Aung San Suu Kyi and her husband, Michael Aris, played by Michelle
Yeoh and David Thewlis, in the Luc Besson-directed film The Lady.
Photograph: Magali BragardFilming in Oxford is almost complete on
an Anglo-French big screen version of the remarkable life of
Aung San Suu Kyi with Michelle Yeoh as the Burmese opposition
and David Thewlis as her university academic husband.
 

The Guardian today publishes the first stills from a Luc Besson-directed
movie which will be called The Lady, the name by which she is known by
a Burmese population banned from saying her real name.

Aung San Suu Kyi was released from her latest period of house arrest
by Burma‘s generals in November, which meant Yeoh could meet the
woman she is playing.

Yeoh told the Guardian: “The first thing we did is hug and I thought you
are really skinny, man. One of the first things she said was ‘why doesn’t
the BBC world service have more music?’

“You feel a real sense of calm when you’re with her. She’s a very striking
figure. She is so proud of her culture and the best way to show it is with
dignity and elegance. She has a glow and an aura about her.”

The film will chart her remarkable journey from housewife bringing up
her children in Oxford to taking on the power of Burma’s generals by
becoming opposition leader.

It will build up to that awful choice she had to make between country
and family when her husband, Michael Aris, was diagnosed with
terminal cancer.

Yeoh, who made her name in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was
instrumental in getting Besson on board to direct, helping to set up
a meeting with the producer Andy Harries – who made The Queen
and the French director at Cannes.

Besson said Aung San Suu Kyi was “more of a heroine than Joan of Arc”
and he hoped the film would get her ongoing fight better known.

“It is the fight of a woman without any weapons, just her kindness
and her mentality. She is very Gandhi like.

“She says we should have the right to decide our future, we should have
the right to express ourselves. She is asking for things we all have and
don’t even think about any more.

“How often in history do you have a person, a woman, who never curses,
never steals anything, never does anything illegal and you put her under
house arrest for 24 years, it is just insane.”

The film is a co-production between Besson’s Europacorp and Harries’s
Left Bank Pictures and has been written by the novelist and screenwriter
Rebecca Frayn – Harries’s wife and the daughter of Michael Frayn.

Harries said the genesis of the project goes back to the early 1990s when
he and his wife visited Burma. “At the time Suu Kyi had just won the
election but was under house arrest. It was an extraordinary experience
for us. On the one hand, it is a stunningly beautiful country but on the
other it is frightening – the austerity, the poverty, the sadness of the
people. We weren’t really allowed to go anywhere and people were
scared of talking to us. It left a long impression on both of us.”

The film is not a biopic, said Harries. It will be set between 1988 –
when Aung San Suu Kyi left Oxford to visit her sick mother and
ended up staying – and 1999, the year Aris died after being diagnosed
with cancer. Aris had been forbidden from entering Burma, a decision
that left Aung San Suu Kyi with the almost impossible decision of
whether to stay or go.

“The film builds to that incredible and depressing crossroads,” said Harries.
“That is the human tragedy of it all.”

Harries had something of a road to travel to get where they are today.
When, about three years ago, the project was in its early stages Aung San
Suu Kyi had slipped under the radar – she wasn’t news.

After 18 months research and writing by Frayn they had a script but
bad timing.

“We were slipping in to the recession and this was going to be a tough,
expensive movie,” said Harries. It was too costly for it to be TV and
came as Hollywood was veering towards bankable popcorn movies
and away from risky drama.”

Harries ploughed on nevertheless, deciding that key to the whole
project would be the actor playing Aung San Suu Kyi. “There was
never any doubt in my mind about who should play her, Michelle Yeoh
was perfect.”

There is about three weeks of filming left and it is due for an autumn
release.

The script was sent to her agent. “Michelle rang me 24 hours later
saying she’d read the script and she was coming to London to meet
me. We met, she looked at me and said ‘this is a fantastic script, how
are we going to do it?’ ”

Although they are making the film without Aung San Suu Kyi’s permission,
Harries said they felt a heavy obligation to get it right. “This is a
interesting story, a powerful story and, I think, an important story.
She has not had the publicity that, say, Mandela had.

“Her situation is remarkably similar, she is one of those extraordinary
people driven by principle who are determined to bring about change
peacefully.”

Harries said writing the script involved talking to people involved in the
story including monks, activists, diplomats and academics. “It is a bit like a
jigsaw involving a very wide group of people who knew her, knew him,
knew the family.

“A lot of the story, or the story we wanted to tell … of their relationship,
is not known. It is a fantastic love story.”