Thursday, September 30, 2010
Asia Argento: Sexy, Scary, and Often Naked
Overwrought, volatile, belligerent and carnal—and, in truth, kind of scary even to her admirers—Asia Argento is the prodigiously lipped femme fatale people think they're talking about when they talk about Angelina Jolie. Only 33 years old, Argento has already amassed an international filmography worthy of the seemingly premature “Sexy, Scary, and Often Naked” retrospective BAMcinématek is throwing for her this week and next. Tonight's offering is Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress, in which Argento plays an anachronistic ice-cream-cone-licking 19th century French tramp; and on Saturday you can catch Mother of Tears, her first collaboration with her father, legendary Italian horror director Dario Argento. Both films were originally released here earlier this year, as was Olivier Assayas's Boarding Gate, which plays tomorrow night and is the must-see of the series.
Like many of Assayas's most interesting films, Boarding Gate goes off the rails—way off the rails—in its final act. But the first half of the movie is the hottest hour of non-porn cinema this year. Argento plays the former employee and lover of an American businessman in Paris (Michael Madsen) whom she visits in his office in the first scene. Although Argento and Madsen had never met before shooting this sequence, you wouldn't guess it. Their on-screen chemistry is immediate—so palpable, frankly, as to have made Sound of the City feel uncomfortable sitting amid strangers in the dark. And that seems to be exactly what Argento, world cinema's reigning provocateur, wants.—Benjamin Strong
Like many of Assayas's most interesting films, Boarding Gate goes off the rails—way off the rails—in its final act. But the first half of the movie is the hottest hour of non-porn cinema this year. Argento plays the former employee and lover of an American businessman in Paris (Michael Madsen) whom she visits in his office in the first scene. Although Argento and Madsen had never met before shooting this sequence, you wouldn't guess it. Their on-screen chemistry is immediate—so palpable, frankly, as to have made Sound of the City feel uncomfortable sitting amid strangers in the dark. And that seems to be exactly what Argento, world cinema's reigning provocateur, wants.—Benjamin Strong
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
An Interview with Asia Argento
In a recent visit to Milan I caught up with the actress to discuss movies, music, video games, and family relationships.It’s a blissfully sunny November afternoon and I am settled in the palatial splendour of Milan’s La Rinascente department store, as I sit in the roof terrace bar I am reminded of my last visit here. It too was a warm sunny day and I had been invited to see the first days filming of the new Dario Argento movie Giallo. At that time I was granted an interview with the delightful Asia Argento, but to everyone’s astonishment suddenly the actress pulled out of filming and was replaced by Emmanuelle Seigner, the wife of Roman Polanski. Now some months on I sit in the shadow of a beautiful cathedral awaiting the arrival of Miss Argento, in my mind the thoughts are running, will she arrive, or will the prospect of meeting me cause her to withdraw from another movie. I had 101 questions, most notably why she had pulled out of Giallo, but there were some questions I was not permitted to ask, this was one.
As the time from the scheduled arrival came and went I was wondering if my time to meet the actress was to be dashed again. A young waiter suddenly arrived with a bottle of Pinot Grigio, and my heart hit my mouth, the actress was here. Argento moved slowly through a crowd, and while myself and others waiting for their time to interview the actress were clearly excited, the locals were completely unmoved by this momentous arrival. While Argento is very distinctive in her appearance and incredibly stunning today she did not stand out from anyone else. Dressed in a long length cardigan black vest top, and a pair of low cut jeans (with the slightest flash of her underwear just above the hip), she looked just like a teenager. She slumps down in the chair next to me, rather like an old friend:-
Argento: Shall we have a drink? The actress said in a semi-seductive manner, I politely declined I wanted a steady head for this and reached for my glass of coke.Argento: I have been very naughty to have kept you waiting.
“For the pleasure of meeting you, it’s worth the wait” I cheekily replied. Argento at this point reaches for her unexposed hip, I think she was trying to show me a new tattoo, but I was not sure if this was the case, I decided at this point to ignore the movements.
I had already lost the plot the interview in tatters because I was here to speak to her about her new movie Diamond 13 in which she co-stars with Gerard Depardieu, but I had been completely blown out of the water by the arrival of this sex siren. Aware of my time restraints (I had a little over 10 minutes before the next interviewer was granted access) I quickly blundered into recent history.
“You have been immortalised in the movie industry, now you’re the leading character in the videogame Mirror’s Edge, how does this make you feel to be reaching an entirely different audience?”
Argento: It’s not so different to the movies, I can most relate to xXx which was a big blockbuster action movie with lots of effects. Mirror’s Edge is much like this, but now (she laughs in a girly style) I don’t have to do the action, I sit, sometimes stand and just my voice is used. Many of my friends go into games, but they start small and get bigger, my first game I play the star in some ways this is like the biggest thing I have ever done, I am really… how you say passioned… Passionate about this thing. I just did a promotional thing for the game, and the fans received me very well, they knew who I was even though Faith (the character in the game) looks nothing like me. These people know their stuff.
“Can we stay on the subject of xXx, because while Europe has known of you for some time this was the first time the world woke up to you, how did it feel to make the transition to Global actress?”
Argento: (She’s looking at me like I have just slapped her) So the world had not heard of B.Monkey? or Trauma? (I felt really uneasy, but my unease was relieved when with a nod she made it clear she was winding me up) It was a very exciting time for me I’m 27 years old at the time and suddenly I’m really known, many of my friends still had normal jobs while I am starring in a movie with the new big Hollywood star. I have been knocking on many doors for years, now I found that it was my door being knocked. But you have to be careful, I stayed true to myself and chose subject matter that suited me best, rather than taking the first thing that came along.
“Do you think this is why you have stayed consistent and why Vin Diesel has gone on a dramatic downhill turn?”
Argento: Vin is as big as he has ever been, he is a new action star for a new generation, I will never achieve his status.
“You are undoubtably however the biggest female name to come out of Italy for a very long time, you are the first actress since Sophia Loren to achieve global status, how do you feel about this?”
