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While accepting the Middleburg Film Festival’s Acting Achievement Award this weekend, Léa Seydoux told the crowd that her parents sent her to summer camp in Middleburg. “The first time I came to the States,” she said, “I went by myself, and I was eight years old, and I didn’t speak a word of English, that’s true. I knew how to say ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and ‘sorry, I don’t understand.’ So it was difficult, but also rewarding. I discovered a new culture. I didn’t know then that I would become an actor, and that this would be my life: traveling, discovering new cultures, and exploring human nature.”
That has become a signature for Seydoux, 41, as she takes her Cannes tour “Gentle Monster” (Netflix) to Middleburg with Austrian filmmaker Marie Kreutzer. Seydoux is in the running for the best actress Oscar.
Kreutzer got hold of the germ of an idea for the film from a 2020 newspaper article about pedophiles. “The article made it clear to me how close it is [to us] the perpetrators are usually the majority,” she said.
When Seydoux first heard about the film from her producers, she was hesitant. As a mother of two children, “I was a little afraid of it,” she said. “I read the script, and I fell in love with the character. The script was well written, so intelligent, and that was it.”
In the film, when Lucy Weiss, a French pop singer who lives with her Austrian husband (Laurence Rupp) and young son in the country, finds out that her husband is accused of child abuse, “she’s in shock,” Seydoux said. As the revelations about his behavior continue, “It’s shock after shock. It’s all the contradictions. It’s what I loved about the character. It’s through her perspective that the story unfolds.
Seydoux often reacts quietly. “I used my face words,” she said. “I try to express inner feelings with my body and my face. That was very interesting for me as an actor.
Kreutzer established a script that begins with an intimate relationship with her husband, and then develops as Lucy discovers one thing after another, fearing that she might find out that her son was a victim of her husband’s predatory behavior. “After researching and learning more about the subject,” Kreutzer said, “I became aware that I had so many stereotypes in my head about pedophile criminals, so I really wanted to show a man and a couple that could feel like friends to an audience, one that would never have any suspicions of that kind. to be true, and hope for her and hope for him that it’s not true, and that some explanation there, because that is very man.
Seydoux said, “When it’s someone we know, that’s a lot harder to accept because everyone has different sides to them, and also amazing people have admirable sides.”
Seydoux had to speak three languages on this film: English, French and German. “Of course German is difficult in terms of pronunciation,” she said. “It was difficult for me to play the emotions with the language you don’t speak. But then I had to be, emotionally, in a strong mood. There was a word that was difficult for me to pronounce, and at some point I remember I broke into tears. Lucy can’t express herself, and she doesn’t speak the language either, so she’s even more isolated.”
The great Catherine Deneuve, who plays Lucy’s mother, points out that she should be in the city, not the country, because she is a player. “Yes,” Seydoux said. “The piano and the technical aspects were the hardest part for me. We spent some time in Vienna with Marie and a piano teacher who helped me. I had to press the right keys. Singing is my voice. I’m proud of it, and he’s always loved singing. So that for me was also a dream come true.”
After 20 years in the industry, Seydoux has learned many lessons, but none as painful as shooting Abdellatif Kechiche’s “Blue Is the Warmest Color”, which won the Palme d’Or in 2013 for the director as well as its two actresses, Seydoux and Adele Excharpoulos.
“That was thirteen years ago,” said Seydoux, “at the time before the #MeToo movement. I have already spoken a lot about how disrespectful the director was with us. We shot for six months, and we found the film in Cannes. The scenes were graphic, let’s say. The co-writers of the film, which was true, because there were a lot of improvisations, and the story is based on the two of us.
It was after that award that things got complicated when Seydoux started talking about “the bad situation,” she said. “The producers came to me and said, ‘You better shut up, because if you want to be nominated for something, if you want to make awards season, you better stop.’ And I said ‘no, I want to explain how bad we’ve been on this film,’ and I didn’t say half of what happened. In fact, it was terrible. And so I was fired. They fired me for a promotion. It was difficult because then the director started bullying me. He said if I was talking, it was because I come from this privileged family. “
Seydoux never appeared in the promo shoot. At the Golden Globes Q&A, some HFPA members challenged Seydoux, who said she was speaking out because of her family. “This was so humbling,” Seydoux said. “Even now I could cry, but I don’t. But I shed tears and it was hard.”
“Since “Blue,” Seydoux has worked regularly with directors in France and Hollywood, from Wes Anderson (“The Grand Budapest Hotel”) and Woody Allen (“Midnight in Paris”) to Mia Hansen-Løve (“One Fine Morning”).
After #MeToo, its director has not returned to his previous station in international cinema. And Seydoux asked for final approval for any scenes in which her body was naked. “When you work hand in hand with a director,” she said, “like I did with Marie, she showed me the scenes. I have to get permission for that because it’s so intimate.”
