ORWhen South African actress and model Charlbi Dean Kriek passed away at 32 from a lightning-fast illness in New York, it all sounds like an omen of death. The words she had chosen for his Instagram biofor example: “Do you know that there is a kind of bird that has no legs, so it must remain all its life in the sky on its wings?”, a quote from The Descent of Orpheus (to the underworld) by Tennessee Williams. Or his own name, so singular, whose genesis he had revealed to us at Cannes Film Festival 2022where he had won our very personal Palme d’Or for the most genuine and sympathetic interviewee.
Charlbi Dean on the Cannes 2022 red carpet (Getty Images).
Triangle of sadness
“It’s an interesting story. Actually my name is Kelly but when I was six my mom started calling me Kelly Dean because she was obsessed with James Dean.. And then he added Charlbi inspired by the sound of Shelby, the character of Julia Roberts in Steel flowers, the one who dies. Strange choices for someone like her mother who is not interested in cinema and knows nothing about it “he explained with the desire to talk about who is in front of journalists for the first few times (it is painful to think that they would also have been the last). Dean, Roberts in Steel flowers… Does he die young who is dear to heaven?
Also the title of the film by Ruben Östlund that Charlbi presented at Cannes – and which then won the Palme d’Or at the 75th edition of the Festival (will be in our cinemas from 27 October distributed by Teodora) – now impresses: Triangle of Sadness, although the “triangle of sadness” he alludes to is the wrinkle between the nightmare eyebrows of any model. Yes, because the Swedish director, after having ridiculed the world of contemporary art with The Square (another Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2017), this time he takes it out on the world of fashion and influencers.
Fierce satire
Why did you accept, given that the satire (very ferocious, corrosive) concerns your environment and she was called to impersonate a model-influencer?, we asked Charlbi Dean. Obtaining an articulate and unsettling answer for sincerity: “For me it was an opportunity to show what it really means to do this job, how ungrateful it is: you start very early (most of the time you leave yours at 13, to give them financial support), you drop out of school and therefore do not receive an education, so that at 25, when fashion industry he no longer wants you, you have no studies, you can no longer provide for a family and you are unable to form your own. The next step is often to find someone to take care of you: it’s not a question of money, it’s a question of survival. And we see it well in the character I play, Yaya: he really loves Carl (played by Harris Dickinson, ed) but he is penniless while in his head there is that he must first worry about getting by“.
Charlbi Dean with boyfriend Luke Volker (Getty Images).
“People generally think of models as frivolous and self-centered creatures” she continued, “but they are always under pressure: you are not thin enough, you are not tall enough, your skin is not smooth enough … I have always felt insecure and I wanted to show the contrast between how Yaya perceives herself and how others see her … I left home at 13 to go to Japan and at that age I was still afraid of the dark … I was terrified: I did not know the language, I could not go around, I did not love food (when you are so young you like your mother’s dishes). From there I couldn’t take my cell phone and call my father and mother, I had to go to the agency to talk to them. You have to grow up fast: you get invited to the clubs, you have to protect yourself. All very, very hard. A solitary profession, in which you travel non-stop ». But she invariably ended with a smile and a chuckle.
Charlbi Dean in Cannes with Harris Dickinson and director Ruben Östlund (Getty Images).
Car crash
He also explained to us that there was no “beauty of imperfection” style message in the choice of wearing a bikini, thus emphasizing the scar he had from his navel. Naturally, she had recounted what had happened: “I had been working for a long time, I was at the peak of my career, in that thin ridge where you fly from model to supermodel, when I was involved in a terrible accident: I broke my back, I broke my ribs, I had a lung collapse, a pneumothorax… I had to stop for two years. I was lucky to survive and walk again, but my agency dumped me. What am I going to do? I wondered. Why did this happen to me? Then I changed my point of view and thought I should be thankful to still be alive. Slowly I recovered and, in 2010, I had a part in Spuda South African film with John Cleese. That crash in the car wasn’t just a tragedy: it forced me to orient myself more seriously towards acting, which had always been my dream, I had attended courses ».
Charlbi Dean and Harris Dickinson in “Triangle of Sadness”.
Love for the set
The differences between model and actress? She had restarted with her so painful experience: “In the first case you are a mannequin, they put on you 50 garments a day, you cannot give your interpretation but you have to follow that of the photographer, the stylist, the make-up artist. You certainly can’t say: I don’t like this lipstick on my lips … On the set, however, if you have a director like Ruben, you put something of your own in the interpretation, there is collaboration. For the first time, I’m learning to hear my voice and to trust it. “
“And how did you imagine in the future? (the question that struck the most today) “I don’t know … Being here in Cannes for the first time, with such an important film, with colleagues (in the cast there is also a hilarious Woody Harrelson, ed) who have become a family, it is something that already exceeds my expectations … I am very, very lucky, I hope to have other opportunities. I love the direction of Guillermo Del Toro, Chloé Zhao … My role models are Tilda Swinton, Penélope Cruz, Gena Rowlands“.
He had chosen New York
She didn’t feel like an influencer. “For heaven’s sake, I’m terrible when it comes to social media, “he laughed. “I will have two hundred thousand followers, my friend Chiara Ferragni has 27 million!” After the festival she would return to New York, where she had chosen to live (“My mother stayed in South Africa, my father is in Ireland, but I talk to them every day”) together with her boyfriend, model and musician Luke Volker: ” I’m learning to play guitar like him. We just got engaged, we’ll get married by the end of next year, “she announced.
At the time of saying goodbye, she joked that the film portrayed decadent lives of the ultra-rich and now it was she, in Cannes, spoiled by everyone, who had a decadent life … And then: “Thanks for the super personal questions, I really appreciate it.” Charlbi Dean was truly unique.
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