Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds have been playing social media frenemies since their characters met in 2009’s X-Men Origins so it was only ever a matter of time before the duo did their faux sniping and trash-talking on the big screen. Obviously, since X-Men, Deadpool and Wolverine have been through the wringer, both narratively and corporately – with the ‘Merc With The Mouth’ staging a rebirth driven by Reynolds and Wolverine popping his clogs in James Mangold’s elegant send-off Logan in 2017. Now, Deadpool’s shepherd, Reynolds, is going to assume audiences rocking up for a third instalment of R-rated humour and violence will be up to speed in Disney’s takeover of Fox, comic book lore and the personal lives of its stars – ‘I’m telling Blake’ he says of his real-life wife, and makes cracks about Jackman’s divorce. Like Deadpool himself, this mash-up is fast, loose and takes no prisoners.
So where do we find Wade Wilson this time around? In a pre-title sequence that sets the tone, Deadpool is digging up Wolverine’s grave, breaking the fourth wall and swearing up a storm when he only finds his adamantium skeleton. This soon leads to bloody hell and an explanation; in an exposition-heavy flashback (which Deadpool naturally acknowledges) we discover that the TVA (seen most prominently in the Loki TV series) are messing with timelines again, forcing Deadpool to try to set the universe right by hopping the multiverse and interacting with variants in each dimension. That means multiple versions of Wolverine (all grumpy and soused), Deadpool (Dogpool, Lady Deadpool and more) and alt-universe superheroes cameoed by famous faces. At the heart of the matter is the timeline junkyard, ‘the void’, presided over by Emma Corrin’s Cassandra Nova – a baddie with links to Charles Xavier, the ability to stick fingers into brains and a kick-ass wardrobe. Unwillingly, Wolverine must accompany Deadpool on a journey that takes in forgotten superheroes, self sacrifice, ironic needledrops, slo-mo team-ups and a lot of dick jokes to find peace.
Though the uninitiated might struggle to get every in-joke zinger and easter egg, Marvel fans will enjoy the ride, perhaps obeying Deadpool when he instructs them to use their ‘special sock’ for some of the frenetic action set pieces. No spoilers, but the cameos are genuinely thrilling callbacks, a fight in a minivan is a cracker (complete with a Greatest Showman hat-tip), Matthew Macfadyen is Tom Wambsgan-witheringly excellent as a TVA suit, the chemistry between Reynolds and Jackman genuinely heartwarming and the end credits BTS and EPK footage a true nostalgia hit. And though there’s numerous digs about Jackman coming out of Wolvie-retirement, the gravitas and soul he brings to proceedings is the true heart of the piece and warrants the grave robbing. (Of course, any tear in the eye is dissipated by Deadpool criticising an oiled up, topless Jackman for getting out his ‘greasy tits’.)
Juvenile, daft, irreverent and sentimental, Deadpool is a messy riot. As the boy themselves say; ‘Let’s f***ing go!’
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
It’s every filmmaker and actor’s worst nightmare when a project looks like it might stall just before principal photography begins. For cinematographer Benoît Delhomme the exit of his director from period thriller Mothers’ Instinct four days before a tight 24-day shoot became an opportunity. When Olivier Masset-Depasse had to leave the film for personal reasons, producers and leads Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway asked Delhomme if he would be prepared to step up and make his directorial debut.
‘Four days before the shoot started – I was given it on a tray, like a beautiful gift, with two great actresses, a good script, and everything set up,’ Benoît tells Hollywood Authentic. ‘We had the location, the costumes, all the cast. I was already the DoP. Jessica and I had breakfast together because it was a crisis moment. Jessica said, ‘What about you also directing it?’ I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to do it.’’
Four days before the shoot started – I was given it on a tray, like a beautiful gift, with two great actresses, a good script, and everything set up
Adapted from Barbara Abel’s novel “Derrière la haine” into a French film, Duelles, directed by Masset-Depasse in 2018, the film caught the eye of manager and producer Paul Nelson who suggested a remake to Jessica Chastain. Masset-Depasse’s original film had won a record-breaking nine Magritte Awards and Chastain’s Freckle Films, invited him to helm an English language remake transposed to 60s New Jersey. Focusing on the relationship between two neighbours and friends, Alice (Chastain) and Celeste (Anne Hathaway), whose same-age sons play together, the movie charts the emotional fallout when one of the women’s sons dies in an accident. The friends become estranged as grief, suspicion and mental breaks force them apart. As both women unravel, their husbands (Josh Charles and Anders Danielsen Lie) don’t know who to believe as each is convinced the other is working against her.
A veteran DoP of 67 films, Benoît admits to feeling terror immediately after agreeing to take on the project. ‘The next hour I was scared. I said, ‘OK, I have enough experience. If I was the DoP arriving today on this movie, I could do it without any prep. So let’s pretend.’’ With the film hanging on the Parisian’s ability to swap hats, Benoît created a psychological system to pick his way through the task. ‘I had so many directors in my life. So many times, you arrive on set, and the director is like, ‘Benoît, help me’. I’ve been helping directors all my life, and I love to do that – I’m a creative partner. So I said to myself, ‘Let’s pretend the director is sick, and I have to replace him for one day. And maybe after 24 days I’ll have a film.’” With only days to prep before shooting Benoît tried watching the master of suspense for inspiration. “I did watch films like Marnie and Vertigo. But when you see a Hitchcock movie immediately it’s like, ‘I can’t make a film, I can’t be a director’. It’s too beautifully made. So I didn’t want to make it like a Hitchcock film. I thought Jessica and Annie could make the tension without trying to make the shots look like Hitchcock. I thought maybe my strength is how I can shoot actresses. I’m really good at connecting with them through the camera. On this film it’s more precious to capture what they do, rather than trying to be obsessed with the genre. You want to say, ‘Listen, I’m going to give you the frame.’’
