CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Ruth Wilson describes herself as a ‘Cannes virgin’ when she sits down with Hollywood Authentic on the roof of the Palais de festival and we look down on the crowds and red carpet below. ‘It’s sometimes a bit absurd. I love it. What a wonderful thing to have in celebration of film. But the film is also separate from the other stuff – the side shows. It’s great for people watching.’ People watching is something of a full time occupation for actors and Wilson has arrived at the festival with a film its director, Zachary Wigon, calls ‘demented’. In Victorian Psycho, based on Virginia Feito’s book, she plays Mrs Pounds, the 19th century lady of Ensor House where governess Winifred Notty (Maika Monroe) arrives to care for her two children. Winifred is a Jane Eyre type with blood lust, a woman who struggles to tamp down her murderous instincts while sparring with her snooty employer. A comedy horror that reclaims the genre for women, it shares some sensibilities with Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma which opened the festival’s Un Certain Regard section.
‘There’s a sense that in horror movies women were always the victims, running around in t-shirts and getting wet. So it is exciting to be in a project where the women are the ones in power, taking revenge, are having the fight,’ says Wilson. It’s not the first time she’s dabbled in psychopathic characters – she’s played Alice in Luther since 2010, a trailblazer for unapologetic on-screen women. ‘I love playing those things that are usually attributed to men. It feels like freedom as a performer, as a female.’ There’s also a through-line from Victorian Psycho to Wilson’s breakout role, when she played Jane Eyre in the BBC’s 2006 adaptation of the Charlotte Brontë novel. Many of the tropes of that celebrated tale are subverted and questioned in Victorian Psycho to viciously amusing effect. Wilson is currently reading Villette by Brontë and thinks the rebelliousness of the genre has always been there. ‘She writes very complicated, interesting, funny, dry-witted women. It’s sort of misconceived somehow.’
Wilson was drawn to the project because of its comedy as well as playing the other side of the Jane Eyre coin – lady of the house rather than ingénue governess. ‘I’d just done a really intense play, which was wonderful, with Michael Shannon [A Moon For The Misbegotten at the Almeida], and I was like, ‘This will be a palate cleanser in its own way’. There’s something really juicy, funny and satirical about it, as well as being violent and gory. There’s something about [Mrs Pounds] – that repression, which is really interesting. When Winifred comes in, there’s a sort of disgust and desire line – a very fine line between the two with her. She’s as psychopathic as Maika’s character in some ways.’
The idea of women being pitted against each other isn’t something new, she reflects. ‘I don’t think it’s modern, it’s always been the case. A repressed group of people will fight for their own freedom – and maybe at the expense of someone else in their group. You’d hope we’d all help each other out, but that’s not always the case. It delves into that female dynamic.’ There’s also something recognisable in the way actresses are measured against each other and the prizing of youth. Wilson nods. ‘I think it’s a really interesting time, actually, for women, and it’s great to have those amazing actors ahead of me, who are ploughing that furrow for me. Your career’s not over in your 40s. It’s only getting more interesting, and that’s really exciting for me. And it’s lovely to see yourself reflected on screen. I’ve just worked with Emma Thompson [on Down Cemetery Road], and she’s an action hero. She’s being blown up, chased and shot at. And she’s like, ‘I’ve never done action. I’m doing action roles in my 60s’. I love that.’
Coming up she’s returning to the Luther world alongside Idris Elba in the second film of the series. ‘Well, she’s not dead, which is great,’ she laughs when asked what we might expect from Alice, who seemingly died at the end of season five, falling from scaffolding. ‘I hadn’t played her for seven years so stepping back inside her, it was like, ‘Wow, this is interesting. How do I do this?’ But the dynamic is so instinctive with Idris and she comes back a bit darker.’ Given she’s a murderer and a psychopath, how much darker? ‘Darker…’ is all she’ll tease before she goes back to observing the circus on the Cannes Croisette.
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival
