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
CANNES DISPATCH 13 … Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
The last time Demi Moore graced the Cannes famous red steps she was a guest at the opening night film of 1997’s festival, The Fifth Element. This year she’s back for her first premiere in her own right, a blistering turn in Coralie Fargeat’s feminist body-horror The Substance. And with her tiny 1.5lb Chihuahua (and Insta star), Pilaf.
She admitted to ‘nervous butterflies excitement’ before walking the carpet dressed in showstopping Schiaparelli haute couture as Greg Williams shot her in her hotel on Cannes’ famous Croisette. The film requires Moore to be vulnerable both physically and emotionally as it charts a movie star who is sacked for being too old and seeking redemption in the form of a shady procedure called The Substance that promises a ‘younger, more beautiful, more perfect you’. That version of herself is ‘born’ from her own body (a truly horrific sequence) as Margaret Qualley, and the two alter-egos duel for supremacy in a misogynist world that values youth and beauty over all else. The role requires a lack of vanity from Moore via full frontal nudity and unflattering lighting, as her character grapples with mortality and external validation. ‘It’s about the male perspective of the idealised women that we have bought into,’ she says.
‘I saw it as a challenge in the best way,’ Moore reflects on taking the project. ‘I look for material that pushes me out of my comfort zone – if something scares me a little bit then I know there’s an opportunity… that on the other side I would come out it a better person.’ The nudity needed was something that wasn’t shied away from in initial discussions. ‘It was spelled out, the level of vulnerability and rawness that was required to tell this story. It was a very vulnerable experience and it required going into it with a lot of sensitivity and finding that common ground of mutual trust.’
In Qualley, Moore says, she found a ‘great partner who I felt very safe with’. ‘We obviously were quite close in certain moments, naked! It allowed us a lot of levity in those moments at how absurd those situations were.’
The film received a standing ovation at its premiere and rave reviews from the press who praised the profundity and prescience of its subject matter – alongside gleeful squirts of blood, icky injections and some thrillingly gross body horror to challenge Cronenberg. ‘There has been a wake-up to a demographic that is deserving of being served,’ Moore says of the film’s Feminist slant. ‘You’re starting to see a lot more stories that are reflecting that audience and it’s nice!’ That’s not to say the movie is male-bashing. ‘We’re not anti-men – we’re just anti-jerks.’
The performance heralds a return to cinema for Moore after an absence and based on audience response in Cannes, marks the start of more to come. As co-star Dennis Quaid commented during the Cannes press conference of experiencing the premiere; ‘I was so glad to be here to see the beginning of an incredible third act for Demi.’
Demi Moore wears Schiaparelli. Necklace and earrings by Chopard The Substancepremiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and will be released by MUBI later this year. To see our review out of Cannes click here
David Cronenberg’s latest is a riddle about grief, loss and mortality wrapped in a whodunnit so twisty you may well have to watch again the minute it ends. It focuses on Karsh (Vincent Cassel) a widower who provides hi-tech graves to wealthy Toronto dwellers. Instead of simply burying their dead, clients buy a sci-fi digi ‘shroud’ that maps every rotting detail of their loved one’s corpse and transmits to the screen in their headstone as well as to an app on their phone. He’s also opened a gourmet restaurant in the graveyard where a blind date is understandably put off by his obsession with the recently deceased, most particularly his wife Becca (Diane Kruger), who perished after numerous procedures to battle breast cancer.
Plagued by dreams of his wife (always nude, her body incrementally more mutilated by medicine), Karsh also toys with living women; Becca’s identical sister Terri (also Kruger) who is aware that her likeness to her sibling creates a frisson, and a mysterious blind client (Sandrine Holt), who’s own partner is succumbing to cancer. Throw in to the mix a vandal attack on the graveyard, Terri’s shambolic ex, Maury (Guy Pearce) and the possibility of a conspiracy that could involve protestors, the Chinese government or Karsh’s AI assistant Honey (also voiced by Kruger) and The Shrouds gets deep into issues of AI, spyware, fidelity and sorrow in Cronenberg’s trademark clinical style.
A deeply personal film for the director (his own wife died in 2017 and Cassel’s look seems borrowed from the auteur), The Shrouds explores the bewilderment and paranoia of grief while staring death in the face via decomposition and with no easy resolution. Is it pure Cronenberg? Yes. Does it have answers? No. And that will be a thrilling/frustrating experience depending on your taste.
David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds starring Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger played at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and will be released in cinemas later this year
Ben Whishaw offers a fiery, unfettered turn in Limovov: The Ballad, a stylish and compelling portrait of a unique figure in recent Russian history. The subject is the real-life dissident poet and politician Edward Limonov, who co-founded in 1993 the ultra-nationalist National Bolshevik Party and lived a life of revolution and rebellion. Adapted from Emmanuel Carrères’ novelised biography that was published in 2011, the film comes co-written and directed by the hugely talented Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov (Leto, Petrov’s Flu).