Benoît had connected as a cinematographer with both leads on previous projects; On Salome and Lawless with Chastain and on One Day with Hathaway. And he knew that they could trust each other and work well together. ‘I think they have great instincts. I knew they’ve wanted to play together for a long time. I wanted to be like a small mouse on set, trying to film them. I observed them more than I directed. But I thought: when the camera is starting, I want to be the best cameraman, also, to capture them.’
With such a short shoot, the team had to work fast. So Benoît made a rule of only two takes before moving on. The discipline helped focus the actors’ choices. ‘It gave such pressure for everyone to be good. Not to experiment and try things. I had to go straight to the point. And I love this idea. I think maybe it’s great to have the time to shoot all of the possibilities, but you have to choose two.’ And when in doubt, the director thought about his previous mentors and how they might have handled the project. ‘I remember working with Anthony Minghella [on The Talented Mr Ripley and Play], and realised that every morning he was terrified to make the day. Many times, I would think about Anthony when I was making this film. Sadly, he’s not with us anymore, but I would have loved to call him and say, ‘Anthony, how can I make this film?’ I was calling him in my imagination. He would say, ‘Forget the story. Just see the two characters. See how these two women interact, and just be there.’’
Using the camera as a friend and not as a ‘dangerous stranger’, Benoît leaned on the fact that Chastain and Hathaway were close in real-life (‘even if the script is pushing them against each other, it’s not going to damage them,’) and active collaborators on the project. ‘When you make a film with two movie stars in 24 days – if they’re not producing, they can say, ‘What’s going on? Why don’t we have 48 days?’ But they knew where the money was going, they knew the rules, they wanted the film to exist. And I think when you make a thriller, it’s good to have rules, you keep your direction. We couldn’t drift. It’s super-controlled.’
During the swift shoot, Hollywood Authentic’s founder Greg Williams was on set in Cranford, New Jersey, to capture Anne and Jessica at work in the two mirroring period properties that played their characters’ homes. Each home was decorated by production designer Russell Barnes to reflect the early 60s but also each character’s personality.
The experience of directing under such circumstances was a learning one for Benoît. ‘When you have worked with 20 directors, you think you know it all. And you start to become a little bit pretentious because you’re a good technician, you know? And you start to judge directors, but then I was there in the director’s seat, thinking, ‘How can I judge anyone? It’s so difficult!’’ Making the movie may have been a trial by fire but it’s an experience Benoît is ultimately grateful for.
‘Listen, I always thought that one day I would do a movie. But I was successful as a DoP, directors liked me, I always had great projects. So I always postponed this idea. But with this we had to be like, ‘OK, it’s an emergency! Let’s get it!” And I think we all loved it. We had to rush. But I think this gave something to this movie. I feel I made it in a very special way.”
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER Mothers’ Instinct is in UK cinemas now
The latest retro refit of a beloved blockbuster taps into the wins of Top Gun: Maverick – not least in harnessing the star wattage of Hangman himself, Glen Powell, to fuel a sexy, entertaining big screen ride designed for the IMAX wow-factor, that you won’t regret spending cash on.
Capitalising on the verve he also displayed in Hit Man, Powell arrives on-screen as a fully formed movie star here – all cocky swagger, dazzling smile and palpable chemistry with Daisy Edgar-Jones – as a cowboy (literally and figuratively) storm chaser, Tyler, who pops fireworks into the eye of tornadoes for his YouTube channel. He’s as loud as his Western shirts and seems to have little care for the destruction and danger these weather events pose to the inhabitants living in their shadow in Oklahoma. He’s the nemesis of a sober scientific team led by Javi (Anthony Ramos) who has co-opted his former classmate, Kate (Edgar Jones) to help in locating twisters in order to study them. Kate’s in a spin of her own having survived a deadly T5 tornado five years earlier which killed her partner and friends in the process of trying out an experiment to stop the storm from raging – but she’s also preternaturally gifted at sensing where and when a twister will land.
As the two teams (hedonistic youtubers vs ethical scientists) try to outsmart each other to get tornado gold, a love triangle forms between Tyler, Javi and Kate, and a film that on the surface is about thrilling audiences with big stunt pieces and effects, begins to explore who the real victims are of cynical capitalism and lack of investment in economies and communities in the path of destruction. A neatly executed bait’n’switch shows the bad guys aren’t necessarily who we might think…
Minari director Lee Isaac Chung takes up Jan De Bont’s baton from 1996’s Twister (though no flying cows in this one), bringing a gentle authenticity to the Oklahoma people he sketches and a no-holds-barred approach to the action. Like Maverick, Twisters succeeds in landing the emotional journey and investment in character as well as the heart-quickening set pieces that are so furious it’s like spending time in a tumble dryer. Each action sequence ups the ante until a moment set in a cinema (Ha! Of course!) leaves both cast and audience hanging on by their fingertips – breath snatched by the physical and CG effects, but also caring for the outcomes of the characters. It’s a disarming and polished combination that seems to buck the algorithm and gives Twisters the edge on being just another big budget disaster blockbuster cashing in on legacy IP.
