VENICE DISPATCH
Photographs by LAUREN CARNELL
Interview by JANE CROWTHER
The star of Miu Miu’s #32 Women’s Tales short, Avec Kim, tells Hollywood Authentic about working with the iconic Claire Denis and learning to drive for her role.
Each year fashion house Miu Miu commissions one of the most profound and original female directors working today to investigate vanity and femininity in the 21st century; this year the 32nd collaborative study is from writer-director, Claire Denis and writer-director-actor Suzanne Lindon (Mona Fastvold’s Discipline is #31). In Avec Kim, Lindon stars as a Parisian woman who mends her retro car before taking it onto the streets of the City of Lights for a series of poetic encounters to meet ‘Kim’ (played by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon). With a soundtrack from Gordon and clothing from Miu Miu’s latest collection, it’s a film bursting with feminine creativity which premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
Lindon, the daughter of acclaimed French actors Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain, is a filmmaker herself (she wrote, directed and starred in Spring Blossom in 2020 and just wrapped filming on her second feature) and has worked with Denis for some time before their collaboration for Miu Miu. The duo co-wrote feature film, The Fence, together previously. ‘It was magical to work with her,’ Lindon says of working with Denis when we catch up with her at the Baglioli Luna Hotel on Venice’s Grand Canal. ‘We started working together by writing the script for The Fence together but getting to work with her on this felt completely different, because I get to see Claire on set, her natural habitat. I’d seen her at home, because we were writing in her kitchen for a year, but I discovered that she was so free on set, so unafraid of trying things, of filming in different ways than what I would expect her to do.’
When Denis first pitched Lindon the idea she had no idea she would need to drive a car, let alone a vintage stick-shift. ‘I didn’t drive, and I didn’t have my license,’ she laughs. ‘And I said, “OK, give me two weeks. In two weeks, I can drive”’. Lindon learnt to drive, passed her test and was ready behind the wheel on day one of shooting. Denis was fluid with her direction, giving the actor space to invent, working towards the denouement when the driver picks up ‘Kim’ and the two share a moment that celebrates intergenerational relationships together in the car. ‘Claire is one of my closest friends now,’ Lindon smiles, ‘and I felt that I would find in Kim something that I found in Claire. I wanted to meet Kim, because I want to meet people that Claire loves – they have to be great if she sees something in them.’
The lure of the project was also its trailblazing nature for Lindon. ‘I think Miu Miu are ahead of their time, because this is an idea that Mrs Prada and her team had before it was fashionable to celebrate women. As a young actress and filmmaker, it felt so important to be a part of this project, also with Kim and Claire, who come from another generation. But I look up to them so much that I felt very privileged.’ Denis, she says, has been her ‘queen’ since she was 15 years old. ‘I’ve always been so struck by her freedom and her independence at a time when a female director was not very listened to. Claire didn’t care. She worked with Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch and she always managed to have her own space and her own voice. And to me, she is part of a generation of women in cinema that have helped us to start changing things.’
Photographs by LAUREN CARNELL
Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Hair by THIBAUD SALDUCCI
Makeup by CAMILLE ARNAUD
Suzanne wears Miu Miu (from the Fall-Winter 2026 runway collection)
Avec Kim is available on Miu Miu digital channel and on MUBI