Something that has become kind of a ritual for Léa Seydoux is Cannes Film Festival, except for last year, when a positive COVID test prevented her from attending even though she had three films in competition. This year she’s back, having starred in two well-received movies, David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future and Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning. Besides that, Seydoux also attended a 75th-anniversary event for the festival.
Something that Seydoux has gotten used to is having to juggle multiple different movie worlds. While working on the tender sibling drama Sister, she was called back for reshoots on Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol. Years later, the two films that she had at Cannes presented an even weirder challenge. Seydoux was halfway through playing a sensitive single mother when One Fine Morning took a short break and she started playing a futuristic performance artist who performs surgery onstage in Crimes of the Future.
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“That was crazy,” she said during an interview with IndieWire. “But it’s also why I love this job. You have to adapt yourself all the time.”
Also, while at Cannes, the complicated legacy of Blue is the Warmest Color, which some have criticized for its graphic sex scenes, continued to surface in conversation. Seydoux said she was okay with that. She didn’t have a problem with the film’s vision but with director Abdellatif Kechiche’s technique.
What goes into picking a film?
Seydoux said that she was director-oriented when sorting out the offers she would get for roles. For instance, working with Mia Hansen-Løve, one of France’s most acclaimed, rising directors, wasn’t a hard decision to make. Upon receiving the script, Seydoux said she found an easy way into the character, who develops a relationship with a married man while also caring for her dying father.
Seydoux isn’t precluded from blockbuster opportunities either. In 2015 she was cast in a pre-Disney Fox production of an X-Men spin-off, Gambit. The title character would have been played by Channing Tatum, who also would have directed, while Seydoux would have been love interest Bella Donna Boudreaux. According to her, the script they had given her was good, but the project later fell apart after Tatum left due to creative differences with the studio.
One of Seydoux’s upcoming projects is a new adaptation of the erotic novel Emmanuelle, with Audrey Diwan attached to direct. According to Seydoux, she and Diwan are from the same generation and are on the same page about what they want to say regarding the sexuality of the modern woman. Seydoux will also appear in Bertrand Bonello’s sci-fi thriller The Beast alongside George MacKay.