‘In this business,’ reads the opening quote by Bette Davis, ‘until you’re known as a monster, you’re not a star.’ In Ti West’s slasher trilogy closer (which began with X and continued with Pearl), that correlation between audience appetite for depravity and the ruthless ambition required for climbing the Hollywood ladder is explored via eighties video nasties and lurid headlines. Seeing the two previous films West has made with his star, Mia Goth, isn’t a requirement to get into the scuzzy, febrile vibe of this installment but there are delicious easter eggs and call backs for those who’ve made the multi-era journey.
For the uninitiated, X followed a 1979 porn shoot gone bloodily wrong when Pearl, the elderly owner of a Texas farm preys on the cast and crew including Maxine Minx (Goth). Pearl tracks the titular character in her youth (Goth), transmuting from WW1-era farm girl to killer. Now, we reunite with Maxine (Goth) trying to outrun her past in 1985 Hollywood where moral panic about movies and music is at a hysterical high, and serial killer the Night Stalker casts a violent pall over the city. Hoping to transition from adult to mainstream movies, Maxine auditions for a horror sequel directed by Elizabeth Debicki’s helmer just as a venal PI (Kevin Bacon) starts tailing her and her friends begin to be butchered…
The most gleeful and self-reflexive of the trilogy, Maxxxine is filthy-gorgeous and neon-drenched, loaded with Hollywood hat-tips to movie lore and iconic flicks. Theda Bara, the Hollywood sign, Chinatown, Psycho, Mann’s Chinese Theatre, the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Universal’s backlot, the good cop/bad cop, psycho-biddy and the last girl tropes… all are woven into a winky, trashy celebration of the dream factory and the VHS era. The horror is squelchy, lurid, daft (balls are skewered, heads popped), the performances equally ripe.
Bacon is a hoot as a Jake Gittes-lite gumshoe with a Southern accent oozing molasses (who later oozes in a mischievously horrible way) while Debicki and Lily Collins lean into cliches of ballbusters and starlets. But the film belongs to Goth, strutting through every scene with a killer wardrobe and attitude for days. A woman with ‘monstrous’ ambition who talks about fame in terms of simply working hard, Maxine is a trope and a timeless truism. Those background billboards asking for the ‘X Factor’ and the nods to tinseltown cults, audience prurience and the career-making power of scandal are as relevant today as they were in ‘85. It’s a film like the one Dibicki’s director is making: A B-movie with A ideas.
Jeff Nichols taps a certain type of Americana with his tactile, evocative films, and his adaptation of Danny Lyon’s seminal photo-essay book, The Bikeriders, is an artistic collaboration that quickens the pulse as much as the guttural rev of a classic Harley Davidson. Lyon tracked a group of bikers in 60s Chicago and readers could practically smell the engine oil and hair grease in his black-and-white photos of meets and the outlier community formed around them. Nichols has taken that aesthetic and run with it, crafting a screenplay that explores identity, social tribes, loyalty, lust and the thrill of the open road in a love triangle formed between three stars operating at full wattage.
Seen through the eyes of Kathy (Jodie Comer) as she looks back on her romance with maverick Benny (Austin Butler), this patchwork of moments straddle a decade as biker gang, the Vandals, grow from a grassroots outfit to a State-wide, and increasingly violent, operation. As Kathy tells it – in a brawny Chicago idiolect Comer has expertly lifted directly from Lyon’s own interviews with the real woman – she must share Benny with the road and gang leader, Johnny (Tom Hardy, doing some of his best work). The process of trying to tie him down parallels the difficulty of halting the brutal evolution of the vandals: Benny is a man who is all feral instinct and doesn’t want to be anything to anyone, the gang cannot remain as ‘riding club’ as Johnny first conceived it without a tough new kingpin. As Kathy tries to pin Benny down to domesticity, Johnny tries to woo him to leadership…
Adam Stone’s cinematography echoes Lyon’s cool pictures as a stellar cast breathe intricate life into snapshots of characters in the gang. Michael Shannon is alpha hurt as Zipco, a man who hates ‘pinko college kids’ but smarts from being rejected by the army. Boyd Holbrook exudes zen (and the art of motorcycle maintenance) as Cal, the gang’s mechanic. Norman Reedus does bad teeth and hippy impishness as Funny Sonny, a California big-hair. Building on his menace in Babyteeth and The Royal Hotel, Toby Wallace brings chaos energy; and Mike Faist, Emery Cohen and Damon Herriman make impressions despite practical cameos.
But the film belongs to a trifecta of charisma. Hardy, a reluctant hardman with a soft core and a gut-punch of a narrative arc. Butler, giving a bad boy heartthrob emotional depth while understanding his role as an archetype. Comer, flexing her considerable skills and more than matching her on-screen partners. When the trio interact the atmosphere crackles and glows like the embers of the numerous cigarettes they smoke. A meet-cute between Kathy and Benny and a conversation between Benny and Johnny are matched in their erotic charge, and the space between their silences speak volumes. And when they’re riding gleaming chrome bikes into the vanishing point of midwest roads as vintage needle-drops play…
It’s the sort of character-led cinema Hollywood would have you believe is as consigned to the past as a ‘65 panhead Harley. That textured, gritty storytelling that immerses audiences in a specific world without spoon feeding. And a showcase for artists onscreen and off (that cinematography, Erin Benach’s precise costumes, Chad Keith’s period perfect production design) who will surely be shortlisted come awards season.
