Jan Bijvoet plays mysterious rogue in Borgman

Were you drawn to the part immediately?

I knew that if Alex asked me to do it, I would say yes – even without having read the script. I first saw his theatre plays when I was 19, and I’ve seen his films, and I find them fascinating. I am totally into the worlds he makes. I feel we are on the same wavelength in the kind of work we like to do. And then when I did read the script, it was even better than I had imagined.

What did you like about it?

Alex’s dialogue and scene descriptions illustrate a huge imagination. You always feel that there are a few layers underneath those actions. When I read something, I like to feel like my imagination has been turned on. This is Alex’s first priority. He doesn’t want to explain anything, he just wants to evoke your thoughts and emotions. If he feels that a line is offering an explanation, he’ll cut it out again. That’s how he builds his stories. He’s a bit like David Lynch that way. The characters will say perfectly normal things, but in a context that makes it very strange.

Despite the director being Dutch and the film being shot in the Netherlands, a lot of the cast is Flemish.

The entire art department on the film was Flemish, too. Alex has some kind of affinity with the Flemish mentality and with Flemish actors. He’s also worked with Flemish theatre companies. In the end, though, he doesn’t care if they are Dutch or Flemish. He wants the best person for the part.

Borgman is a mysterious character who arrives out of nowhere to manipulate this family in more and more nefarious ways. Is he real? A symbol for something? Do you know who or what Borgman is?

No, and I didn’t ask, either. It was important to just step into the fantasy and feel it without having to think something specific. I never wanted to have an opinion. Of course he is some kind of devil, some kind of criminal. But you could also say some he’s some kind of Christ. He’s a player, a joker. He’s also a human being, but he isn’t. When I read the script, that’s what I liked.

I felt there was a sense of guilt in the character of wife and mother Marina at their middle-class, privileged existence. It’s like she wants to be punished.

Yes, as if Borgman is her personal demon. In the middle ages, when a woman got pregnant out of wedlock, it was often said that an incubus came to  her while she was sleeping. Borgman does this in the film; he’s naked, and he leans over Marina and influences her dreams. That’s part of where Alex got his inspiration, from these kinds of myths. But of course that’s all conjecture, because Alex never told me!

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a new Flemish TV series called Cordon, which is about a deadly virus that gets released in Antwerp. They quarantine the entire area, and for everyone inside, it’s the law of the jungle. Koen De Bouw and I play brothers who escape from a prison in all the chaos and take hostages in a supermarket. It will air early next year, I think.

Do you find that TV and film offer an outlet that the stage doesn’t?

I never liked playing in television series or movies, in front of a camera; you have to wait for hours, shoot out of order chronologically and then get into character immediately. When I see it afterwards, it almost never satisfies me artistically. But I had the chance to work with Felix Van Groeningen in The Broken Circle Breakdown and with Alex, so now I feel perhaps there’s a bit of an outlet for me there, when I have faith in the filmmakers.