Aung San Suu Kyi's tragic love and incredible life come to the big screen | World news | The Guardian

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 Bragard

Filming 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 leader 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 very 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."

via guardian.co.uk