Be warned, it will make you want to buy a bike…
The Bikeriders directed by Jeff Nichols staring Tom Hardy, Austin Butler and Jodie Comer is in cinemas now
DISPATCH: VICKY KRIEPS THE DEAD DON’T HURT Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Luxemburg actor Vicky Krieps is feeling buoyed after her jury time at Cannes Film Festival, in the Certain Regard section, where she saw a wide range of cinematic genres and voices. ‘Movies are probably one of the oldest international languages of exchange,’ she tells Hollywood Authentic. ‘A movie can be the voice for a country, a voice for a generation. A movie can be a voice for victims or marginalised people. And that was represented in the movies that I saw in my section. It gave me hope, and it was inspiring. With all the money and restrictions in the world, what can never be erased is the power of cinema, you know? The power and freedom of expression. And people somewhere in the world getting together, even if they don’t have money, and creating something that can cross every border.’
Krieps’ own output certainly falls into that category, having impressed critics and audiences alike in Phantom Thread, Bergman Island and Corsage – all of which debuted at Cannes Film Festival in the Palais where Greg Williams shot her before a screening of The Most Precious Of Cargoes. Her latest film, The Dead Don’t Hurt is slow-burn cinema that asks audiences to go on a journey, to live with characters through their highs and lows, to relate to the hardscrabble human pursuit of happiness and the act of forgiveness. Written, directed and led by Viggo Mortensen, it tracks a couple making their way together on the 1860s American frontier with Krieps playing Vivianne, an independent woman who decides to make her life with Danish immigrant, Holgar (Mortensen).
When casting the role Mortensen could only think of Krieps, likening her to an acting icon who received the honorary Palme D’or at the recent Cannes festival. ‘She reminded me of Meryl Streep the first time I saw her,’ he told the Academy in a recent interview. ‘She has a quality and ability to communicate so much, even in silence. It’s almost like her thoughts and feelings come through her skin. It’s remarkable what she can do. It’s a gift.’
Mortensen gave Krieps the space to fully inhabit and communicate a character in Vivienne as she meets Holgar in San Francisco and sets up a home with him in Elk Flats, Nevada, where he becomes sheriff. Vivianne tames the arid land in Elk Flats, but not necessarily the townsfolk, and a violent act changes her and Holgar’s destiny forever. A non-linear storyline sees Vivienne throughout key moments in her life – from childhood to death bed – and explores the particular emotional, moral and maternal strength of women living in an unforgiving environment. A non-traditional oater then, but not one that Krieps would call a ‘Feminist western’.
‘No, it’s not like that,’ Krieps says. ‘Viggo just made a very honest movie, it’s a humane film. It’s a tale about love and about humans, and he tried to make it his own way. And it’s a very personal film for him. It’s cinema that is not trying to impress. It’s not trying to shock. It’s not there to be a new invention of something new. This is the kind of cinema I do, and it’s the kind of cinema that I really live for. It’s not trying to say, ‘oh, we are feminists because that’s in fashion.’
Speaking of fashion, Krieps has endured corsets before – especially on the critically-acclaimed Corsage, playing Empress Elisabeth of Austria. And she was determined not to restrict herself again on this film, which lensed in Durango, Mexico in searing heat and required horseriding and the portrayal of manual work. ‘I immediately got rid of the corset!’ she laughs when recalling her meeting with the film’s costume designer. ‘I swore after Corsage I would not wear a corset again, just knowing what it does to you psychologically and physically. I wanted Vivienne to have a very normal movement – when you wear a corset, you can’t even run the way you would run. I think the historical shape is not important. What is important is that we make it look like it’s real, so that someone from today can relate to it, and is emotionally struck. On the weekend, we would take the horses, and ride up the canyon. I would be in a pair of trousers, and I could gallop, and I was free!’
Understanding the demands of location work on an independent period drama Mortensen told the cast and crew at the beginning of filming that he hoped ‘you will have a good time, but that the experience won’t punish you too much’. Did Krieps feel she had a good time or a punishing one? ‘It was a bit of both. The nature was pretty tough because we had a low budget, and that means that you’re always outside, standing most of the time either in the heat or in the cold. And all the time in the dust. So that was quite surprisingly hard, I have to say.’ The physical duress was not as challenging as the emotional though – with Vivienne experiencing the worst kind of brutality at the hands of men. ‘For me what was hard, to be honest, was the story – to open myself to this pain. I remember I went really deep. I’m just this way. I cannot just act, and then shake it off. It stayed with me for a few days. The role wasn’t a happy role, I have to say. But it was so wonderful to be in that landscape.’
The resulting film is one that Krieps feels encouraged by – that it exists in a world increasingly dominated by attention deficient streaming and algorithms. ‘We live in a time where sometimes I find it hard to keep up my hope for cinema because everything is switching to these huge platforms. They have so much money, and they have all the power in the world. So it becomes very, very difficult for independent movies to even exist.’
Krieps’ next two projects are part of that drive to make independent and challenging cinema – she’s just finished shooting Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother and an AI-scripted film based on Werner Herzog’s work, About A Hero. ‘I’m as curious as I could be about what [About A Hero] is going to be. And Father Mother Sister Brother was such fun to make. My group, my family part, was me, Cate Blanchett, and Charlotte Rampling. And it was just amazing to exchange, with these women, so much wisdom, so much experience, so much beauty and intelligence and sensitivity. It was a gift to work with these two women and with Jim, with his sensitivity. So I think it’s going to be a great film.’
