Ludivine Sagnier: "I Love Challenge"

With Claude Chabrol's newest film, A Girl Cut in Two, now opening in New York, moviegoers may further observe one of France's top young actresses in yet another interesting role. Most recently seen on this side of the Atlantic in Christophe Honoré's Love Songs, in which she plays a pivotal part in the ensemble cast, Ludivine Sagnier will next appear here in Claude Miller's A Secret.

Miller, for my money an under-seen and under-rated director, cast Ms. Sagnier in his large ensemble in a riveting story that spans four generations of Jews: pre-, during and post-Holocaust. The tale flips back and forth in time, and the director/adaptor (from Philippe Grimberg's novel) sees to it that we view the Holocaust from unusual angles, most of them specific and personal, rather than via the large-canvas, atrocity-filled manner to which we've become accustomed. I reviewed the film in more detail when it screened as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema series last March. Six months later, it's as strong as ever in my memory, and I'd still call it a "Don't Miss."

Regarding Chabrol, it seems to me that his later films, particularly Comedy of Power and now A Girl Cut in Two grow ever more subtle and rigorous. He is still concerned, of course, with the haute bourgeoisie, their hypocrisies and addiction to power, but he is content to let us in on all this via bits of conversation. We see almost nothing of the specific evils, sexual and criminal, that go on. For this director, and for his older, intelligent audience, there is little need to show and tell all.

The director and co-writer (with Cecile Maistre) has cast his movie with the very best France has to offer, starting with Ms. Sagnier. She's bright, eager, smart, thoughtful, needy, loving, hurt and most everything else a girl can expect out of the French television industry, a well-heeled heel of an older lover (François Berléand, as good as ever) and a young man in loving pursuit of her who is as rich, nasty and nutty as they get. Though based upon the early 20th Century scandal involving Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White and Harry Kendall Thaw (which was also the basis for Richard Fleischer's 1955 film The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing), Chabrol's movie is so French and cerebral that any comparison is dead in the water.

Another young, hot French actor, Benoîot Magimel (whom Chabrol is said to have cast because he feels that Magimel can handle any character of any class) gives one of the most florid and hateful performances I can recall. And I mean that as high praise. Caroline Sihol is properly cold, vicious and smart as his mother; Mathilda May makes a gaunt and sexy friend and ex of Berléand, with Valeria Cavalli a loving dishrag as his "saint' of a wife; Marie Bunel (as Sagnier's intelligent, devoted and very mistaken mother) completes the ensemble.

I recently spoke with Ludivine Sagnier on the second floor lounge of NYC's shabby-chic Soho Grand hotel (pets are permitted!). Blond and glowing, Ms. Sagnier is five months pregnant (and rubbing her tummy almost constantly as we speak). "We're all animals," she tells me with a smile, as I comment on the tummy-rub.

A Girl Cut in TwoDo you know if it's a girl or boy?

It's a girl.

So you'll have two girls. [She already has a three-year-old.]

Yes.

Before we get into you, I have one question about the info that appears in the press kit for A Girl Cut in Two, buried in the interview with Claude Chabrol. In speaking about his use of framing, the director says, "When the characters are running from themselves, I shoot them in profile to emphasize that they are revealing only a small facet of the truth. In any case, there were some lines the actors could not deliver straight to the camera." What does he mean by this? What lines could you not deliver straight to the camera?

I think he means to say that everybody is hiding something. Because the characters are lying to themselves, he shoots them in profile. In this film, all the characters are sometimes lying to themselves. They are all "cut in two."

Really - not only your character? The girl of the title, who is cut in two.

No. I think that all of them are, in some way.

Interesting. It's true that most of the people we see are lying to themselves or each other. Only the character of your mother seems somewhat free of this.

It may be. But although she seems supportive of her daughter, in some ways she pushes her toward Paul, and thus toward danger. Chabrol told me that perhaps she is jealous of her daughter's relationship with the older man. It's funny, but when I talked about this with my own mother, even she laughed and said, "Oh - François Berléand! I am so jealous - he is gorgeous!"

Well, it's nice to know that as we age, some people still find older men attractive. But I suspect that is true more in Europe than here.

Yes, here - and I don't want to be mean - but I think that American people have a problem with aging.

This may be one of the reasons why a lot of us prefer European films: We feel like we are watching real people. But to get back to your career: Among young French actresses, you are rather unusual because, at the age of 29, you already have worked with so many wonderful directors: from Resnais and Rappeneau, early in your career, to the Claudes - Chabrol and Miller - François Ozon, Diane Kurys, P.J. Hogan, Alfonzo Cuarón, as well as French directors who may be less known on our shores but who are probably on their way "up": Yvan Attal, Christophe Honoré and Laurent Tirard.

I have been lucky in that. Did you know that Claude Miller actually worked for both Truffaut and Godard?

I knew that he was an assistant to Truffaut but not that he had worked for Godard.

Yes: In Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her, Miller actually appeared in the film!

He was an actor, too?

Not really, but you know how Godard used everyone for everything.

[We laugh.] Of course. I really like Miller's movies and I wish his work were better known in this country.

Yes. He does not express himself that much, I think.

He seems reticent, and not at all pushy.

No, he's not pushy.

But he's good: Class Trip!

Yes, Class Trip is amazing!

And that film he made from Chekhov's The Seagull: La Petite Lili: Oh, boy.

Oh - I am glad you saw that!

You were lovely in that: one of the best Ninas I have seen. [The film is a modern-day retelling of The Seagull, with the character now named Lili and the venue switched from legitimate theatre to filmmaking.] This summer, it's going to be fun for American audiences to be able to see you in one film after another in such quick succession - just to compare your work. Last spring your film Love Songs was released theatrically; now A Girl Cut in Two will be released theatrically this month and A Secret next. Can we talk a bit about how you worked with your most recent directors: Chabrol and Miller? They both strike me as quite intelligent men and thoughtful, precise filmmakers. Yet the viewer would never mistake the work of one man for that of the other.

But you know what? They do have connections. Here is one, and it is funny, strange: There is a line in the screenplay of Chabrol's A Girl Cut in Two that did not make it into the final film, in which my character's uncle says to her, "You know what I like best about you? You never cry about yourself." When I first read the script, this line really surprised me, because it is exactly what the director Claude Miller once told me about myself - as a person: "What I like best is that you never cry about yourself." When I read that line, I remembered that it was the same thing that Miller had said.

At the penultimate moment of the film [slight spoiler ahead: skip to the next page to avoid it], the character does shed a tear.

Yes. Sometimes tears can be very liberating.

Exactly. And then in the moment after, when we see her smiling image on the screen, we feel a very positive sense, as though the character has indeed come through all this.

Yes, and that is what I like about this story. She is a modern heroine in the sense that she has the power to get over all the bad things in the story. In the original story, the young woman could not recover at all.

For me, your career has been so interesting because your roles have been, well, all over the place - in a way that's similar to these two roles in the Chabrol and the Miller [Ludivine laughs and nods, yes]. You are equally splendid in both roles. How do you choose which roles to accept? Or do you feel that the roles - or the writer, producer or director - choose you?

I think, if there is something that drives me over the years, it is "necessity." If I feel that I have to do it. If the role is so good that I don't dream - that I don't sleep - until I know I can do it, then I choose to take that role.

Ah... So most of the movies we have seen you in have been the roles -

- that haunted me!

You felt you simply had to do them.

Yes.

Were there any roles that you now wish you had not taken?

Maybe some things. I would say that, before working with Ozon, when I was very young, not yet 18, there were some things that were not maybe that interesting...

Like I Want to Go Home?

That was nothing, a very small part.

But it was Resnais! But maybe his worst film - for me, anyway.

Yes. When I was a teenager, I did some things, maybe two or three TV things, but even these I do not regret because, you know, it is still "experience." And it was a chance to work with different colleagues, and I would not want to give that up!

What was it like to work with the two Claudes - Chabrol and Miller? The results are wonderful on both films, so could you talk a little about the differences, how they work with actors?

This will sound like a cliché, but to me is not a cliché: Working on a movie is like to be in a family. So I would say that Claude Chabrol is my grand-dad, and Claude Miller is like my uncle. But they are also completely different in the way they work. Miller is full of vulnerability; he shows himself as a very sensitive person. He is full of affection and gives his heart to everything. You can see that he cries all the time, when he is watching the movie. He seems to be very shy and sad at the same time.

Chabrol is rather very distanced, very disguising of his feelings and seems to be a very grumpy character. He is with his cigar, like this [she imitates the director smoking], never happy with anything but, you know, it is a game he plays. I think it is all an act. Really, he could have been an actor! He performs all the time, in front of his crew, in front of us. When we are not working, if we are out at a restaurant, he will suddenly start singing like an opera singer, very loud. [She sings a little "Figaro-like" song, imitating the director.] It's really very bad! [She laughs.]

And he does this sort of "out of the blue"?