Here, Serebrennikov co-scripts with Ben Hopkins (Simon Magus) and Pawel Pawlikowski (Cold War, Ida), two intriguing filmmakers in their own right. The results are as explosive as they are impressive, tracing Limonov’s life from his early literary years to his time in politics around the turn of the Millennium. Arrogant and assured – ‘I’m better than all those mindless people in Moscow,’ trills Eddie, as he prefers to be known – Whishaw carrying off Limonov’s cocksure swagger with real aplomb.
The British actor famed for Q in the Daniel Craig-era James Bond films and voicing Paddington Bear in the recent movie series is tremendous and transformative as the transgressive rebel. He’s cursed with a quick-fire temper, from fits of jealous rage over the love of his life, the willow-like model Elena (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), to disparaging protestors on the streets in New York who he feels are not radical enough.
Limonov, who died in 2020 before the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, is shown here in various guises (butler, celebrity, prisoner and more), with Serebrennikov going all-out to spirit audiences along through thirty-odd years of history, with a considerable pitstop in 1970s New York. Scored with a love for Lou Reed (‘Walk on the Wild Side’ gets a good airing) and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, it’s an electric way to take on a political biopic.
One of the most remarkable sequences comes as Serebrennikov spins us across the 1980s, right up to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the fall of the Berlin Wall, in a transitional montage bursting with imagination. Cut to the Sex Pistols’ ‘Pretty Vacant’, Whishaw’s character runs through a series of ‘rooms’ on a street, each representing a moment in time, as images from Margaret Thatcher to The Terminator flash past.
While some will accuse Limonov: The Ballad of sacrificing substance for style, questioning whether it digs into its subject’s political motivations enough, there can be no doubt that this is expert filmmaking, brimming with vigour. ‘Life is much more interesting than writing,’ says Limonov; Serebrennikov shows this vibrantly.
Kirill Serebrennikov’sLimonov: The Ballad starring Ben Whishaw and Viktoria Miroshnichenko played at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and will release in cinemas later this year
Parthenope is the occasional moniker of Naples after the same-named siren in Greek mythology threw herself in the sea to drown to stop herself from luring Ulysses, and washed up on the shores of the city – beloved home of Paolo Sorrentino. It’s also the name given to the protagonist of his latest love letter to his hometown, a girl born in Neopolitan waters who grows to be such a beauty that no man is immune to her, including her brother (Chalamet-esqe Daniele Rienzo). Charting her education – romantic, sexual and academic – from bikini-clad teen ingénue in 1968 to her retirement as a beloved colleague and mentor in 2023, Parthenope explores ideas of the burden of beauty, male entitlement, female empowerment and well, just how damn gorgeous Naples and Capri are. Along the way, ‘Parthé’ experiences different types of male attention; lethally enmeshed, lecherous, worshipful, possessive, nurturing, transgressive, as well as various versions of female agency and disenfranchisement.
Sorrentino has always created beautiful tableaux and his lens makes both the azure seas and faded splendour of Naples and Celeste Dalla Porta as Parthenope a visual treat. Fully embracing the power of her attractiveness, the 18-year-old emerges from the sea to smoke a cigarette and bats away suitors with her wit. She is, after all, not just a pretty face. A straight-A student in anthropology, Parthenope meets two formative men during her late teens – alcoholic, melancholic novelist, John Cheever, who cries for the beauty in the world and gently rebuffs her (Gary Oldman, wonderful in a matter of minutes); and her grumpy uni professor (Silvio Orlando) who only ever engages with her brain. But a family tragedy sends her spiralling, making her unsure of how to direct the power she holds…
Sorrentino has great fun unpicking the dirty-gorgeous character of Naples (football, religion, a superstar actress based on Sophia Loren) as well as the directionlessness of girlhood. And though some of Parthenope’s decisions seem to play into the very male gaze and misogyny the director initially appears to be examining (a church-set sex scene featuring speedos and religious treasures may test some viewers), Parthenope, with some fourth wall breaking, ultimately asks audiences to question their own relationship to aesthetics and youth. The question she asks a perving older family friend at the start of the film is silently asked again by the end; would Parthenope still be so attractive to men if she were 40 years older? And speaking of aesthetics, be warned, it’s impossible to watch and not want to immediately book a plane to Naples…
Paolo Sorrentino’sParthenopestarring Celeste Dalla Porta, Gary Oldman, Silvio Orlando and Daniele Rienzois screening at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and will release in cinemas TBC
CANNES DISPATCH 12 … Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Sebastian Stan has played real life protagonists on film before – most notably Jeff Gillooly, in the critically acclaimed, I, Tonya and Tommy Lee in awards-winning Pam and Tommy. But his turn as former president, Donald Trump, in Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, is attracting heat – not least from the 45th POTUS himself. ‘As always it’s about understanding,’ Stan told Hollywood Authentic when we shot him before the premiere at the Palais. ‘The challenge was perhaps working against preconceived ideas or what’s currently out there. Had to go back in time. To the beginning. And go step by step without judgment.’
