawn together in dramatic circumstances involving the male explorer they both love, has opened the 65th Berlin film festival.

Set in the icy climes of Greenland in 1908, Nobody Wants the Night was directed by Isabel Coixet and inspired by the true story of Josephine Peary, the naive but determined wife of Robert Peary, the American explorer at the forefront of several expeditions to reach the North Pole.

Asked how she had coped with the cold during filming, Binoche who plays Josephine, said most of the time the actors had to “create the chills” because much of the picture was filmed in a hot studio.

“It was really bloody warm in the studio [with] the lights and the wind. We had the capacity with our imaginations to create chills ... that’s the the beauty of the imagination,” said the French actor.

The Berlin film festival opens with an Arctic love-triangle starring Juliette Binoche and Gabriel Byrne, who reveals how many of the chills needed to be bussed in via a meat truck

But Gabriel Byrne, who plays Bram Trevor, a loner and explorer who risks his life to help Josephine reach her husband, revealed that on one occasion a refrigerated meat truck had been brought onto the set at the request of the French actor, to help induce the sensation of cold. “But I only went in it twice,” Binoche sheepishly admitted.

Ignoring the advice of experts, Josephine sets out on a gruelling trek to join her husband of 20 years on what is expected to be the last of his adventures. On the way she meets Allaka, a young Inuit woman played by Japanese actor Rinko Kikuchi, who she soon discovers is her husband’s mistress and expecting his child. Both women end up becoming close during their long tense wait, as they try to survive the harsh conditions of the Arctic north. Their relationship becomes essential to their survival.

“She did go to see her husband at the North Pole and she did meet this woman Allaka and she was remarkable,” Binoche said, saying her research had included reading Josephine Peary’s writings. She said that she was fascinated by the change her character undergoes, from being a snobbish, educated socialite from the Park Avenue area of New York — who opens the film with the memorable line “I got my first bear” when she shoots dead a polar bear — to that of a humbled woman who discovers herself through the extreme experience.

“To me the meaning of this film is [in the] western white educated person ... [who] goes into the wilderness and she encounters a new way of thinking, a new way of living and this nowhere place becomes the place where she learns to be human. I have this image of being a peacock at the start of the film and becoming a dog with four legs on the earth trying to survive this thing, but becoming a human being.”

Binoche went on to say that her character symbolised western arrogance. “Nobody wants the night, nobody wants to go into that dark place, but we have to sometimes if we want to become humans.”

Croixet, for whom this was a seventh appearance at the Berlinale and who did much of the close-up filming with a camera hanging from a wire, rejected most questions put to her about gender. “How I manage to work so much?” she said in response to one question about her prestigious output as a female director. “Maybe I have a dick.”

She admitted it was hard working as a female director. “Making a movie is a road paved with stones ... all I want is the same stones that the man is having.” However she did stress it had been important for her to tell the story of North Pole exploration from a woman’s perspective. “Nobody has told the story of the North Pole from the point of view of a woman,” she said.

Parts of the picture, which variously shows the main protagonists melting ice over open fires, chewing on raw walrus and dog meat and wrapping themselves in animal skins, was filmed in remote parts of rural Norway and Bulgaria. The film is one of 19 in competition for Berlin’s Golden Bear prize, which will be awarded on Feb 14 by a jury headed by the director Darren Aronofsky.

—By arrangement with the Guardian

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2015

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