Yes. You don't really know where it comes from! And suddenly all the crew will yell, "Shut up! It's so bad. You are killing us! Stop it!"

And he stops?

No he just goes on, even louder. He likes this! It is hilarious. Usually, a director does not like to be mocked. But he enjoys it!

Hmm... You might expect something like from a younger director - maybe Tarantino? But Chabrol? Pretty funny. In A Girl Cut in Two, you first have the opportunity to be a "weather girl" - which you do very well - and then a talk show host, which you do even better, in fact, very, very well [Ludivine laughs delightedly]. I found myself thinking, boy, if this woman had a regular talk show, I would watch it. And I hate talk shows!

[She laughs again] This is very funny, because that was an improvised scene! It was not rehearsed at all. That whole scene with Edouard Baer - who is a great actor in France, he is also a kind of comedian who does a lot of stage work, too - and he is a great friend of mine. And I think the scene works.

It works very well. Beyond this, you also get to play a young girl who falls in love with a much older man. Something that American audiences are not very used to seeing, I think, from our own "superstars." And you carry this off, too, and make it something sad, moving and real, and through all of this, you still manage to maintain a good relationship with your mom!

Yes, because I don't tell her everything!

In A Secret, you play a character who is a little more mousy, less glamorous, ending up in competition with Cécile De France for the love of your husband.

It is funny, but when I read the script, I thought Claude Miller was going to offer me the Cécile De France role, but I really wanted the other role. When he told me that it was the other role he wanted me for, and I said, "Oh, thank you, Claude!"

This goes back to another reason why I find you such an interesting actress: the manner in which you handle the physicality of your roles. You have the kind of face and body that allows you to play a glamorous role, but you can just as easily play a role that is not so glamorous. Which not all that many actresses seem to possess - or maybe they don't care to make use of it. Certainly Meryl Streep has it. It's a kind of gift, I think.

Yes, it is certainly is a kind of gift. And it makes me laugh. Because after I did Swimming Pool, they all thought that was the kind of girl I was. But, no, François Ozon had been composing that role with very many different artificial tools, you know?

And I suppose, after Swimming Pool, you got many offers to do that kind of role again?

Oh, yes.

But you didn't. [She nods.] Good for you. I'm proud of you!

[She laughs.] Thank you!

I'm being your father now... Not that there would have been anything horribly wrong with this, but you would have been type-cast in that same kind of role. How much more interesting it has been to see you in all these different roles since then.

And how much more fun for me, too!

And you are being challenged and are growing as an actress.

That what I like. I love challenge. It is more interesting.

I wonder if that is one of the differences between the French and the American movie industries. Less type-casting?

Ummmm. [She thinks for a moment.] In France we make a lot of bad comedies, too. But you do not see them over here. They don't travel very much. What you see here is always the best that is coming out of France. So may be you always have a good opinion of France?

I guess we are lucky over here with what French films we see. We just don't see enough. But people don't like to read subtitles any longer. They don't want to see foreign films. We're all getting stupid.

I think so, too. The other day my fiancé and I, we really wanted to see a Hitchcock movie on a screen. We looked - and nowhere in Paris was any Hitchcock playing! This was incredible.

But, dear: he's dead. He's not making any more movies. No, I'm kidding. But that would be the same in our country. It would be unusual to find a Hitchcock movie playing in any theater, except for maybe the Film Forum or Walter Reade here in NYC. So you expected one of his films to be playing at the Cinémathèque?

Yes. And we have retrospectives.

But why not rent one of his films on DVD and play it on a nice wide-screen TV? It's great. Do you have the Criterion label available in France?

Criterion?

Yes, they make these fabulous transfers of old movies - so clear and sharp that they look like the best print you could see in a movie theater.

I don't think we have that label. But actually, I don't want to miss the pleasure of going out to a movie theater. And we now have MK2 theatres.

MK2? Like Marin Karmitz?

Yes, he is also a producer, but he now has theaters all around Paris that show old movies and new movies - but not so commercial. And they have these special seats...

Like our bucket seats?

No - but where just two people can sit.

Like a love seat? [She nods, yes.] We don't have anything like that here - this would have to be France. Except maybe at the IFC Center, where A Girl Cut in Two will be playing.

I now love to go to the cinema because of these seats! It's like you would be at home, with the person you love.

Wow. Can gay men go and sit in these seats, too?

Yes, of course! But, well, you know, it's only a cinema. It's more for crooning, you know.

And Marin Karmitz is the owner of these theaters?

Yes. We call them Multiplexes and it's like they are in malls. Very big theaters with 16 or 17 screens. You have the movies and a restaurant and a DVD library. We have seven or eight of these theaters.