Argento: I’m very ordinary, so I never really look at it like that, I can move around the world looking like me and nobody ever spots me, unless I spend a lot of time on my makeup I get around okay. It never occurred to me that I am regarded as a big actress, but you are right I may be the only successful Italian actress outside Italy since Loren. My mother (Daria Nicolodi) was very big, but only here and maybe Spain, Germany. You make me paranoid now… Naughty!
“You went on to work with a true Hollywood legend in The Keeper, what was it like to work with Dennis Hopper?”
Argento: This was an interesting movie, but it was not good, well not well received I mean. Dennis was very nice, very courteous; it was a great learning experiment for me, I did not spend much time with Dennis he was juggling movies at the time, The Keeper was good on paper not so good in reality.
“You had directed and written Scarlet Diva, a movie I really enjoyed but was a bit disturbed by in places, this must have been a big thing for you. But I gather The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things was more exciting for you”
Argento: They were good for different ways, what disturbed you in Diva?
“The bit with the dog!”
Argento: Oh yes I see (Chuckles), I think both movies were equally exciting, Scarlet Diva I enjoyed twice because I am the subject matter. I really enjoyed Heart Is Deceitful but no more so than Diva, the difference was that for Diva it was all about me, the script, the acting, the direction; but with Heart I was trying to live out the thoughts of JT (JT Leroy the author of the book). Heart was much longer in the making, because much had to be cleared I made many treatments of the book in lots of styles but needed to get much of it checked. It was however very good because it was like I had received acceptance, until that time the only people who really knew me were fans of my father.
“You have a reputation for having affairs with your co-stars, and for being a little bit of a wild child, do you think this is fair?”
Argento: Life is so short, you live it how you feel the need to. Because I enjoyed sex, like drinking, and occasionally other stuff I am seen as dangerous. I am enjoying life, I’m older now though and more settled down, I have my life partner, and besides I became board with the self impressed attitudes of actors, I have moved on to other things, but maybe if I find myself single I might look for more creative types like writers. (She threw me a flirty wink, it was obviously meant in a joking manner but it still made me go a bright reds colour, it was not something I expected to hear).
“So… I’m walking through a city about a year ago and I stumble across this club; it’s very pricey to get in, but I had too because the DJ was Asia Argento, imagine my surprise? I never knew this of you, so there you are not just playing but dancing…”
Argento: “You say Daancing, that’s really funny; you’re a little bit… hang on… you say “wide boy?” Then you say Daancing like aristocracy, that’s really, really, funny!”
“What can I say I had no education, or rather I did but I chose not to do it… (Moving back onto track) Anyway there you are, so my question is which do you prefer acting or being a DJ?”
Argento: Both are very good, acting is my career, but to be a DJ is my passion, I feel really free to show my creative side, it’s not work it’s like a hobby, I really enjoy it. I could never give up acting to pursue this hobby, I like money too much.
“You’re like the big dance diva; I really like your style!”
Argento: I love dance music, it’s really liberating, and I love to display what I feel with a great set. I like more classic style music too if the venue is right, Nina Simone is really cool.
“I have not really spoken to you about my passion, and that’s your fathers (Dario Argento’s) movies. I’d like to hear about this time if possible (being careful because there were limitations on this area)? Do you have future plans to work with him?”
Argento: Of course, of course we are blood you know (she chuckles), in the future we will work together again but for now I need to follow my own path. I have lots of exciting projects on the way, and I feel that if I work too much with my father people will think that’s all I can do, almost like we are matched together.
“I saw a great fastest finger first style quiz with you and Dario for a TV network recently, sadly in Italian and I could only make out a few bits; as I looked at this I thought that this was much different an image from what maybe UK and US fans hear about you, you seemed really warm and close together, really comfortable; yet we are led to believe you and your father have a traumatic relationship, was what I saw the real father/daughter relationship, or are all the press rumours true?”
Argento: My father and I get on really well, unless of course we are working together. If we work together he has high expectations of me, I am his daughter therefore I must be better than everyone else. It’s hard to work with a perfectionist, he is so precise, I am a little more..billowy… is that right? Er..like a free spirit, less accurate.
I was at this point reminded by a burly associate of Argento that my time was almost over, sensing I was entering an area that was maybe somehow taboo I quickly moved on.
“Well we are running short of time now, so I’d like to ask you quickly about Transylvania; what was that like to make, it’s a very unusual film?”
Argento: Yes very unusual, it was very downbeat. It was very cold through filming, there was very little budget, our accommodation was very bad and we would sometimes sleep in unusual places. One day while waiting for a night scene I fell asleep in the back of the car, and they all closed in and filmed me, which is actually in the film, but it should not have been, I was genuinely asleep. Transylvania was a very European film, I think some people would find it hard to follow, but despite this and the bitter cold I had a lot of fun, many laughs while filming.
“Why did you agree to see me, there are many others who would/should deserve an interview with you?”
Argento: You’re a little like me, you do your own thing, you do not write for one specific magazine or website, you are probably not making much…How much do you earn? (I shrugged my shoulders), you seem true; and you have always been good to my family, you see our films even though many you don’t understand because they are in Italian, and baby your Italian is soooo bad, stick to English. But always for many years you write good things about us and enjoy our movies, if I had to see someone it should be you, yes?
Our time was up and it was time for her to talk to a gaming magazine about Mirror’s Edge, but as I rose to leave she grabbed my hand and asked for my autograph, which under instruction I wrote on the underside her wrist. Rather foolishly and a little thrown back by events I never returned the compliment.
Mirrors Edge is available on Xbox 360 now, and Diamond 13 is in European cinemas from January. Dario Argento’s Giallo is due out in Summer 2009.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Asia Argento answers your questions
Thanks for all your questions for Scarlet Diva director and xXx star Asia Argento. In a wide-ranging, interesting interview, the charming young Renaissance woman talks sex scenes, motherhood, and revenging herself on Italy...
Do you prefer acting or directing, and is it difficult starring in a film that you are directing? Alex Lochrie
I think the best thing in the world is acting in something I'm directing. That's like the most fortunate and the happiest moment for me, although I guess it's exhausting. Now I'm preparing my second movie and I think it's even more challenging than the first one.
The first one was like a documentary, in a way. I felt very comfortable, I was working with a lot of freedom, and the crew was mostly very young people and we were all really together in this. Now, here in America, preparing this movie and having to deal with people who are saying, "How many names are you going to put in the movie?" and all this useless stuff, it's like - I'm thinking how I was lucky on the first one - everything was so magical and synchronistic. It is very difficult, this choice that I've made in life to do what I do, but I don't know any better. Easier life is more sad for me, it's more impossible.
How challenging is it being both an actress and a director when the more intimate scenes need to be shot? Houssam Bachir
I guess it's more reassuring in a way, because I'm the one in control. So if there's something that I don't feel comfortable with, I can always cut it out, whereas when I'm at the mercy of a director, I remember, this one time I'll never forget, shooting this sex scene. I was really young, I was like 20 or 21, and I didn't know really what the camera was shooting. So then I go back and there's this close up on my crotch, you know, my naked crotch. And that was the most vulnerable moment ever - like, I have no control here. This and other things that happened to me on film sets when I was just acting had me direct my first movie, and probably this is why I put in so much sensuality and sex scenes, because I wanted to be in control for once. The next movie, there won't be any of that.
What are you working on at present? Douglas Michel
It's called The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, and it's an adaptation of the JT Leroy novel. I'm playing the female lead role, called Sarah. At the moment I'm casting the movie, and it should start at the beginning of July.
Is it difficult finding funding for your films in America? Marcus O'Neil
Strangely enough, it was easy for me. Last year, even before xXx came out, I had read the book and I proposed it to this independent company in LA called Muse Productions. They had seen Scarlet Diva in Toronto, a few years back, and even back then they contacted me and said that they were interested in my next project. So when I found the book last year I gave it to them, and it pretty much started a year ago - it's a slow process. We don't have that much money compared to any American movie made, and compared to a big European movie too, but I guess it's enough to do it.
The roles I've seen you play always seem to be dark, sexy and edgy. Is this because you like to draw from your own experiences, or would you like to branch out in a totally different direction,to see what reaction you get? Julian Moorehead.
Do you prefer acting or directing, and is it difficult starring in a film that you are directing? Alex Lochrie
I think the best thing in the world is acting in something I'm directing. That's like the most fortunate and the happiest moment for me, although I guess it's exhausting. Now I'm preparing my second movie and I think it's even more challenging than the first one.
The first one was like a documentary, in a way. I felt very comfortable, I was working with a lot of freedom, and the crew was mostly very young people and we were all really together in this. Now, here in America, preparing this movie and having to deal with people who are saying, "How many names are you going to put in the movie?" and all this useless stuff, it's like - I'm thinking how I was lucky on the first one - everything was so magical and synchronistic. It is very difficult, this choice that I've made in life to do what I do, but I don't know any better. Easier life is more sad for me, it's more impossible.
How challenging is it being both an actress and a director when the more intimate scenes need to be shot? Houssam Bachir
I guess it's more reassuring in a way, because I'm the one in control. So if there's something that I don't feel comfortable with, I can always cut it out, whereas when I'm at the mercy of a director, I remember, this one time I'll never forget, shooting this sex scene. I was really young, I was like 20 or 21, and I didn't know really what the camera was shooting. So then I go back and there's this close up on my crotch, you know, my naked crotch. And that was the most vulnerable moment ever - like, I have no control here. This and other things that happened to me on film sets when I was just acting had me direct my first movie, and probably this is why I put in so much sensuality and sex scenes, because I wanted to be in control for once. The next movie, there won't be any of that.
What are you working on at present? Douglas Michel
It's called The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, and it's an adaptation of the JT Leroy novel. I'm playing the female lead role, called Sarah. At the moment I'm casting the movie, and it should start at the beginning of July.
Is it difficult finding funding for your films in America? Marcus O'Neil
Strangely enough, it was easy for me. Last year, even before xXx came out, I had read the book and I proposed it to this independent company in LA called Muse Productions. They had seen Scarlet Diva in Toronto, a few years back, and even back then they contacted me and said that they were interested in my next project. So when I found the book last year I gave it to them, and it pretty much started a year ago - it's a slow process. We don't have that much money compared to any American movie made, and compared to a big European movie too, but I guess it's enough to do it.
The roles I've seen you play always seem to be dark, sexy and edgy. Is this because you like to draw from your own experiences, or would you like to branch out in a totally different direction,to see what reaction you get? Julian Moorehead.
Before I shot xXx, I did this French movie called The Red Siren. It was a really dull role, and I find it extremely difficult to play dull stuff. It's easier for me to play the mad woman, the bitch from hell. I don't know if I draw from my own experience. Probably yes, but I think that in a way, like comedians are the saddest people, people that I know who are like me, who are always playing the dark roles, are usually the sweetest people. I can't say that I’m the sweetest person in the world, but I'm not as dark as they draw me.
Was it a challenge doing an action flick like xXx, having not done one before. And how did you prepare for the role? Harps Kals
It was really a lot of fun for me to play in this movie, because I had never done anything like that. And in a way it was like going to film school. Every movie I've done as an actress, I'm always observing the director - especially this one, it was such a huge machine. To see how a huge movie like that is made is a good lesson in filmmaking. It was a lot of fun. I had to learn how to shoot guns, which I knew a little bit but not that much, and how to shoot Uzis and machine guns and to shoot two guns at the same time - all this good stuff! That's pretty much how I prepared for the movie. I didn't need any particular stuff. A little Russian, a hint of Russian in my accent. By the way, people always ask me all the time if I'm Russian, not Italian, which I find really funny.
I hear that there are more xXx movies on the way. Will you be appearing in any of these? Rory
I do hope so. All I know is that when I signed the contract for the first xXx, they had me sign an option for two other sequels. I'd love to be in it, but usually it works that, like in 007, they get rid of the girls real fast, so I don't know if this will be different. It seemed like a very different movie, xXx, from 007, as far as women were treated. My character is much more powerful than any Bond girl in the past, so I don't know... it's up to them, really.
