Cwho were our parents? What was their life like before we were born? And who are we? Are we alike? How are we different? I am impossible questions that Jim Jarmusch asked himself when he decided to write the three parts into which his film is divided, Father Mother Sister Brother which at the last Venice Film Festival took home the Golden Lion (and which we will see at the cinema on December 18th).
To try to venture some answers he moved from rural America to Dublin and Paris and called an incredible cast. Some old friends – Tom Waits -, top actors – Adam Driver – and a legend, Charlotte Rampling. Rampling occupies the second space of the title, she is the mother. From two daughters who couldn’t be more different, Cate Blanchett and Vicky Kriepswho calls together once a year, despite all three living in the Irish capital, for tea.
We witness the preparation of the table, where every detail is important. As the pleasantries that the three women exchange and let leak out ancient tensions.
The film makes us think about all the masks we wear in life, all the lies we tell ourselves, but which perhaps, within families, have more serious consequences.
The way we communicate with the world begins early, in the mother’s womb, and then in the first community that welcomes us, the family. We grow up telling ourselves that those are the people we can trust, that when we are with them we are in a safe haven. But suddenly we find ourselves lying: the moment comes when parents tell us what to do and we discover that we would like to go in a completely different direction instead. It happens that we begin to hate our parents. Sometimes to hate them. Because they don’t understand who we are. But we are the first to not know who we are. Life is a continuous learning process.
Charlotte Rampling with Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett in Jim Jarmusch’s film.
Charlotte Rampling: my masks
Oscar Wilde wrote (ne The Picture of Dorian Gray ): “At first children love their parents; as they grow up they judge them; sometimes they forgive them”.
Freud was right. The father – and the mother – must be killed. Metaphorically you mean… I don’t know who would have more right to do it than my daughters in the film. Cate is dominated by her mother, she says: “Mom look how good I am.” And she replies: “Well done, I’m proud of you.” Vicky is rebellious. Two consequences of the same education.
Vicky Krieps, Charlotte Rampling and Cate Blanchett on the red carpet in Venice (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
Her character is the portrait of decorum, the way she sets the table says everything about the education that her two daughters must have received. That decoration is his mask. What is yours? How many do you have in your wardrobe? He has to wear them at work and also outside, being a public person.
I have always hoped to be able to maintain my verticality, to never stop being me, the person who was born with me. Because if you abandon that verticality you risk losing yourself. In the world of creatives there are dizzying ups and downs, much more than for people who don’t have to put their feelings on the line every time for work. This is the difficulty. Knowing that you will go through periods of great depression, periods of remission, aware that it is this alternation that you feed on. This is the challenge. How far are you and when you become someone else, how far can you go? Then abuse emotions or not? If you want it to be human and not acted out you have to continually cross that border in one direction or the other. And I need to spend it often, to keep myself motivated.
She has chosen roles that have brought her into legend, from The night porter to The fall of the gods. Were those the moments in which you risked losing your verticality?
Certainly. So every now and then I think that I can’t go on doing what I do, that I have to stop. But then something comes, wakes me up and here I am, with another film.
Charlotte Rampling on the red carpot of “Father Mother Sister Brother” (Photo by Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)
A few years ago she told me that she needed to “be seduced by directors”. That he wasn’t the type to let it be known that he wanted to work with this or that. Has she always stood still waiting for seduction? Is that the spring?
This question of yours makes me reflect on the fact that I cannot continue to be “the chosen one”, the one who is chosen, who is loved, who is desired. And sexuality has nothing to do with it, it has to do with being loved, being indispensable and knowing it, feeling it. Do you have any idea what it feels like when someone tells you: “I wrote this with you in mind, only you can do this”? It’s intoxicating.
Wanted for life
Is it still? She was wanted and loved all her life.
It was like that, but now I’m thinking about what’s next. Before there was nothing I needed anymore, but now… Let’s go back to the family, to what Jim’s film says. You may not feel like your mother and father love you, but that doesn’t mean they don’t. Maybe you’re just receiving the wrong signals, because decoding love, of others for us, and of us for ourselves, is one of the most difficult things in life. How many times are we wrong! And how difficult it is to love the world despite all its absurdities and horrors, but somehow we succeed if we enjoy what each day brings us and stay here. That love that I received from my profession, which you may also judge to be a fake love, is what allowed me to carry on in the darkest moments of my life. When my sister died, when she decided to die (Sarah, committed suicide in 1967 at the age of 23, ed ), it was so violent, so difficult to understand, I said to myself: I have to find a way to survive… and I found it. In the people who told me: «I want you to make this film of mine, there is only you for me». And then in those who told me: «You are wonderful in this film». I needed it to survive.
Charlotte Rampling in The Night Porter by Liliana Cavani. (Photo by Les artistes Associés/Lotar Film Productions/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)
And when that tragedy struck his family, his biographies say he decided to lie to his mother. A lie that was the deepest act of love…
I hope so, I hope he believed my lie. But it’s also possible that he somehow knew. My father said: “We can’t tell her, it would kill her.” But we never talked about it, it was the great thing left unsaid in my family. I had to obey my father. I had to lie. He was a very authoritarian man, I loved him, but he also scared me.
Enter the world of Jim Jarmusch
Another film starring her has just been released in France, Two Pianos by Arnaud Deplechin, in which he is the mentor of a talented pianist. What will he do now?
Maybe I’ll take a different route. I’m questioning everything. I’m in a big “I don’t know” phase, and I want to stay there for as long as necessary. I want to slow down because I’m getting older and because cinema is a demanding commitment, for the body and for the soul. But at the same time I can’t imagine my life without it. I finished Dunes, I have offers, but I don’t know… (filming of The Species in which she plays Emma Darwin alongside Anthony Hopkins-Charles are currently scheduled for next spring, ed ).
Is it a moment that you are experiencing with sadness, with melancholy, or is it just waiting for an answer that comes from within you?
It can’t be a rational answer I’m waiting for. And it can no longer be enough to be chosen by a director. It’s the universe that must want me. And I would like to ask him: please help me find the right path for me at this time in life. It can be a beautiful moment, a global rethink. That’s what I was doing when Jim called. ( Imitates Jarmusch’s deep voice ). «Charlotte, I’m Jim Jarmusch, would you like to make a film with me?». And it was wonderful to enter into his poetry.
Luka Sabbat and Indya Moore in the third episode of Jim Jarmusch’s film.
Jarmusch knows how to build universes and perhaps even families of choice with the people he works with.
He’s the kind of artist who makes you feel that what he does is right, not in the sense of right or wrong, but in the sense of right for you. It’s right to be inside his world.
For a long time your life coincided with Italy: does it still give you emotions?
Italy was the cradle of my creativity. Here I discovered what I would do, I was 22 when I filmed Kidnapping-Kidnapping with Gianfranco Mingozzi and then came Visconti and Cavani. Everything that came after was born with them.