Eva Green and the mystique of the French actress

While the allure of Gallic women may have cast a spell over cinema, we shouldn’t allow it to cloud our vision, argues Clarisse Loughrey

Wednesday 27 March 2019 19:39 GMT

Eva Green has a Gothic air that’s made her a natural muse for Tim Burton (Getty)

Colette Marchant soars above the crowd, sequined and befeathered, moving with ethereal grace as she performs her famous trapeze act. The audience are in awe. As played by Eva Green in Disney’s live-action remake of Dumbo, Marchant is the ultimate French woman of our imagination: poised, daringly styled, and full of mystery. Describing her role, the actor called her “a bird in a cage – and quite an enigmatic one at that”.

The same could be said of Green herself. Or, at least, that’s how her adoring fans have come to view her. Born to star Marlène Jobert and raised in Paris, Green is a prime example of our obsessions with French actresses. There is a sense of enigma to her that we can’t resist. Having paired her pale complexion with the dark locks she’s been dyeing since the age of 15, Green has a Gothic air that’s made her a natural muse for Dumbo’s director, Tim Burton. Her roles in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016) and Dark Shadows (2012) offered her more to chew on than the love interest roles of Kingdom of Heaven (2005) or Perfect Sense (2011). And while her best work was undoubtedly in Showtime’s drama series Penny Dreadful, she’s struggled to break free from the “femme fatale” image that’s defined her since 2006’s Casino Royale.

Bond does appear to have a fondness for Gallic women, including Green, Sophie Marceau (The World is Not Enough), and Léa Seydoux (Spectre). They all embody sophistication and seduction, without the emotional attachment. It’s a perfect deal for 007. Green’s Vesper Lynd coolly introduces herself with the words: “I’m the money.” That said, this isn’t the only kind of French woman Hollywood has fixated on, as long as the image of Audrey Tautou’s Amelie looms. She’s as indecipherable as Bond’s women, but sexual magnetism has been traded for elfin innocence. International audiences gobbled up Amelie’s joie de vivre in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s comedy; it remains the highest-grossing French-language film released in the US.

Meanwhile, the saucer-eyed Tautou, with her little bob haircut, became the poster child for modern whimsy. She spawned so many poor imitators, you could blame her for the infestation of “manic pixie dream girls” of the early 2000s. Her delight in simple things, from cracking a crème brûlée to stealing a garden gnome, spoke to a different kind of French self-indulgence. This was about the luxury of slowing down our own lives in order to appreciate our everyday surroundings.

Of course, Amelie couldn’t have existed without the French New Wave of the 1950s and 1960s, which not only shaped so much of what we now deem French “cool”, but created archetypes for the nation’s women. When Hollywood thinks of France, its mind is drawn immediately to Brigitte Bardot, the original sex kitten, or to Catherine Deneuve, the aloof beauty. Or, perhaps, it reflects on Anna Karina’s melancholic stare or Jeanne Moreau’s sultry pout. The films of Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and their circle had a habit of putting women on a pedestal. These women command immense power when they’re on screen, but there’s something often mythical about them. They’re celluloid goddesses. You need only watch the way Godard’s camera fixates on Karina’s face in 1962’s Vivre Sa Vie – it’s pure adulation.

The 10 best neo-noir films

Show all 10

1/10The 10 best neo-noir films

The 10 best neo-noir films

10. Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967)

For many, the starting point for neo-noir, although it passed under the radar in 1967. From Donald Westlake’s novel, noir veteran Lee Marvin is relentless as the criminal seeking revenge after being left for dead by his wife and best friend. Taut, uber cool, and full of noiresque flourishes (the whole story may well be Marvin’s dying dream), Point Blank never wastes a second. It introduced a new level of violence in cinema and laid the foundations for everything that was to come.

The 10 best neo-noir films

9. Brick (Rian Johnson, 2006)

The key components of film noir are audaciously relocated from the city’s mean streets to an American high school where the kids speak as if they are in a Dashiell Hammett novel. A teenager investigates the death of his former girlfriend in this highly original indie homage to the classic noir era.

The 10 best neo-noir films

8. Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1981)

The storyline of this Florida set thriller so resembled classic noir that its makers must have feared a plagiarism suite, but it works thanks to Kasdan’s assured direction and the last third of the film when the plot heads in a different direction. William Hurt is the dim-witted sap hoodwinked by an incendiary Kathleen Turner into murdering her husband. The verbal sparring between the two leads comes across as an amalgam of the sexual repartee of Double Indemnity and The Big Sleep in a film that has grown in stature over the years.

The 10 best neo-noir films

7. Blood Simple (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1984)

The Coen brothers debut film is a dazzling, darkly comic delight choc-full of the hallmarks of the brothers’ subsequent career. A venal private detective is hired by a cuckolded husband to murder his unfaithful wife and her lover. Complications ensue when the detective decides to deviate from the plot and murder the husband instead, resulting in a series of misunderstandings that leads to the blood soaked, twist filled denouement.

The 10 best neo-noir films

6. Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975)

Los Angeles private detective Harry Moseby’s marriage is on the rocks and he’s making a living on low rent divorce cases. So Moseby (Gene Hackman) jumps at the chance to high tail it to Florida to bring back a missing nymphet to her obnoxious mother. It all goes wrong from there, as in a common theme in 1970s noir, Moseby’s good intentions only serve to exacerbate an already fraught situation in this confused, perplexing example of post Watergate paranoia scripted by Scottish screenwriter Alan Sharp.