You're not just an actress. You produce, write, and direct as well. Ever thought about slowing down? Oh, and since you starred in xXx, are you worried that you're going to be typecast? T Hughes
Well, no, instead of slowing down I've added more things to what I like doing. In the past six, seven months, what I've been working on - apart from preparing my movie - is photography. I've been working a lot as a photographer for British, French and American magazines. And yes, there was this fear which became a reality of being typecast, but I haven't made a movie as an actress for a year. I just finished a movie in Canada with Dennis Hopper, it's called The Keeper and it's a very different role from the one in xXx. It's a very interesting and weird little movie that was made, in which I played a stripper, a stripper that Hopper kidnaps. He keeps me for a year locked up in a cage, to give me redemption. He doesn't rape me, he doesn't do anything bad to me, he just feeds me and talks to me. A very strange little movie. It's very different from the role in xXx. I accepted the movie mostly to work with Dennis Hopper. I'm a huge fan and he's a great inspiration to me. He's somebody who does everything: he's a great director and he's produced and written and acted. He's a great photographer and a great art collector, so I was curious to meet somebody of my own kind, and it went really well.
As a daughter of an established director, do you think your current progression is easier or more difficult than it normally would be? Steve Mac
At the beginning it was more difficult, before I started directing. But the moment I did, I saw that my vision is completely separate from the one that my father has. But of course there are always references, in my head, to him. Observing him growing up, and his movies, has made a strong impact on me, and my vision, and maybe that's why I want to do something completely different. But observing his movies and his freedom, in the storytelling and the narrative, was like a lesson I like to keep.
There are many visionary Italian directors, and there are many sad and boring Italian directors today. The ones of the past, like my father or Fellini, or Antonioni, or Pasolini, great ones... I like to observe and pay my homage to everything they've done.
Did your father encourage you to move into directing? Keith Bartholomew
Yes, he really did. I was really unhappy artistically, creatively before. I think my father saw that and he encouraged me. I had this story in my head, which was actually a different one from the movie that I did, and he encouraged me and said to do it, to write it. If it wasn't for his encouragement, probably I wouldn't have had the balls at the time to make the leap. So, I'm very grateful for that.
With your recent foray into American cinema, you have whet the appetite of many moviegoers stateside. What are your thoughts on mainstream Hollywood cinema? Christian Miles
I can't say that I watch many or any big American movies. Lately I've been very picky in what I go to see. Even more, since I'm preparing my movie, so I feel like I wanna preserve my mind, so I very rarely go to see those movies. So, probably my answer is that I'm not very interested in them and I don't think that I get anything out of it. But I do like some action movies, so that's probably why I did xXx. I like John Woo. Face/Off, I think, is a masterpiece. Mission: Impossible II is fun. He's just so good with a camera, anyway, even if the story is not that great. But I like the story in Face/Off.
Do you have a favourite scene from a movie you wished you could have been in? Steven Greenhough
Wow. Favourite scene? Yeah, I really like a scene in Freaks, the Tod Browning movie. I would have loved to play Cleopatra. I love that scene. It's the dinner for their wedding, and they're saying, "We accept you, you're one of us,". And - she's drunk - she's saying, "No, you're monsters." I really love that character.
Who are your filmmaking heroes? Clive Elle
OK... that's tough. Well, today I think only Gaspar Noe, who did Irréversible. He's really a hero and an inspiration for me. It's very refreshing to see somebody who's so free. I think what he did with Irréversible really pushes the possibilities of what a movie can be further, what we could do. I really like the New York transgressive cinema of the 80s, and I like silent movies, the ones of Abel Gance and Fritz Lang, of course. And I like Abel Ferrara's movies a lot. He is a great inspiration, and working with him taught me a lot. It was working with him that made me want to direct, because he's so free, and on a film set I love how he keeps the set together and how he forces the actors to really research their characters and have fun with it. I made a documentary about him when I was shooting New Rose Hotel, it was a very spontaneous documentary. I have to say, I haven't watched it in four years. I know they just showed it at the French Cinematheque. I would like to watch it again. It was pretty insane, I think. It was called Abel/Asia. I showed it only at a couple of festivals.
Fellini is probably my biggest inspiration. I love his colour movies more than the ones like La Dolce Vita or 8½ - even though I love 8½ and I think that Scarlet Diva is greatly inspired by that. I love Juliet of the Spirits and I love this little movie he did called Toby Dammit, with Terence Stamp. It was an episode of this movie he did inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's short stories, and I find it so free. His vision is so personal. When you watch a Fellini movie, you have to accept that this is not the world you live in, but it is his world and just the freedom and his wisdom. He's very in contact with his - how shall I put it? - very interior world, where everything has to do with synchronicity and magic and vision.
Was it a challenge doing an action flick like xXx, having not done one before. And how did you prepare for the role? Harps Kals
It was really a lot of fun for me to play in this movie, because I had never done anything like that. And in a way it was like going to film school. Every movie I've done as an actress, I'm always observing the director - especially this one, it was such a huge machine. To see how a huge movie like that is made is a good lesson in filmmaking. It was a lot of fun. I had to learn how to shoot guns, which I knew a little bit but not that much, and how to shoot Uzis and machine guns and to shoot two guns at the same time - all this good stuff! That's pretty much how I prepared for the movie. I didn't need any particular stuff. A little Russian, a hint of Russian in my accent. By the way, people always ask me all the time if I'm Russian, not Italian, which I find really funny.
I hear that there are more xXx movies on the way. Will you be appearing in any of these? Rory
I do hope so. All I know is that when I signed the contract for the first xXx, they had me sign an option for two other sequels. I'd love to be in it, but usually it works that, like in 007, they get rid of the girls real fast, so I don't know if this will be different. It seemed like a very different movie, xXx, from 007, as far as women were treated. My character is much more powerful than any Bond girl in the past, so I don't know... it's up to them, really.
