Todd Haynes on 'De Noche': Todd Haynes Reveals How Smell and Sound Shape His Cinema in Lyon

Todd Haynes hired his costume designer on the spot over a smell. Speaking at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon on Tuesday, the Oscar-nominated director recalled what Mexican costume designer Anna Terrazas told him about her craft: the most important thing about a costume was what it smelled like. His answer, Haynes said, was immediate: "You're hired."

The anecdote came up as Haynes discussed "De Noche," his upcoming romantic noir drama starring Pedro Pascal. The film follows a detective (Pascal) and a younger schoolteacher (Danny Ramirez) who flee the corruption of 1930s Los Angeles for Mexico.

"We see movies with our ears and our eyes," Haynes explained. "But movies that evoke smell and touch and other kinds of senses are the ones that keep allowing us to fill in."

Haynes is in Lyon with longtime producer Christine Vachon for a retrospective of four of his films: "Poison," "Safe," "Far From Heaven" and "I'm Not There." The first two screen in newly restored versions.

How does Haynes prepare for a film?

He gives himself an assignment before each production. Haynes said he immerses himself in films that share a project's genre or cinematic style rather than its historical setting. That research feeds into what he calls his "image books," which he shares with collaborators.

The method shaped "May December," his Oscar-nominated film with Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. While assembling its image book, Haynes began listening to Michel Legrand's score for Joseph Losey's "The Go-Between." He played the music on set from the first day, using it to choreograph camera movements. By the editing stage, it had become so central that he asked composer Marcelo Zarvos to rearrange and adapt it.

"We couldn't let it go," Haynes recalled. "It became a definitive part of the structure, the language, and the energy of the film."

What did the Lyon retrospective bring back?

Haynes had watched the restored version of "Safe" the previous evening. He praised sound designer Leslie Shatz for the unsettling soundscape of the 1995 drama, in which Moore plays a woman suffering from a mysterious illness.

He described "all of the strange, lurking, unconscious sounds" that created what he called "a kind of magnetic field in which the contamination she senses from her surroundings becomes literally audible."

On "Carol," his six-time Oscar-nominated 2015 romance, Haynes recalled how journalists kept congratulating him and stars Cate Blanchett and Cannes Best Actress winner Rooney Mara for portraying strong women. Blanchett, he said, would object: her character was not an invincible heroine but a woman constrained by her time, struggling to understand herself and how she wanted to live.

"There is something radical and anti-social about love," Haynes said, citing Roland Barthes' "A Lover's Discourse," passages of which he shared with his actors.

Who kept these films alive?

Haynes paid tribute to Vachon, who helped rescue "Safe" when he struggled to raise its $1 million budget. The film, he said, would not exist without her.

Vachon recalled the practical advice she gave him when he proposed his first feature, "Poison," as three interconnected 20-minute stories. "I said, you know what, Todd? Make it 90 minutes," she said.

She also made pointed observations about independent cinema. She sees younger Americans flocking to repertory theaters, including her own 26-year-old daughter, but she worries about the supply side.

"I feel like we are creating a new generation of cinemagoers, but we're just not giving them enough movies to see," Vachon said.

What might the surprise screening hold?

Haynes revisited his childhood obsession with Lucille Ball, which inspired his autobiographical short "Dottie Gets Spanked." He then teased a possible pairing with "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," his cult short made with Barbie dolls, rarely shown publicly since legal disputes over its music rights.

The filmmaker was hinting heavily at the festival's surprise screening on Wednesday evening at the Institut Lumière. The Lumière Film Festival runs in Lyon through Oct. 18.