Premiering in Cannes this week, The Apprentice charts the rise of Trump in 70s and 80s New York as he evolves from a debt collector with real estate ambitions to a Manhattan baller who learns how to ‘win’ from unscrupulous lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). An origin story, if you will.
Stan, with his sandy wig and pursed lips, portrays Trump as a nuanced sponge to Cohen’s shady mentorship, a kid trying to get out from under the shadow of his father who takes advice we now recognise as his MO, and runs with it. As he grows in capital and stature, the boy becomes a man, the persona fixed.
It’s certainly a big swing for Stan, taking on the depiction of such a divisive, current figure. But the gamble paid off in Cannes – the film received an 8 minute standing ovation at its premiere and prompted discussion on the Croisette. Though Trump himself is threatening to sue to production and disputing the depiction of events.
‘The hope we have is that people watch the film cos I always feel that there is always something to learn,’ Stan says of the movie that sees Trump betray family and friends, get liposuction and BJs, and bend the truth to his needs. ‘For me as an actor standing next to this brave artist [Abbasi] that I respect and will follow wherever he goes – and all these people that had enough balls to do this project – we have to take on things that are risky and perhaps uncomfortable to talk about. I think it’s important that we do, because it’s in our face every day and we need to have a perspective. And I think there’s a lot to learn from the film.’
Sebastian Stan wears Balenciago. Watch by Cartier The Apprentice premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and will be released later this year. To see our review out of Cannes click here
Ali Abbasi’s take on the origins of Donald Trump’s take-no-prisoners MO plays as a scuzzy 70s version of the Shakespearean Hal/Falstaff dynamic that stop short of his political career but includes plenty of cheeky prescience towards the 45th former POTUS’ now famous traits.
We meet Trump (Sebastian Stan) as a debt collector for his disapproving Dad (Martin Donovan) and a wannabe real-estate player with dreams of building the best hotel in a Manhattan riddled with vice and poverty. A New Yorker who wants to see the city bounce back from 70s debt and lawlessness, make cash and get out from under Daddy’s shadow, Trump is a callow water-drinking youth ripe for shaping when he meets infamous lawyer, Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) in a private members club. A ruthless, influential and feared man who hangs out with crime kingpins and will do whatever it takes to win a case, Cohn sees potential in Trump – taking him under his wing to teach him three rules for being a ‘killer’ in life. It’s advice viewers will recognise; attack, attack, attack; the truth is fluid, never admit defeat.
As Cohn’s mentorship (in dressing, media manipulation, networking) takes hold Trump’s image begins to crystallise – the navy suits, the helmet hair, the hyperbole – and he sheds his past. His father is eclipsed, his troubled brother jettisoned, his wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova) betrayed… and Trump gets liposuction, his bald patch removed, his face looks more and more like, in Ivana’s words, ‘an orange’.
Though Stan portrays Trump with some signature moves (hand gestures, his stiff neck, the pouting) his performance is nuanced, getting to the heart of the stone-cold ambition and narcissism that took him from knocking on doors for rent money to the oval office. And he throws himself into the more cartoonish moments with relish as Trump meets Andy Warhol, gobbles speed, gets blow-jobs from casino girls and worries about his weight while refusing to exercise.
But the more interesting aspect of the film is not necessarily the rise of an international figure, it’s the man who shaped him. Strong is repellent and reptilian as Cohn, an unblinking mercenary who oozes malevolence and misanthropy, and ultimately, one of the first people Trump stabs in the back. Though a controversial marital rape scene horrifies, drawing audible gasps from the Cannes audience, it’s Cohn’s treatment at the hands Trump that really strikes a nerve in a movie that dramatises known aspects of his rise to power.
Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice starring Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova and Martin Donovan is out now
CANNES DISPATCH 11 … Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
As Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds Of Kindness bowed at Cannes Film Festival, the film – a triptych of contemporary tales starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Jesse Plemons – got a standing ovation and a flurry of engaged reviews lauding a challenging film with no easy answers. ‘Listen, I’m a total cheerleader for festivals,’ smiles Dafoe when Hollywood Authentic sits down with him in a Carlton Hotel suite on the Croisette. ‘This is not a popcorn movie. So when it comes to a festival, it starts a discussion, and that’s a good way to make contact with a critical world.’
