It’s hard to pin down exactly why it was that The Return brought Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche back together for an onscreen reunion nearly 30 years after their last film, but the pair certainly seemed enchanted with the idea from the start.
There’s the obvious attraction of filming a version of Homer’s mythic epic the Odyssey.
‘The script worked for both of us: the idea of it, we hadn’t worked together, and they’re hugely iconic characters, Penelope and Odysseus,’ Fiennes, 62, ticks off as the starting points while talking to Metro.
He was committed already and wooed his former Wuthering Heights co-star Binoche when she visited him while they were both shooting in Georgia, gifting her Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey.
Binoche, 61, was ‘thrilled’ that they finally had something to work on together again, following their second collaboration on 1996’s Oscar magnet, The English Patient – ‘Of course I wanted to do it!’
‘What brings two actors together is a mystery, but I think there’s a belief that you can make something that is rewarding, not just for yourselves, but for the people who are going to see it,’ muses Fiennes of The Return being the catalyst for their long-awaited reteaming.
‘But I don’t know how to analyse it, except it’s like energies that are sort of coming together in a positive way.’
The pair made this movie under the stewardship of Italian filmmaker Uberto Pasolini, shooting in Corfu, the Peloponnese and Rome during 2023, and Binoche was taken by how passionate Pasolini was about the production.
‘He had precise ideas about what he wanted, because he had the script and the story for many, many years. Since he was a little boy, I would say that was probably his dream [that] one day I’ll do something with it, because the story meant so much to him.’
She smiles as she describes the filmmaker as ‘sort of controlling in a way’, prompting Fiennes to laugh as she recalls how the cast offered their own input as they began working on The Return with Pasolini.
‘And he was happy with the ideas, but he was keen to do both – his way and our way,’ the award-winning French star adds.
Fiennes leaps in – the pair are seated together, relaxed, on a worn sofa in a Soho club – to offer his take on that discussion and ‘the idea that you don’t have a plan, as an actor’.
‘You’ve learnt your lines, you’ve thought about it, but also you need to go, “I don’t know what’s going to come at me.” And, of course, a director should be prepared and have thoughts – and often, there are some directors that have thought it down to every shot and angle.’
It sounds like Pasolini was in the latter camp, with years of dedication to a planned vision, but Fiennes calls their discussion ‘a benign debate’ where Binoche put forward the argument that their more spontaneous acting choices might not necessarily fit in with Pasolini’s planned shots.
He hastily adds: ‘Those are my words, but the implication was, allow us the space to discover. So have your plan, but please let it be flexible for what we might bring, which might hopefully add to what you’ve thought about.’
The actors are very comfortable in each other’s company, sharing talking duties and happy to take the lead or chime in where appropriate or just sit back and listen to the other answer – Fiennes often has his eyes closed while paying attention to Binoche or considering his own remarks.
The story of the Odyssey is one of the most famous in all Greek mythology, where its hero, the wily Odysseus, is away from his home of Ithaca for 20 years – 10 years fighting in the Trojan War and 10 years trying to get back through all manner of trials and tribulations. Meanwhile his wife Penelope attempts to keep a gaggle of suitors – intent on the power and wealth marrying her would bring – at bay and raise her and Odysseus’ restless son, Telemachus.
Focusing on just the final portion of his story, where Odysseus washes up on the shore of his homeland but opts to keep his identity hidden, The Return is far more about personal relationships than any fantastical gods and monsters.
Fiennes talks through his reaction to filming their first interaction onscreen with Odysseus in the guise of a beggar as ‘for both of us I think, in different ways, strong emotionally’ after so much time apart – as characters and actors.
As for Binoche’s response to the scene as an actress, she reveals she dreamt of it ahead of time.
‘Suddenly, when you’re in it, it’s, “Oh my god. It’s going so fast!” You’re, like we say in France, ca t’echappe, it’s escaping you, in a way. But that’s part of making movies, you try to give the best you can – but the best is not the biggest. It’s the right place in you and, after that, it’s the art of the editing, where it goes back and forth.’
Binoche is also pleased with how Penelope is shown in the film, with the slightly ‘surprising’ element of her being ‘p***ed off’ with Odysseus.
‘Uberto’s script made Penelope strong. Not the faithful wife waiting, with the weaving. She positions herself into the story. And I think it’s an invention of how you transform a book into a film, a point of view.’
The actress later muses on her character being ‘full of contradictions’ as she attempts to hold onto her sanity and navigate ‘a lot of responsibility, a lot of hard situations’.
‘So I understand her being upset with Odysseus, and it’s going to take time in order to reconcile. It’s not this easy situation and happy ending where Penelope says, “Yes, come my love – just in time!”.’