You're not just an actress. You produce, write, and direct as well. Ever thought about slowing down? Oh, and since you starred in xXx, are you worried that you're going to be typecast? T Hughes
Well, no, instead of slowing down I've added more things to what I like doing. In the past six, seven months, what I've been working on - apart from preparing my movie - is photography. I've been working a lot as a photographer for British, French and American magazines. And yes, there was this fear which became a reality of being typecast, but I haven't made a movie as an actress for a year. I just finished a movie in Canada with Dennis Hopper, it's called The Keeper and it's a very different role from the one in xXx. It's a very interesting and weird little movie that was made, in which I played a stripper, a stripper that Hopper kidnaps. He keeps me for a year locked up in a cage, to give me redemption. He doesn't rape me, he doesn't do anything bad to me, he just feeds me and talks to me. A very strange little movie. It's very different from the role in xXx. I accepted the movie mostly to work with Dennis Hopper. I'm a huge fan and he's a great inspiration to me. He's somebody who does everything: he's a great director and he's produced and written and acted. He's a great photographer and a great art collector, so I was curious to meet somebody of my own kind, and it went really well.
As a daughter of an established director, do you think your current progression is easier or more difficult than it normally would be? Steve Mac
At the beginning it was more difficult, before I started directing. But the moment I did, I saw that my vision is completely separate from the one that my father has. But of course there are always references, in my head, to him. Observing him growing up, and his movies, has made a strong impact on me, and my vision, and maybe that's why I want to do something completely different. But observing his movies and his freedom, in the storytelling and the narrative, was like a lesson I like to keep.
There are many visionary Italian directors, and there are many sad and boring Italian directors today. The ones of the past, like my father or Fellini, or Antonioni, or Pasolini, great ones... I like to observe and pay my homage to everything they've done.
Did your father encourage you to move into directing? Keith Bartholomew
Yes, he really did. I was really unhappy artistically, creatively before. I think my father saw that and he encouraged me. I had this story in my head, which was actually a different one from the movie that I did, and he encouraged me and said to do it, to write it. If it wasn't for his encouragement, probably I wouldn't have had the balls at the time to make the leap. So, I'm very grateful for that.
With your recent foray into American cinema, you have whet the appetite of many moviegoers stateside. What are your thoughts on mainstream Hollywood cinema? Christian Miles
I can't say that I watch many or any big American movies. Lately I've been very picky in what I go to see. Even more, since I'm preparing my movie, so I feel like I wanna preserve my mind, so I very rarely go to see those movies. So, probably my answer is that I'm not very interested in them and I don't think that I get anything out of it. But I do like some action movies, so that's probably why I did xXx. I like John Woo. Face/Off, I think, is a masterpiece. Mission: Impossible II is fun. He's just so good with a camera, anyway, even if the story is not that great. But I like the story in Face/Off.
Do you have a favourite scene from a movie you wished you could have been in? Steven Greenhough
Wow. Favourite scene? Yeah, I really like a scene in Freaks, the Tod Browning movie. I would have loved to play Cleopatra. I love that scene. It's the dinner for their wedding, and they're saying, "We accept you, you're one of us,". And - she's drunk - she's saying, "No, you're monsters." I really love that character.
Who are your filmmaking heroes? Clive Elle
OK... that's tough. Well, today I think only Gaspar Noe, who did Irréversible. He's really a hero and an inspiration for me. It's very refreshing to see somebody who's so free. I think what he did with Irréversible really pushes the possibilities of what a movie can be further, what we could do. I really like the New York transgressive cinema of the 80s, and I like silent movies, the ones of Abel Gance and Fritz Lang, of course. And I like Abel Ferrara's movies a lot. He is a great inspiration, and working with him taught me a lot. It was working with him that made me want to direct, because he's so free, and on a film set I love how he keeps the set together and how he forces the actors to really research their characters and have fun with it. I made a documentary about him when I was shooting New Rose Hotel, it was a very spontaneous documentary. I have to say, I haven't watched it in four years. I know they just showed it at the French Cinematheque. I would like to watch it again. It was pretty insane, I think. It was called Abel/Asia. I showed it only at a couple of festivals.
Fellini is probably my biggest inspiration. I love his colour movies more than the ones like La Dolce Vita or 8½ - even though I love 8½ and I think that Scarlet Diva is greatly inspired by that. I love Juliet of the Spirits and I love this little movie he did called Toby Dammit, with Terence Stamp. It was an episode of this movie he did inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's short stories, and I find it so free. His vision is so personal. When you watch a Fellini movie, you have to accept that this is not the world you live in, but it is his world and just the freedom and his wisdom. He's very in contact with his - how shall I put it? - very interior world, where everything has to do with synchronicity and magic and vision.
What actor or actress do you most admire? Louisa Page
I can't think of anybody. There are actors that I admire in particular projects. I like actors who are mostly crazy and outsiders. In America I can't think of many. Tom Sizemore is a great actor and I'm working with him now - he's going to be in my next movie. And Dennis Hopper - he's one of them
How true to life is the story of Scarlet Diva? Patricia Lake
Well, every movie is always 100% real. It always talks about yourself, even though you're talking about something that is very different from you. Everything is inspired by people and places that I've been to, but everything is a reflection of them, so nothing is really real and everything is elaborated and fantasized. People wonder who this character is inspired by, but it's more like a reflection of anybody I've met and how I've demonised them and made them grotesque in order to exorcise them.
Your character's mother in Scarlet Diva is portrayed pretty negatively. Did that upset your real mother? John Franks
Well, my mother was playing my mother in the movie, so if she was that upset she wouldn't have done it! I think we both knew that in order for our relationship to grow, we had this incredible tool of making a movie, which is better than going to a shrink. So we used that to make this movie. She's not the person I'm talking about in the movie, although for a while I was seeing her as the mean mother. For her to play the mean mother was useful, like a sort of psychodrama.
How are you coping with being a mum? Antonia Davis
It's the best creation I've ever done and the most nurturing for me. Nurturing her is very nurturing for me. I think I've become a better person since she's been in my life, as all the rest - all the useless stuff, all the stuff that used to make me upset - doesn't make any sense now. Now I have a goal. Before, everything I did was always for myself. Now I'm more careful in everything I do because of her. She's two. She's very strong, she has a very strong will. She's the only one that dominates me.