The Dead Don’t Hurtis out in cinemas now About A Hero and Father Mother Brother Sister will be released TBC
Photographs, interview and video by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER
When I arrive at Adria Arjona’s Hollywood Hills home, she’s prepping for her goddaughter’s birthday party in her pyjamas. She landed in Los Angeles the night before, and decided to undertake some DIY on her first owned home. ‘Get ready for my outfits, Greg,’ she laughs as she offers me some birthday party chocolate-covered strawberries. ‘There’s no Versace, no Armani, no Saint Laurent. It’s Carhartt and dirty T-shirts!’
The Spanish-style house isn’t just a place to rest her head, it’s a physical representation of the actor’s success – an ambition fulfilled. ‘I think that you get to define what the Hollywood dream is for yourself, and I believe in mine. I am very much living my dream – just being able to do what I love, to tell stories for a living, to be an artist, and to get paid for it.’
Arjona has lived at her house for six years and revamped the property from a place she describes as initially looking ‘like a weird porn video was filmed in the 80s here’. Her roof recently leaked and rather than get contractors out, she climbed up to her eaves herself to fix it. Today, she needs to patch up another rogue spot and has invited me along to help with the home improvements. It’s a change from our usual set-up; ‘I love that every time that you’ve shot me, it’s always been really glamorous and elegant… I’m always in a really nice dress and a full face of makeup when I see you. But there is a different side of me that I don’t think a lot of people know, which is: I’m a little more of a tomboy, and I am a fixer. It’s really empowering to know that I can fix something, and I don’t need anybody else to come and do it. I find beauty in things that are kind of broken. I think that kind of relates to my job as well. I find broken characters really beautiful, but I don’t try to fix them.’
Had I not been an actor, maybe I would have been a contractor. I just like the idea of having an empty canvas – an idea in your head – and then gathering a group of people and bringing a vision to life
In her latest role as Madison, an abused wife who hires Glen Powell’s contract killer to off her hubby in Richard Linklater’s comedy, Hit Man, Arjona certainly plays a character struggling to repair herself. It doesn’t help that Powell’s character is a police informant and not a murderer – or that sparks fly between the duo. ‘The movie is really sexy, and Madison is really comfortable with her own sexuality, and kind of uses it to her own advantage,’ Arjona nods. ‘Had I not been an actor, maybe I would have been a contractor. I just like the idea of having an empty canvas – an idea in your head – and then gathering a group of people and bringing a vision to life. It’s very similar to filmmaking, in a way.’
Rocking chunky boots that her character wears in Star Wars series Andor and a look she terms ‘contractor chic’, Arjona climbs on a cooler box, onto her barbeque, along a precarious wall and jumps onto the roof, inviting me to follow. We make our way across the sloping expanse to the leaking tiles – it reminds me of the rooftop scene in Once Upon A Time In…Hollywood. Arjona is already checking tiles to see if they’re watertight, the city sprawling below us and the hills rising behind.
Having trained at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York, Arjona started her acting career on the East Coast, juggling waitressing and working kids’ birthday parties (‘I got fired when they realised that I wasn’t really that good at face painting!’) in between auditions. The discipline of the Strasberg school is something she feels helped build resilience. ‘It almost felt like therapy, in a way. I went there to discover a lot about myself, and heal a lot about myself, and learn about the craft.’
Her big break came with a role on season two of True Detective, which meant a move to LA in 2015. ‘I first moved here to an apartment in West Hollywood, and I always saw the hills as this big dream of mine. I was like, “One day I will live there.” The fact that I’m already living here and I’m 31, it’s kind of epic for me. I don’t take it lightly, and I don’t take it for granted. That’s why I take care of it.’
Self-taught via YouTube tutorials, Arjona has tiled her own bathroom and incorporated friends’ work in the detail (a friend’s ceramicist boyfriend contributed features), plastered her living room walls and fixed her air-conditioning unit. ‘I’m getting my hands a little bit dirtier than in filmmaking. It’s making things – when I was little, I loved arts and crafting. I think as I’ve gotten older, and as I own my own house, I come home from four months of being away and I see it completely different. I’m like, “Ooh, now I want to do this with it.”’
The daughter of musician Ricardo Arjona and Leslie, a beauty queen, Adria was born in Puerto Rico and brought up in Mexico City until she was 12 – a place she considers a big part of her heritage (‘You can hear it when I speak Spanish, right? There’s a twang. I have a little bit of a Mexican accent’). They moved to Miami when the family felt unsafe due to her father’s growing fame, but Arjona ‘ran away from that city quick’, north to New York. ‘I was 17 when I moved to New York. I got a modelling job, I think it was a cleaning commercial, that never came out. But it paid me so good, and it really allowed me to move to New York, and kind of run away, and not really ask for permission.’
She has just completed work on Andor season two, returning as intergalactic mechanic Bix Caleen, and on Los Frikis, the true story of Cuban teens infecting themselves with HIV to live in a government treatment facility. ‘It’s probably one of the most special films I’ve ever, and probably will ever, be a part of,’ she says as she kneels over the leaking roof and begins sealing the tiles with a sticky, black sealant. Working with six young non-professional Cuban actors in the Dominican Republic, the actor saw the world differently having viewed it through their eyes. ‘You know, they had never seen a full chicken before. They had never chewed gum before. We went to a supermarket, and one of them walked out and just started crying. I asked him what was wrong. And he said, “Now I can’t unsee it.” He had never seen a full supermarket. We were in the chocolate aisle, and he goes, “Why are there so many chocolates?” It was really humbling to see life, and live, through them.’