Though he’s made so-called popcorn movies during his long and illustrious career, Dafoe is well known for collaborating on invigorating films that prompt discussions on meaning that often start at festivals before moving the lobbies of cinemas globally, and Kinds Of Kindness marks another piece of provocative work as the actor plays three roles. In the first story, he’s a businessman with an idiosyncratic wardrobe who minutely controls every aspect of the life of his subordinate (Plemons). In the second he essays the father of Emma Stone’s lost-at-sea wife who returns to her cop husband (Plemons) and arouses suspicion that she may not be who she seems. And in the third, Dafoe is a cult leader who is sexually permissive and cries tears into a vast vat of sacred water, sending his acolytes (Stone and Plemons) out into the world to find the group’s new messiah.
Having previously worked with Stone and Lanthimos on last year’s acclaimed Poor Things, Dafoe was intrigued by the script as soon as the director offered it to him during post production on their period awards winner. He didn’t hesitate in jumping in again. ‘Poor Things was such a good experience. Yorgos is a filmmaker that I’ve always followed, and have always enjoyed. And he’s so good with actors. He gives you really fun stuff to do. He’s very playful. He’s very intellectually curious. It’s a very conscionable and very creative set. So, to work with him again was fantastic. Also, this structure was interesting, the fact that we’re playing three different characters. It became very clear that [Lanthimos] didn’t want this to be a showy thing of actors transforming. Because they’re three distinct films, but they’re all obviously thematically related. And they’re all different, given each different world, and our function in that world. For example, in the first one, I have a pretty substantial role; in the second one, quite a smallish role; and in the third one, a medium role. How I fall into those worlds is different each time. But it’s the same group of people, dealing with the same kind of mentality and themes.’ It also meant re-teaming with Bella Baxter herself, in Emma Stone. ‘Emma, I adore!’ he enthuses. ‘She’s really fun to work with.’
Those themes then; all the stories explore control and cruelty, the weird and illogical kindnesses that humans do for each other in marriage, business, friendship, faith. And each story, while not related, informs the next as a viewer. But like all of Lanthimos’ work, the meaning is defined by each audience member – a Rorschach test in cinematic form. ‘It’s a little bit of a Russian doll,’ Dafoe nods of the project. ‘But you work so hard to just try to be engaged with what’s in front of you. You know, that’s one of the tricks of an actor: that’s your world, so you want the other parts to fade away, because you don’t want to point to those things, or be too tied to that. You want a fresh start each time.’
While playing Stone’s Dad required Dafoe to tap into his affection for his co-star (‘I just cued off my love for Emma’), playing a cult leader did have him looking into real-life examples. ‘I’m fascinated by the nature of cults. I looked at a documentary that I think Jesse recommended to me called Holy Hell, also I liked Wild Wild Country. Not so much because I need that to figure out how to play a cult leader. That’s not it. The themes are there. You know, the kind of devotion, the need to give your freedom up to someone else, or dedicate yourself to something outside of yourself. All those themes, the power dynamics, the things about sexuality – they’re all in that. You’re swimming in that pool. You’re not necessarily taking something, and seeing something, and saying, ‘I’m going to do that’. It’s just to get you in that head.’
Lanthimos is also known for his rehearsal process before filming, another aspect that Dafoe was drawn to. ‘Yorgos is very good at making a company. Rehearsal is not so much to deal with the text, or even talk about character, except to play games and get comfortable with each other. And that’s very helpful. So once you finish that rehearsal period, you feel very comfortable with each other, and everyone is kind of on the same footing. And it’s a good way for you to understand Yorgos, what his impulses are, what he likes, and what he tends to go towards. You get in his head a little bit. And it’s always good any time you can get that in a movie, because then people stop worrying about that old thing of, ‘leave your ego at the door’.’
Dafoe will be digging into ego, legacy, fame and the impact of praise on the soul with his next project, a film he’s also in Cannes to launch. Late Fame, adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s 19th century Vienna-set novella, switches the time period to 70s New York with Dafoe playing a poet long forgotten by society. Until, that is, his poems are rediscovered and feted. Sandra Hüller will play a Broadway actress and fan of his work who challenges his ideas of genius. Directed by Kent Jones, the film starts shooting in New York this Autumn. The project was sparked by creative serendipity for Dafoe.
‘The Schnitzler novel that it’s adapted from, a friend brought to me, independent of this production, and said, ‘I think there’s a movie here’. I was carrying it around when I happened to meet the director, and we started talking. To make a long story short, we came together on it but from separate places. We were both reading this, and were interested in this, at the same time. And then it’s Samy Burch who wrote this beautiful adaptation that sets it in New York at a time that I was in New York, and it was a very special time, the late ‘70s. It’s very rich material. It expresses a very particular time, and it has lots of interesting ruminations about fame and personal history and memory and ambition, and about what it is to aspire to be an artist.’
Kinds Of Kindnesspremiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and will be released later this year. Late Fame starts shooting in autumn this year, release TCB