Maybe we'll get more theaters with these kinds of seats eventually. I read on the IMDB that you campaigned for Lionel Jospin in one of your elections.

Well... yes. [She giggles.]

That's better than for Le Pen. I wouldn't be talking to you if you'd campaigned for him. That's interesting.

Yes, but it was already eight years ago, seven years ago.

You didn't have your child back then, right?

No. But lately I also campaigned for Ségolène Royale.

Wow - I was just recently talking about her to Eric Guirado, who directed The Grocer's Son, and Eric said that he felt that Royale was just not smart enough.

That's true. But Sarkozy is not good for the democracy movement. He is establishing the nobility, the privileged and the upper class. He cleans up the scandals of old friends who are in trouble. He is almost like Berlusconi in Italy.

Yep: That's the triumvirate: Berlusconi, Bush and Sarkozy.

He just married the singer, Carla Bruni.

She's interesting. And beautiful. And smart. But is she kind? Even a little?

Yes, I think she is kind.

Maybe she'll soften him.

Yes, but she is an Italian aristocrat. And she is obsessed with making new friends. She has ego problems and she is on the cover of every magazine in France. I have met her several times, and she seems very kind, but we don't necessarily want our President to be... bling bling, if you know what I mean. We just want him to do good work and do what is best for all the country. And to conserve the values that have been won over the centuries.

You had your revolution around the same time that we had our revolution, but your history goes so much farther back than ours. [The PR person gives us the five minute warning sign, so we get back to films.] You've worked with François Ozon more than with any other director, right?

Yes. Three films together. It's a record!

You also worked with P.J. Hogan - as Tinker Bell in his wonderful film of Peter Pan. I've read that Hogan cast you after seeing you in Ozon's Water Drops on Burning Rocks. And also that Chabrol finally decided to cast you in this film after seeing you in Peter Pan. Funny how one role can lead unexpectedly to another. Before I forget, I want to tell you that you are my grand-daughter's favorite actress. She's only three, but all her other favorites - Belle, Ariel, Snow White - are animated. So I told her I was meeting Tinker Bell - the actress, the real person who plays her - and she seemed to understand the difference between an actress and a role.

Really! Because my daughter, she doesn't: She calls me "Mommy Tinker Bell" and you know, in every Disney Peter Pan DVD, too, you have a Tinker Bell, and when she sees any of them she says, Mommy Tinker Bell!

You brought a real "edge" to that role.

Something maybe very French? You know: P.J. Hogan, he sent me a picture of his children, but I don't really know what he is doing now.

He made a wonderful movie that didn't get released here in theaters called Unconditional Love with Kathy Bates, Rupert Everett and Jonathan Pryce. But I don't know what he is doing now. But he is so good. And very underrated, I think.

Completely!

And Ozon is a good director, too - but not so underrated. My favorites of his are 5 x 2, 8 Women and the one with Melvil Poupaud.

Le Temps qui reste - with Jeanne Moreau! I think this is my favorite, too. Have you seen his last one? It is about a music writer with a young actress called Romola Garai.

From Atonement. No, I haven't.

I loved this one. And his new one I have just seen at the editing table, but I think it is going to be good! He is challenging himself a lot.

On the IMDB, it also mentions that you have turned down offers from Hollywood to star as the girlfriend of various male American superstars, and that you were doing this because you remain committed to French cinema. Is that the reason, or was it really just the roles? I think you are committed to French cinema...

Yes, but it was the roles. I really don't mind working in the United States, but - sorry - it is only because I did not have the right feeling about the part.

Like you can't sleep unless you do this role! Before we close, is there anything else you'd like to talk about?

Only that I do have another movie to be released in France. So you might hear about it. It is the story of a French gangster who became public enemy #1 during the 1970s; he is played by Vincent Cassel and I play his last girlfriend. It is a kind of diptych made in two parts - the first called Death Instinct and the second Public Enemy Number One.

I just interviewed Guillaume Canet about Tell No One and he mentioned that the producers wanted Cassel to star in that movie, but François Cluzet was his choice. He said that, yes, Cassel is good but that he can't star in every French film.

Well, he does not star in every French film, but he also makes very edgy choices. And now he has also become a producer, and he is producing more and more projects and is becoming very formidable.

Whoops: We're getting the high sign that we have to end this conversation, Ludivine. Thank you so much for your time and energy and very interesting thoughts on all of this! Keep up your good work, and we'll look forward to seeing you on-screen again very soon.