Why did you get your tattoos? Do they represent anything? James Firth
I started getting my tattoos when I was 14. They're almost like a reminder. And I hate people when they say, "This tattoo symbolises this and that," but I remember at the times when I had them made, they were usually times when I was changing, and they were marking a change in my life. Now I have many - I have six right now. The latest one is the meanest one I've made and it's on my wrist, inside, and it says "Panos". It's this person that I met briefly that had a very strong impact on my life. I met him, like, for a day, and I had this name tattooed. It's really crazy, this tattoo, I think it's the craziest one I've ever made. But every few years I feel the urge to mark myself and mark the passages, as if my body was a map and every scar will always be with me, and every scar tells you where I've been, like an animal.
Would you ever work with your father again? George Davis
I would, but not now. I think in a few years, but right now we're each doing our own thing. And I live away and don't go back to Italy, and I don't think I will go back to Italy for a few years now. I had to run away, I was very upset, as if Italy was this entity, this person almost, who I was mad with for the way they're really primitive culturally, socially, and politically. When Berlusconi got in power I really had to leave, it was a shock for me. And what happened in Genoa - two years ago - with the anti-globalisation movement and this police state that Italy has become. That's why I moved out, and the way they demonised Scarlet Diva. I'm very lucky that this movie has this long life, because I did it when I was 23 and now I'm almost 28 and the movie is still coming out in places around the world. It is my big revenge against this entity that's Italy.
I can't think of anybody. There are actors that I admire in particular projects. I like actors who are mostly crazy and outsiders. In America I can't think of many. Tom Sizemore is a great actor and I'm working with him now - he's going to be in my next movie. And Dennis Hopper - he's one of them
How true to life is the story of Scarlet Diva? Patricia Lake
Well, every movie is always 100% real. It always talks about yourself, even though you're talking about something that is very different from you. Everything is inspired by people and places that I've been to, but everything is a reflection of them, so nothing is really real and everything is elaborated and fantasized. People wonder who this character is inspired by, but it's more like a reflection of anybody I've met and how I've demonised them and made them grotesque in order to exorcise them.
Your character's mother in Scarlet Diva is portrayed pretty negatively. Did that upset your real mother? John Franks
Well, my mother was playing my mother in the movie, so if she was that upset she wouldn't have done it! I think we both knew that in order for our relationship to grow, we had this incredible tool of making a movie, which is better than going to a shrink. So we used that to make this movie. She's not the person I'm talking about in the movie, although for a while I was seeing her as the mean mother. For her to play the mean mother was useful, like a sort of psychodrama.
How are you coping with being a mum? Antonia Davis
It's the best creation I've ever done and the most nurturing for me. Nurturing her is very nurturing for me. I think I've become a better person since she's been in my life, as all the rest - all the useless stuff, all the stuff that used to make me upset - doesn't make any sense now. Now I have a goal. Before, everything I did was always for myself. Now I'm more careful in everything I do because of her. She's two. She's very strong, she has a very strong will. She's the only one that dominates me.
Why did you get your tattoos? Do they represent anything? James Firth
I started getting my tattoos when I was 14. They're almost like a reminder. And I hate people when they say, "This tattoo symbolises this and that," but I remember at the times when I had them made, they were usually times when I was changing, and they were marking a change in my life. Now I have many - I have six right now. The latest one is the meanest one I've made and it's on my wrist, inside, and it says "Panos". It's this person that I met briefly that had a very strong impact on my life. I met him, like, for a day, and I had this name tattooed. It's really crazy, this tattoo, I think it's the craziest one I've ever made. But every few years I feel the urge to mark myself and mark the passages, as if my body was a map and every scar will always be with me, and every scar tells you where I've been, like an animal.
Would you ever work with your father again? George Davis
I would, but not now. I think in a few years, but right now we're each doing our own thing. And I live away and don't go back to Italy, and I don't think I will go back to Italy for a few years now. I had to run away, I was very upset, as if Italy was this entity, this person almost, who I was mad with for the way they're really primitive culturally, socially, and politically. When Berlusconi got in power I really had to leave, it was a shock for me. And what happened in Genoa - two years ago - with the anti-globalisation movement and this police state that Italy has become. That's why I moved out, and the way they demonised Scarlet Diva. I'm very lucky that this movie has this long life, because I did it when I was 23 and now I'm almost 28 and the movie is still coming out in places around the world. It is my big revenge against this entity that's Italy.
The arrow interviews... Asia Aregento
The Arrow has had an arrow in his heart for Asia Argento since he saw her in "Trauma". Not knowing much about her or her career, his heart was forever pierced and has never fully recovered. Today I can say I feel better and the wound has healed, only because Asia agreed to have a little QNA with yours truly.Born on September 20 1975, Asia was destined to be in the movie business. Her mom is an actress and her dad is director grandiose "Dario Argento". She has over 15 movies to her credit and has acted in French (La Reine Margot), in Italian (Phantom Of The Opera, Stendhal Syndrome) and more recently in English (New Rose Hotel and B Monkey). She has won two "David Di Donatello" (Italian Oscar), two "Clack" (Italian Golden Globe) and one "Grolla Doro" (have no idea what that is…but it's good). Only now are Americans starting to take notice of this sensual, dangerous, exciting actress…and The Arrow thinks it's about damn time. Let's dive in…
1- What's your favorite horror flick, sweety?
Freaks. Texas Chainsaw Massacre..
2- Of all your films which one is closer to your heart?
I like New Rose Hotel by Ferrara because it's the last one that came out.
3- What does Asia do when she's not working?
I don't think there is much difference between life and work. Is that why I'm unable to live? I don't do much when I'm not working. I'm at my best when I can be creative. I like to write. I go to some tiny concerts (last one, yesterday). I buy CDs. I walk with my dog. I read tonz of books. Watch silent films.
4- Are you into other art forms apart from acting?
Like I just said I write. I just published a book and I've written my first film as a "directress" (which I finished acting, directing, editing and mixing- in other words it's ready). I write every month for a magazine. That pays the rent. Sometimes I play live with a band (I talk/sing) called RYLZ. I paint.
5- What genre would your film fit in...horror perhaps?
See A's above. It's not horror, it's not drama , comedy or Porno... It's almost like a DOGMA95 film but with no rules. I find hard to relegate a film into a sobriquet. I leave that to the critics. My film is real. It gives you the impression some scenes might have really happened. And they DID. I stole so much out of my actors and myself. The film is called SCARLET DIVA, and I like to call it Pragma2000 (AS IN PRAGMATIC).