The indie film has only garnered more recognition and relevance since the announcement in December that Oppenheimer’s Oscar-winning director Sir Christopher Nolan was also making his own big screen version of Homer’s Odyssey.
Despite the somewhat predictable question as to comparisons between them (Binoche brushes it off with a laugh and ‘Well, you’ll have to see the film!’), Fiennes is happy to indulge it.
‘We know it’s a very big budget, that seems to indicate they’re going to go all out for special effects and gods and monsters and extraordinary set piece moments of Cyclops and Scylla and Charybdis and Calypso – so all that’s bound to be there, I suppose. I don’t know. I mean, Kirk Douglas did it many years ago,’ he says of Nolan’s anticipated, more fantastical, interpretation.
He continues: ‘What I loved about Uberto’s take was it attempted none of that. It’s pared down. It’s like a sort of lean Western, where there’s just a few people in the landscape. It boils down to a family drama in this version.
‘I’m sure it’ll be – he’s a brilliant director, Christopher Nolan, he will do something epic, magnificent, but very, very, very different. Not at all what we would do.’
The other element of The Return that’s made waves in the press is Fiennes’ impressive physical transformation for the role – where he was dubbed ‘Swoldemort’ for his toned physique.
I wonder if it’s uncomfortable to have a performance analysed in terms of how his body looks, or if he’s gets validation from people appreciating the effort that went into it?
‘We did a lot of work with a wonderful trainer, because I knew my body would be seen and I wanted it to be believable for that sort of man with that sort of past and history,’ he shares before giving insight into the toughest part – the diet.
‘All the sort of little creature comforts and things like no wine – once a week maybe – and very, very meticulous. But the masochist in me sort of went for it,’ he reveals while explaining he was in a ‘state of hunger all the time’ for three to four months.
We also discuss how The Return has been described as ‘the Odyssey with PTSD’, with Fiennes acknowledging that ‘the label came up in discussion, sure,’ but he didn’t research it, turning to Pasolini and the script instead.
‘It was more interesting what he was encouraging me to think about, which was on the page, the sense of, “I don’t know that I can come home. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know”.’
This was coupled for the actor with Odysseus’s ‘wrecked’ physical state.
‘It was helpful for me to think less of PTSD, but the specific beats of each. But I did lock into the sense of I’m lost, it’s someone who’s a bit, in a very profound way, spaced out by not knowing himself.’
As for any favourite scenes or moments as Binoche and Fiennes reflect, Fiennes’ immediate response is self-deprecating, despite his recent third Academy Award nomination for Conclave – ‘I think you always look [back] and think, “Oh I could have done that differently!”’
‘Better?’ interjects Binoche with a laugh, before offering her favourite scene, which sees a recovering Odysseus emerge from the hut where pig herder Eumaeus has been looking after him, fully nude.
‘It’s a beautiful moment, because it’s done with humility, and it’s about coming home, you’re coming back naked, and yet with all the uncertainties of how it’s going to evolve.’
The pair also both love the scene at the end where Penelope bathes Odysseus.
‘When we shot it, I felt some connection… I can’t explain what it was – maybe it’s to do [with] we shot it towards the end, and so we had played through all the more difficult, jagged moments. And so in a funny way, you and I came together in that moment, and the symbolism of washing and cleaning, and the tenderness of that,’ Fiennes shares.
‘And the healing, yes,’ adds Binoche. ‘It reminded us of The English Patient, I think. Just kidding!’ she laughs. I suggest at the very least the thread that connects all three sets of characters she and Fiennes have now played is their tumultuous relationships.
‘Tormented couples,’ agrees Binoche.
Warming up to the recollections, Fiennes then praises ‘the power’ of the scene where Penelope challenges the suitors to string Odysseus’ bow and shoot an arrow through 12 axe heads to win her hand.
‘[It] was so potent to watch you do that,’ he adds to Binoche, before revealing it allowed him to experience something he has never previously felt while making a movie.
‘Often on a film, it’s all broken up and you know that somewhere it’s going to be put together and it’s going to be – hopefully – good. But very rarely are you part of the making of those pieces.
‘Sometimes it was a bit chaotic and there were lots of technical things, but I always felt, my God, the components of this scene are somehow holding the space, despite all the movement of cameras and changing and the actors leaving the set and the scene, the energy of that final confrontation – it was on the set. It was an energy.’
‘I’ve never felt that before,’ he emphasises. ‘I’ve never felt this – as on film, you have these bits and you think the editor will make it work. But it was an extraordinary thing, that scene.’
The Return is in UK cinemas now.
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