With the roof sorted, we climb back down to the ground to head off to Home Depot for supplies in the actor’s no-nonsense Toyota pickup. Rather than a sports car or vintage runaround, this is Arjona’s ‘dream car’ and she also has the truck bed camper so she can camp out in the back. ‘I got it this year, and it gives you so much power on the road. A pickup is so cool. I learned how to drive in Mexico City. I feel like if you can drive in Mexico City, you can drive just about anywhere in the world.’
As she pilots the pickup down the ribboning canyon road to the city grid where the Hollywood sign comes into view, she recalls how she landed the role of Madison in Hit Man – a potentially game-changing gig given the rave reviews for the film out of the Venice Film Festival, where it premiered last year. Writer-director Richard Linklaker was sold on her as his femme fatale with a twist, but skipped a traditional chemistry read with his star and co-writer, Glen Powell. Instead he simply sent his potential co-stars out for a drink.
‘We went to a restaurant, and it was supposed to just be an hour meeting. We talked about the character and the story for maybe 10 minutes out of the five hours we were there,’ she laughs. ‘We weren’t the most responsible. We just got to know each other. We were both doing Dry January, and that also lasted 10 minutes! We both looked at each other, and I was like, “I kind of like you.” He was like, “I kind of like you, too. Do you want a shot?” We just started drinking mezcal… I just felt so comfortable and so safe. We talked about our lives. We talked about relationships… We sent a picture to Rick of us together after five hours, quite tipsy, and we were like, “We just left the meeting.” I think after that, we just knew that he was going to be in my life forever, and that I was going to be in his forever. Whether he wants it or not, I think Glen’s kind of stuck with me now!’
We stop off for construction supplies, Arjona zooming down the aisles of Home Depot, filling her trolley and squealing with excitement as we pass the power drills. We head to a friend’s nearby art gallery where the walls are in need of some love. ‘It’s this beautiful technique – to put it on the walls,’ Arjona enthuses about plastering, unloading her equipment from her truck’s cargo bed. ‘It’s kind of alive, it gives a zen vibe, and it’s minimalist and beautiful. But it’s pretty hard to do… The reason I go there is because I can fuck up her walls, and not mine!’
As the daughter of a beauty queen, this sort of downtime activity wasn’t necessarily Arjona’s family’s dream for her. ‘I think my whole family, grandmother included, really wanted me to be Miss Puerto Rico one day, and they had this big dream of me going to Miss Universe. I’m quite shy in front of the camera, I have to hide behind something – whether it’s an outfit; whether it’s a hair and makeup look; whether it’s a character. I need to feel like I’m hiding behind something. It’s a little too vulnerable to just be pretty, or just to be myself, I think. I get too self-conscious. I enjoy the fact that I’m saying words that aren’t mine, and wearing an outfit that doesn’t belong to me, and walking in someone else’s shoes. Red carpets, for me, are probably the scariest thing in the world.’
She gets stuck into mixing the plaster in a bucket, her hands covered, her boots splattered. ‘As a kid, my parents thought I was deaf. They took me to all of these doctors to find out if I had an actual hearing problem. And what they found out was that I was just so in my head, and I would create all these worlds in my head. I just really lived in my imagination. I wasn’t deaf; I was just ignoring the shit out of everybody!’
But that rich interior life led to an aptitude for acting. ‘There weren’t that many opportunities for Latin American actresses, even when I started. I see this younger generation, and I see more new faces, more Latin talent. I think we have a lot of work to do, but it’s really exciting that this new generation won’t have it as hard as my generation did. I didn’t have many people to look up to, to say, “I want that career.” It was definitely a hard start, because I saw myself as something, and no one else seemed to have the same vision that I did. They just saw me as this tough, Latin woman who was destined to be a cop, or the tough roles, in movies. And I wasn’t really interested in that. I wanted to play complex women, and there kind of was no space for that when I first started. I had to veer off to other things, and play in different genres in order for me to get those roles like in Good Omens. Or The Belko Experiment. Or Irma Vep. I think genre kind of saved my career, and saved me as an actress. It allowed me to have fun, and be weird, and to play different characters.’
Now she dreams of playing real-life character Lolita Lebrón, a Puerto Rican nationalist who was jailed in 1954 for attacking the US Capitol, and Arjona is in the process of developing her story for the screen. ‘She did a lot for our island, and fought for our people. She’s someone who I admire a lot, and I would love to play her.’
With the wall plastered, we head back home to the birthday party and a house full of relatives. Arjona’s mother is delighted to see her daughter after she’s spent time away working, describing her as ‘the most selfless, loving, kind, hard-working, tenacious, smart, bright, amazing human being I know.’ She kisses her and adds, ‘made in Puerto Rico!’
‘And this is what we call the Puerto Rican flag!’ laughs Arjona, slapping her backside. Both women repeat the movement in sync and giggle. ‘The Puerto Rican flag!’