6- What's your favorite Dario Argento flick, honey bunny?
Inferno and Suspiria.
7- Any new projects in the works?
I've just finished a couple of films in France, one is a French-American production, "Les Miserables".
The other one is called "Les Morsures de L'Aube" and I play a vampiresse!
8- What kind of preparations do you do before tackling a specific role?
I believe research is a whole lotta bullshit (even though I always unconsciously research a character). Either you already have the character in you or you're not gonna find it at the supermarket. It's not like something that's gonna magically appear! I believe we all have EVERYTHING we need in us. In a tiny little spot, hidden somewhere we have the whole world. Like in that Borges short story: The Aleph.
9- How is it being directed by that Dario fella?
Well, he's my father! I feel much more comfortable with him. Sometimes it's almost scary. It's a very deep experience.
10- What's the worst horror flick you've ever seen?
I think that there is something to be saved in every film. Even in the stupidest ones. There's a face, a prop, a shot, an idea that makes the worst film a masterpiece for me. My own private masterpiece!
http://www.joblo.com/arrow/interview2.htm
Monday, September 27, 2010
Asia Argento and Michele Civetta on Cannes Controversy and Porn-y New Work
The last time Asia Argento was at Cannes, she had three films in the festival. In one of them, she distracted an ex-lover by idly masturbating in front of him (Boarding Gate); in another, she licked the blood off her wounded lover’s chest (The Last Mistress); and in the third, she made out with a Rottweiler (Go Go Tales). This year, the fearless Italian actor-director was no less ubiquitous on the red carpet, but she kept a discreet silence throughout the festival as a member of the nine-person jury, which, rumors suggest, was a hotbed of acrimony.
While in Cannes, Argento also co-presented the European premiere of the “OneDreamRush 42-Second Film Showcase,” a project sponsored by 42Below Vodka and the Beijing Film Studios, in which 42 filmmakers were each asked to make a 42-second short film exploring “the world of dreams.” Booze-hawking gimmick notwithstanding, the roster of assembled directors is impressively eclectic, ranging from veteran auteurs (David Lynch, Abel Ferrara) to avant-garde greats (Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekas) to hipster provocateurs (Harmony Korine, Gaspar Noé); Argento’s husband, filmmaker Michele Civetta, is one of the project’s producers, and they both also contributed shorts. We called up the couple in Rome to talk about 42x42, and to find out what Argento would divulge about her Cannes jury experience.
How did you both get involved with the 42x42 project?
MC: A friend of ours, Rajan Mehta, had become the creative director of [42Below's OneDreamRush]. They came up with the idea, and asked Asia and I to make the first two films, and also asked if I would produce a bunch. It was really an ornate web of friendships that came into play. I called Larry Clark, Gaspar Noé, Jonathan Caouette. Asia called Joe Coleman. It was like a creative dialogue amongst friends.
What were the inspirations for your own 42-second shorts? [You can see Civetta’s Astarte and Argento’s S/he online.]
AA: The fact that it’s a dream allows it to be very personal and abstract, but I didn’t want to make it too dreamlike; that would have been cheesy. I used it as an opportunity to enter the world of these transsexuals that live in our neighborhood that I’ve been sort of spying on. It’s like they’re in a Fellini movie, but with transsexuals. I wanted to show these incredible creatures that are hyperfeminine and joyful, playing with clothes and Champagne, which is like a phallic metaphor.
MC: I decided to re-create a cult ceremony based around the Phoenician goddess of fertility. I mishmashed a series of old pagan images [and] twenties vintage German porn with satanic rituals and Enochean sex magic, along with some modern footage that I shot.
Asia, two years ago, everyone was calling you queen of Cannes. What was it like keeping a lower profile this year?
AA: It was a lot better. Spending five hours a day in the dark, and discussing cinema with people with diverse, interesting tastes, that was great. I loved hearing what [jury president] Isabelle [Huppert] had to say about the movies; she’s so illuminating. It was the first time I had a good time in Cannes.
According to a Variety report, one of the male jurors said it was the worst jury experience of his life, and another called Huppert a fascist.
AA: Really? I’ve got nothing to say about that. Obviously everybody has different tastes, but we came together very much at the end. We had no preconceived ideas; at least I didn’t. I felt the awards at the end surprised even us.
When an Italian journalist asked you at Sunday’s press conference why the Italian film [Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere] was shut out, you said you wanted to keep the focus on the films that won awards. Will you reveal then which of the prize winners you were most pleased with?
AA: I was very happy with Kinatay [which won Filipino filmmaker Brillante Mendoza the directing prize, despite being the competition’s most widely despised film]. It had such terrible reviews but it was a movie that I hadn’t seen before. It felt necessary, so naïve and urgent. It felt like the director had no idea how to do it and picked up a camera and was shooting the first movie of history. The 45-minute scene in the car where nothing happens I thought was incredible.
And I was also so happy about [screenplay winner] Spring Fever [by Chinese director Lou Ye, who also made a “42x42” short]. It might be surprising to give it the script award, because the movie was very long, but it had ingenious ideas about the love triangles between the characters.
Both of those prizes were booed by the journalists who were watching next door.
AA: I know. That’s always a good sign.
The jury was made up mostly of filmmakers and actresses. Since you’re both a filmmaker and an actress, did you end up having to play the mediator?
AA: No, I mean, maybe the directors like to think actors have minor tastes. There were movies that divided between female and male, which was strange. I won’t tell you which ones, but I definitely wasn’t in the middle. I’d rather keep what went on behind closed doors a secret. It would be like watching your parents having sex — you don’t want to see that.
While in Cannes, Argento also co-presented the European premiere of the “OneDreamRush 42-Second Film Showcase,” a project sponsored by 42Below Vodka and the Beijing Film Studios, in which 42 filmmakers were each asked to make a 42-second short film exploring “the world of dreams.” Booze-hawking gimmick notwithstanding, the roster of assembled directors is impressively eclectic, ranging from veteran auteurs (David Lynch, Abel Ferrara) to avant-garde greats (Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekas) to hipster provocateurs (Harmony Korine, Gaspar Noé); Argento’s husband, filmmaker Michele Civetta, is one of the project’s producers, and they both also contributed shorts. We called up the couple in Rome to talk about 42x42, and to find out what Argento would divulge about her Cannes jury experience.