The 10 best neo-noir films

5. The Late Show (Robert Benton, 1977)

Art Carney excels as ageing private eye Ira Wells who investigates the death of his ex-partner with the help of kooky Lily Tomlin. Ira has a bad leg, an ulcer and a hearing aid, but still clings to his old world sensibilities. Ira doesn’t like to talk much, but that doesn’t matter as Tomlin’s character never stops. But the mutual attraction that develops between the two drives a warm, affectionate, witty love letter to 1940s’ noir.

The 10 best neo-noir films

4. The Grifters (Stephen Frears, 1990)

Assured, knowing direction from Englishman abroad Frears and career defining performances from John Cusack, Annette Bening and Anjelica Huston elevate this adaption of Jim Thompson’s pulp novel about a trio of con artists and their destructive relationship to near classic status. Frears cleverly retained much of Thompson’s hard-boiled dialogue and by using authentic noir locations and costumes produced a movie that personifies the spirit of classic noir.

The 10 best neo-noir films

3. The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)

Purists were outraged at Hollywood maverick Altman’s irreverent updating of the 1953 novel. The great iconoclast Altman’s signature tropes are present and correct, from the overlapping dialogue to the incessantly wandering camera. One critic, missing the point entirely, complained (albeit humorously) that any resemblance to the Chandler novel was not only coincidental but probably libellous. The Long Goodbye was scripted by Leigh Brackett, maintaining continuity with both Chandler and classic era noir as she had co-written Howard Hawks’ version of The Big Sleep almost thirty years before. Elliott Gould’s dishevelled, mumbling Marlowe stumbles around modern day LA trying to unravel Chandler’s serpentine plot as if he had just woken from a twenty year slumber. However, Altman doesn’t try too hard to make sense of it all, famously stating that the biggest mystery in the film was just what had happened to Marlowe’s missing cat.

The 10 best neo-noir films

2. LA Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997)

Hanson proved that there is no such beast as an unfilmable novel with his masterful adaption of James Ellroy’s convoluted, labyrinthine original about three contrasting police offers who unite to investigate corruption and murder in the LAPD. Hugely compelling and wonderfully atmospheric, a game-changer in every sense and nominated for nine Oscars, winning just two in the year of Titanic. The acting, direction, script, editing and cinematography are uniformly brilliant in a film that defines the term modern classic.

The 10 best neo-noir films

1. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)

As great as LA Confidential is, it has to bow to Chinatown; one of the greatest, most stylish films ever made. Polanski drew on real life events (the bringing of water to Los Angeles through widespread corruption) to weave a sinuously intoxicating retro-noir that has never been bettered. Jack Nicholson’s suave, urbane private detective Jake Gittes exudes confidence and competence as he investigates a seemingly straightforward adultery case that spirals into a vast conspiracy involving corporate corruption, incest and murder. In reality, Gittes is just as lost as Elliott Gould’s Marlowe in The Long Goodbye. As heinous businessman Noah Cross tells Gittes, “You may think you know what you’re dealing with, but, believe me, you don’t.” Only the final tragic scene takes place in Chinatown and ultimately Chinatown itself is just a state of mind, a metaphor for the nefarious inner workings of a Los Angeles on the cusp of becoming the monstrous deity of lore.

Graeme Ross

Then came the likes of Béatrice Dalle, whose roles in Betty Blue (1986) and Trouble Every Day (2001) helped cement the image of the sexually free (and provocative) French woman. Whichever way the outside world chooses to see them, French women are so often defined by qualities that make them seem inaccessible. For actresses today, it’s both a boon and an obstacle in their careers.

Many French actresses have circumvented the ageism of the film industry and enjoyed substantial careers and international recognition in their later years. Juliette Binoche, now 55, hops smoothly from blockbuster productions such as Ghost in the Shell (2017) and Godzilla (2014), to the work of internationally recognised French auteurs, such as Olivier Assayas and Claire Denis. Meanwhile, Isabelle Huppert at 66 continues to be a favourite among cinephiles, known for her bold choices – most notably, her role in 2016’s Elle, as a victim of sexual assault who decides to track down the perpetrator. The French woman’s sophistication has ensured they’ve been treated with a level of gravitas sadly not afforded to many of their American contemporaries.

Yet, the image also comes with boundaries. Green is one of many French actresses who have struggled to be seen as more than the femme fatale, ever since her risqué debut in The Dreamers (2003), about a group of students all enraptured by the New Wave movement. 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) gave her little to do other than traipse around in low-cut dresses, while her masterfully nuanced work in Cracks (2009) and White Bird in a Blizzard (2014) remains criminally underseen. Marion Cotillard, too, has found few roles in Hollywood that match the fearsomeness of her Oscar-winning performance in La Vie en Rose (2007). However, she’s delivered plenty of turns as the mysterious woman who beguiles those around her, but has little inner life of her own.

There’s also the question as to how much these classic images of New Wave muses may have helped whitewash the idea of French womanhood. Names such as Sofia Boutella, Aïssa Maïga, and Pom Klementieff should not be ignored. At last year’s Cannes Film Festival, 16 black French actresses staged a red carpet protest in order to bring attention to the pervasive racism of the nation’s film industry. It was a call, among many things, to no longer typecast them in the roles of cleaners, prostitutes, or criminals.

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Dumbo - Trailer 2

While the allure of the French muse may have cast a spell over cinema, we shouldn’t allow it to cloud our vision. We may celebrate these women for their sense of liberty, power, and sensuality, but it’s important to acknowledge, too, how those qualities can exist in so many different women, in so many different ways. There’s no right way to be French.

Dumbo is released in UK cinemas on 29 March

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