Photographs, interview and video by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER Adria Arjona stars in the Netflix movie Hit Man, out 7 June
CANNES DISPATCH 16 … Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
‘This movie is the celebration of the journey of my life,’ Neapolitan writer-director Paolo Sorrentino told the audience at the Cannes premiere of his latest, Parthenope, as he recalled the reception he’d had at the Riviera festival two decades earlier. In fact, his first time at the festival was 20 years to the day: The Consequences of Love premiered at Cannes in 2004 on 21 May, catapulting Sorrentino in cinema’s consciousness as a unique artist, and his career has been hand-in-hand with the festival ever since.
He won jury prizes in 2008 for Il Divo and 2011 for This Must Be the Place, as well as having seven of his works compete for the Palme d’Or and many play in competition. What better place then, to showcase his second love/hate letter to his hometown (after 2021’s Hand Of God) in Parthenope, the coming-of-age story of a beautiful young woman (Celeste Dalla Porta) finding her agency in 70s and 80s Capri and Naples?
Though the film focuses, in every way, on Porta’s Parthenope, Gary Oldman makes a powerful and haunting cameo as author John Cheever – a melancholic alcoholic who provides a salient chapter in the young woman’s life. Oldman makes no pretence of having ‘manifested’ the role, having been a fan of Sorrentino’s work and putting him at the top of his wish list to collaborate with.
‘When I heard about [Oldman being a fan] I immediately called him up,’ Sorrentino says. ‘I consider him a great actor so I was truly flattered.’ Oldman worked a handful of days on Capri essaying Cheever, and was joined on set by Greg Williams who captured photos of the production, including the film’s dreamlike poster image of Porta swimming like a mermaid through the azure waters surrounding the island. He also shot the cast and crew at the pre-premiere cocktails, red carpet and after party at Picasso’s former villa in Cannes – travelling with Sorrentino by car as his two-decade anniversary in the city unspooled in suitably celebratory fashion.
‘I’m very grateful and very excited to be here,’ he told Greg in his hotel room before his premiere. ‘For me, Cannes is cinema!’
Acquired by A24 before it premiered in Cannes, Parthenope is slated for a cinema release later this year when audiences off the Croisette will get a taste of Sorrentino’s latest intoxicating fever dream, a movie that is the closest thing to stepping into the crumbling alleys of Naples and perching on the sheer cliffs of Capri you can get without journeying there yourself…
Watch Travel with Sorrentino video here Read our review of Parthenope here
CANNES DISPATCH 15 … Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by Greg Williams
In honor of Dame Donna Langley, Kering and the Festival de Cannes were pleased to welcome the members of the Festival jury as well as Julianne Moore, Justine Triet, Uma Thurman, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Salma Hayek Pinault, Michelle Yeoh, Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Jacques Audiard or Judith Godrèche on the occasion of the official Women In Motion Awards dinner.
Kering’s annual Women In Motion dinner kicked off again this year on a warm Sunday evening at Place de la Castre, a castle perched overlooking Cannes town and presided over by François-Henri Pinault, Chairman and CEO of Kering, Iris Knobloch, President of the Festival de Cannes, and Thierry Frémaux, General Delegate of the Festival de Cannes. This year the event celebrated the achievements of NBCUniversal Studio Group and Chief Content Officer, Dame Donna Langley, the first producer to receive the accolade in the Women In Motion nine year history for her trailblazing career – with Salma Hayek Pinault, in Gucci and Boucheron jewels, calling her a ‘visionary’.
The get-together attracted the toast of the festival, including Emilia Perez stars Zoe Saldana and Edgar Ramirez, both in Saint Laurent, as well as The Shrouds lead Diane Kruger (wearing Balenciaga). They were joined by South Korean star Han So Hee, legend Catherine Deneuve (in competition with Marcello Mio) plus jury president Greta Gerwig (in Gucci) and her jury members, Eva Green, Omar Sy and Lily Gladstone. Julianne Moore (in Bottega Veneta), Uma Thurman (opening her film Oh, Canada! at the festival), Michelle Yeoh (in Bottega Veneta), Isabelle Huppert (in Balenciaga and Boucheron) and director Justine Triet also attended along with The Apprentice actors Sebastian Stan and Maria Bakalova. French actress turned filmmaker Judith Godrèche was also part of festivities having opened the film festival with her powerful #MeToo short Moi Aussi, highlighting the number of women who have been victims of sexual assault.
The bash started with a cocktail hour before the ceremony where Langley and emerging talent recipient, director Amanda Nell Eu, received their accolades. Langley told the light-bedecked room that she had first attended Cannes as an executive on Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. She said ‘In roles like mine, we have the power and the opportunity to say “yes”, and “yeses” don’t come very often, but when they do come, they are so powerful.’
After the speeches, guests were served dinner created by Michelin-starred chef Virginie Giboire; to start – marinated John Dory, roast geranium and garden peas infused in almond milk followed by turbot, zucchini flowers and beurre blanc made with Noilly Prat. Dessert was a raspberry blossom yogurt and crunchy meringues with meadowsweet followed by dancing to a band who wandered through the tables playing their instruments…
Iris Knobloch (President of the Festival de Cannes)Dame Donna LangleyEva GreenLily GladstoneSalma Hayek Pinault and Karla Sofía GascónMaria BakalovaMarco Perego and Zoë SaldañaMichelle Yeoh
Find out more about Kering’s Women In Motion program here Salma Hayek Pinault wears Gucci and Boucheron jewels, François-Henri Pinault wears Balenciaga, Iris Knobloch wears Balenciaga, Dame Donna Langley wears Saint Laurent, Lily Gladstone wears Gucci, Karla Sofía Gascón wears Saint Laurent, Maria Bakalova wears Balenciaga, Zoë Saldaña wears Saint Laurent, Michelle Yeoh wears Bottega Veneta
CANNES DISPATCH 14 … Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Kevin Costner believes in the magic of movies so much he’s willing to bet the farm on it. Literally. The actor-filmmaker sank millions of his own cash into funding his planned four-part Western epic, Horizon (part one of which premiered in Cannes this week) when he could find no studio interest and admits he gambled his own homesteads on making it.
