The Cannes Film Festival, yet again, belongs to LĂ©a Seydoux.
The French actress has already shared in a Palme dâOr at the festival, in 2013 for âBlue Is the Warmest Color,â which made her and AdĂšle Exarchopoulos the first actors to ever win Cannesâ top prize, which they shared with director Abdellatif Kechiche.
Last year, she had four films at the festival, but missed all of them because she tested positive for COVID-19. But this year, Seydoux gives two of the best performance of her career in a pair of films unveiled at Cannes: Mia Hansen-Loveâs âOne Fine Morningâ and David Cronenbergâs âCrimes of the Future.â Together, they have only reinforced the view that Seydoux is the premier French actress of her generation.
On a recent afternoon a few blocks from Cannesâ Palais des Festivals, Seydoux greeted a reporter cheerfully. How was she? âGreat!â she answered. âShould I not be great?â
The 36-year-old Seydoux has already made a major mark in Hollywood, most notably by taking the once stereotypical role of âBond Girlâ and stretching the character â a âBond Womanâ she redefined â across several films, adding a new dimension of depth to the franchise. Seydoux was so good that even James Bond wanted to settle down.
But itâs especially clear at this yearâs Cannes that Hollywood was only one stop of many in the fast-evolving, exceptionally varied career of Seydoux, who has managed to be one of Europeâs most famous faces while still exuding a mysterious melancholy on screen. Sheâs ubiquitous and elusive at the same time.
âI carry a sadness,â Seydoux says, tracing it to a shy childhood. âCinema for me is something playful. Itâs a real consolation because, in a way, I transformed my sadness into an object of beauty. Or I tried to, anyway. Itâs not like it works every time.â
âIf I didnât have cinema, I would have been very sad,â she adds. âThatâs why I work all the time. Itâs a way to be connected.â
In âOne Fine Morning,â one of the standouts of Cannes, Seydoux plays a young widow raising a daughter in Paris while tending to her elderly father, whose memory is slipping. After reconnecting with an old friend, a passionate affair follows. âOne Fine Morning,â a semi-autobiographical movie Hansen-Love wrote shortly before her own father died of COVID-19, throbs with the irreconcilable coexistence of grief and love, death and rebirth, and lifeâs vexing impermanence. Hansen-Love, the âBergman Islandâ filmmaker, wrote it with Seydoux in mind.
âShe was maybe my favorite actress for this generation,â explains Hansen-Love. âSheâs enigmatic in a way that very few actresses are. Sheâs not trying to show things. Sheâs not affected.â
âThereâs a sadness and melancholy about her that contrasts with her status as a superstar that moves me,â adds the writer-director. âOn the one hand, sheâs a very glamorous figure in the landscape of cinema. Sheâs very sexy. Sheâs in films where sheâs seen from the viewpoint of a masculine fantasy, and she enjoys that a lot, I think. But thereâs an innocence and simplicity about her that gives me the same feeling when I film unknown actors.â
Sony Pictures Classics acquired the film Monday for US theatrical distribution, citing it as Seydouxâs âfinest performance to date.â
Leading up to this moment, Seydoux has experienced some of the worst sides of the movie business. In 2017 she said Harvey Weinstein once forcibly tried to kiss her in a hotel room in a meeting that was ostensibly about a potential role. The filming technique of the romance âBlue Is the Warmest Color,â in which Kechiche would shoot up to 100 takes of a single shot, has also been questioned.
In Cronenbergâs âCrimes of the Future,â which opens June 3 in theaters, Seydoux stars alongside Viggo Mortensen in a film yet more focused on the body. In a future where humans and plastics have drawn closer, she plays a surgeon who performs operations to remove tumors and organs with the flare of an artist.
âTo be honest, I didnât understand everything about the film,â Seydoux says, smiling. âFor me, itâs like a metaphor about what it is to be an artist.â
âCrimes of the Futureâ may present an usual science-fiction world but Seydoux is remarkably grounded in it. Eager for more open-ended cinematic adventures, Seydoux says doing a variety of films âis how I feel free. I donât want to be stuck in one place.â
âIâm not crazy about films that are âentertaining,ââ says Seydoux. âI donât think that I go to the cinema to be entertained. I know itâs a big thing in America. I like to ask myself questions more. I donât like to be given answers. I donât want to stop thinking. I think certain films are just to feed you with images.â
âI love to feel that Iâve touched something truthful,â Seydoux adds. âIn this world weâre living in today, Instagram and all that, is just lies. I feel that with cinema we can touch a certain truth. And there are many truths. I love to be touched. I feel alive.â