Reality is overrated. Most of the acolytes of the Sitges festival know it and also Eve Greenwho after debuting in ‘Dreamers’, by Bertolucci, a fascinating ménage à trois in a Paris on the verge of the riots of 1968, has been dropped above all in projects without attachment to the laws of everyday life. New example: ‘Nocebo’ (Official Fantàstic Competition)supernatural thriller Lorcan Finneganthe director who inadvertently predicted the reality of confinement with the hallucinated ‘Vivarium’.
In which Finnegan announced on Friday in Sitges as “the first ever co-production between Ireland and the Philippines”, Green brings to life Christine, a successful children’s clothing designer who sees her life change radically in a matter of a few months, as a result of a mysterious encounter with a dog that shakes her ticks.. She suffers from memory problems, insomnia or tremors, but according to her husband Felix (Mark Strong) it’s all in your head. Only Philippine assistant Diana (Chai Fonacier), arriving at the door of the house without Christine remembering having called her, seems to have the solution to her problems. But something in the air says that the nightmare has only just begun.
As a good lover of the strange, Green had vibrated with ‘Vivarium’. “That’s why I read this script with interest,” she explains to us in a one-on-one interview. “And I thought it was an exciting psychological thriller that also had an important social message.” As Finnegan tells us a few minutes before we chat with her, “This role was ideal for Eva: he likes complicated characters, who may not be too likeable, and he is a very politically aware personso he was interested in exploring the themes of the film.”
Against ‘fast fashion’
The fascinating ‘Nocebo’ is, among other things, an exploration of the effects of gaslighting, that form of psychological abuse by which an abuser makes his victim doubt his own judgement. Who says an abuser can say a doctor, as they show some studies and recalls the film: “Lorcan made me see a lot of things about, specifically, Lyme disease [infección bacteriana que se produce a través de la picadura de una garrapata infectada]. Many women are not taken seriously. And until the root of the problem is found, they really suffer.”
But if anything thoroughly condemns the film, it is our rampant consumerism and exploitative model of affordable and ephemeral fashion. “‘Fast fashion’ destroys our environment,” recalls Green at the start of a long tirade. “It’s very destructive to human rights. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the third biggest cause of climate change. And people aren’t aware of how toxic it is to the environment and ourselves. All those clothes, too, don’t is not usually recycled, but most ends up in gigantic landfills. People say: why buy a thirty dollar shirt instead of a five? If you’re going to wear that cheap t-shirt thirty times, fine, but don’t buy it to wear it once and throw it away.“.
Tragic-looking Bond girl
The daughter of actress Marlène Jobert and dental surgeon (or, be careful, Bresson actor) Walter Green tried her luck, without self-satisfaction, in the theater before dazzling and being happy with ‘Dreamers’. She kept pointing to stars like the Jerusalem Sibyl of ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’ or the Vesper Lynd of ‘Royal Casino’, a Bond girl who, like Diana Rigg’s Tracy Draco in ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’, did not make it to the end credits alive. “I once saw ‘Casino Royale’ as a great love story, or even a great love tragedy, that happens to have James Bond as one of the main characters. It was also very well written. The verbal give and take between them it was incredible, almost like a 1940s movie with Katharine Hepburn.”
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Precisely a scriptwriter of the Bond saga, John Logan (‘Skyfall’, ‘Spectre’), served her another of her most memorable roles, that of the medium Vanessa Ives in the series ‘Penny Dreadful’: “Without a doubt, she is one of the best characters that have touched me. In a way , felt like Logan had written it for me. Well, hopefully not quite, or I’ll die soon [risas]”.
We will soon see her in another series, the Anglo-French ‘Liaison’ on Apple TV+, directed by stephen hopkins, author (with all the letters) of ‘Predator 2’, ‘The demons of the night’ or the pilot of ’24’. “It’s a bit sad, but it seems that cinema is dying and television is prevailing. I’m lucky to be able to continue working. Also doing very different things: soon you’ll see me as Milady from ‘The Three Musketeers’ and now I’m going to play an American soldier. I love being able to explore so many worlds.”