‘I’ve had good luck in my life and I’ve acquired some land and some homes that are important to me and they’re valuable,’ he admitted, ‘but I don’t need four homes. And so I will risk those homes to make my movies. I wish I didn’t do it because I want to leave those homes to my children. But my children will have to live their own life and if I’ve not made a mistake, they will have these four homes. If I’ve made a mistake, I’ll say “you have to live your own life – I’ve lived mine and I’m really happy!”’
Costner was certainly happy after the reception his film received at the premiere, shedding tears of emotion as he saw his dream project finally reach an audience. ‘It was a remarkable moment for me,’ he said of the premiere and standing ovation. ‘I started to walk my life backwards, thinking how in the world did I get here?’
The road to Horizon has been long – Costner first dreamt up the saga in 1988 and the lead character of Hayes Ellison, who he plays in the movie and the name he gave his son he was so obsessed with the project. His now fifteen-year son makes his film debut in the movie in a full-circle moment for the filmmaker. ‘I had trouble making this movie, but the name Hayes was part of my journey. I couldn’t make it but I couldn’t fall out of love with it. So 15 years ago I named my son Hayes cos I couldn’t let go of it. And then all of a sudden I put him in the movie and he’d never acted before. I don’t automatically give parts to my children because I know how coveted this is and there’s young people who do anything to have a part on a movie. But I’m also a father and it was a part that wasn’t that long and I wanted him to be close to me. And I thought he was just beautiful in the movie. The movie at that moment is everything I want film to be about.’
Costner has long been associated with Westerns – and betting on them – having previously made Dances With Wolves in 1990, a film that Hollywood considered so unfashionable and a folly it was nicknamed ‘Kevin’s Gate’ after previous oater flop Heaven’s Gate. Back then Costner poured his own money into the film and was rewarded with epic box office and seven Oscars. He also championed Open Range in 2003. This time around he worked more nimbly to conserve cash (Dances lensed for 106 days, Horizon for just 52) and he recognises that history is repeating itself with his latest work.
‘I don’t know why it was so hard to get people to believe in the movie that I wanted to make. It’s a pattern for me: it’s happened with Dances With Wolves, Field Of Dream, Bull Durham, Open Range. It seems to be a pattern that some of the things that I like are harder to make. My problem is I don’t fall out of love with what I think is something good. Part of why I wanted to make 2, 3 and 4 was to make it for myself cos I know what it’s like to sit out there in the audience and the curtain open and something magic’s going to happen, a story’s going to transport us. The movies have always been a place for us to go and have a chance at magic. So I have made the second one and I’m trying to make the third one.I will have to figure out with my friends, with the things I own – how do I make three to bring us back [to Cannes], I would like to come back with the third movie.’
‘I wrote the best Western that I would write with Jon Baird. A Western that included women as being the biggest characters in the movie, it made sense to me. Movies have to have something in common with you or you lose track of what you’re watching in the dark. You go ‘who the fuck is this?’ It’s when we recognise ourselves that we create moments that we’ll never ever forgot.’
The women leading the charge to the frontier include First Nation wives, Chinese laundresses, wagon train ladies, wily seductresses and widowed mother, Frances Kittredge, played by Sienna Miller. For Miller, the idea of appearing in a Western was a long-held ambition, especially one helmed by Costner.
‘I grew up watching Westerns. I think my idea of cinema was a Western when I was a little girl, and then Dances With Wolves was a huge, huge part of my life. I had two rabbits called Two Socks and Cisco,’ she said, the names of the wolf and the horse in Dances With Wolves. ‘I got this call that Kevin wanted to talk to me, and then I got sent four scripts and I thought it must be a series. There are four of them, but they’re so big, so it didn’t really make sense. And then we had this great conversation. I’d really go to the ends of the earth for him, I think he’s phenomenal.’
For Costner, the decision to put women front and centre in a Western – and to bring all his female leads to Cannes – isn’t a cynical one. ‘It’s almost impossible to imagine a West without women, isn’t it? The West doesn’t carry on without women,’ he said. ‘I am not looking for kudos because women are in it. For me, they’re not in it, they actually dominate the movie, to be honest. Every one of those women dominate when they’re on the screen.’
He hopes that he can get funding to finish his magnificent obsession and make the third and fourth instalments (the second is already in the can). ’I used to get no money to do this, then I got a lot of money to do this, now I have to pay my own money to do this,’ he notes. ‘I love the dreaming part of movies and the writing of them. The red carpet is an incredible thing, but if you’re only in the movies for the red carpet, for the glamour of it, for the fame… I like to think I got to this place because I like the work. The dreaming part.’
Kevin Costner wears Brioni. Watch by Chopard Sienna Miller wearsChloé and Schiaparelli Horizon: An American Saga premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and Release date 28 June. To see our review out of Cannes click here