How did you both get involved with the 42x42 project?
MC: A friend of ours, Rajan Mehta, had become the creative director of [42Below's OneDreamRush]. They came up with the idea, and asked Asia and I to make the first two films, and also asked if I would produce a bunch. It was really an ornate web of friendships that came into play. I called Larry Clark, Gaspar Noé, Jonathan Caouette. Asia called Joe Coleman. It was like a creative dialogue amongst friends.
What were the inspirations for your own 42-second shorts? [You can see Civetta’s Astarte and Argento’s S/he online.]
AA: The fact that it’s a dream allows it to be very personal and abstract, but I didn’t want to make it too dreamlike; that would have been cheesy. I used it as an opportunity to enter the world of these transsexuals that live in our neighborhood that I’ve been sort of spying on. It’s like they’re in a Fellini movie, but with transsexuals. I wanted to show these incredible creatures that are hyperfeminine and joyful, playing with clothes and Champagne, which is like a phallic metaphor.
MC: I decided to re-create a cult ceremony based around the Phoenician goddess of fertility. I mishmashed a series of old pagan images [and] twenties vintage German porn with satanic rituals and Enochean sex magic, along with some modern footage that I shot.
Asia, two years ago, everyone was calling you queen of Cannes. What was it like keeping a lower profile this year?
AA: It was a lot better. Spending five hours a day in the dark, and discussing cinema with people with diverse, interesting tastes, that was great. I loved hearing what [jury president] Isabelle [Huppert] had to say about the movies; she’s so illuminating. It was the first time I had a good time in Cannes.
According to a Variety report, one of the male jurors said it was the worst jury experience of his life, and another called Huppert a fascist.
AA: Really? I’ve got nothing to say about that. Obviously everybody has different tastes, but we came together very much at the end. We had no preconceived ideas; at least I didn’t. I felt the awards at the end surprised even us.
When an Italian journalist asked you at Sunday’s press conference why the Italian film [Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere] was shut out, you said you wanted to keep the focus on the films that won awards. Will you reveal then which of the prize winners you were most pleased with?
AA: I was very happy with Kinatay [which won Filipino filmmaker Brillante Mendoza the directing prize, despite being the competition’s most widely despised film]. It had such terrible reviews but it was a movie that I hadn’t seen before. It felt necessary, so naïve and urgent. It felt like the director had no idea how to do it and picked up a camera and was shooting the first movie of history. The 45-minute scene in the car where nothing happens I thought was incredible.
And I was also so happy about [screenplay winner] Spring Fever [by Chinese director Lou Ye, who also made a “42x42” short]. It might be surprising to give it the script award, because the movie was very long, but it had ingenious ideas about the love triangles between the characters.
Both of those prizes were booed by the journalists who were watching next door.
AA: I know. That’s always a good sign.
The jury was made up mostly of filmmakers and actresses. Since you’re both a filmmaker and an actress, did you end up having to play the mediator?
AA: No, I mean, maybe the directors like to think actors have minor tastes. There were movies that divided between female and male, which was strange. I won’t tell you which ones, but I definitely wasn’t in the middle. I’d rather keep what went on behind closed doors a secret. It would be like watching your parents having sex — you don’t want to see that.
This Fanpage is NOT run by Asia Argento. By Fans for Fans.
Also, I do not accept BANDS unless you message us telling us you are a FAN of Asia's. I ONLY SPEAK ENGLISH, I am sorry.
Rome's city registry office refused to acknowledge ''Asia'' as an appropriate name, and instead officially inscribed her as Aria Argento.
She grew up in the entertainment industry. For three days following her birth, her parents projected Gone with the Wind on the living room wall.
As Asia grew older, she was gradually exposed to other genres of film, notably her father's slasher movies, beginning when she was six years old with a viewing of Deep Red -- a film which, incidentally, starred her mother. She received the David di Donatello (Italy's response to Hollywood's Academy Award) for Best Actress in 1994 for her performance in Perdiamoci di vista!, and again in 1996 for Compagna di viaggio, which also earned her a Grolla d'oro Award. In 1998, Asia made her American film debut in the movies B. Monkey and New Rose Hotel, alongside Christopher Walken.
Asia has also proven her ability to work in multiple tongues, adding French to the list of languages in which she has performed, with a role in 1994's La Reine Margot. That same year, she made her first foray into directing, calling the shots behind the short films, Prospettive and A ritroso. In 1996, she directed a documentary on her father, and in 1998 a second one on Abel Ferrara, which won her the Rome Film Festival Award. Her feature directorial debut came in 2000's Scarlet Diva, a film that she also and starred in.
In 2001, a great deal of attention was drawn to an alleged hit-and-run that Asia was involved in, and her position in this incident wasn't helped by the fact that a bottle of absinthe was found in her car (the liqueur was to be used as a prop in a music video that Asia was directing). In June of 2001, Asia gave birth to her first child, Anna Lou. The father is musician Marco Castoldi (''Morgan'') from the Italian band Bluvertigo. Asia has appeared in many movies such as,
Une Vieille Maitresse (2007)
Boarding Gate (2007)
Go Go Tales (2007)
MARIE ANTOINETTE (2006)
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2006)
Land of the Dead (2005)
Last Days (2005)
The Doll Is Mine (2005)
Milady (2004) (TV)
The Keeper (2004)
Live Freaky Die Freaky (2003)
Ginostra (2002)
xXx (2002)
Sirène rouge, La (2002)
Morsures de l'aube, Les (2001)
Assenzio, L' (2001)
Loredasia (2000)
"Misérables, Les" (2000) (mini) TV Series
Scarlet Diva (2000)
Tua lingua sul mio cuore, La (1999)
Fantasma dell'opera, Il (1998)
B. Monkey (1998)
New Rose Hotel (1998)
Viola bacia tutti (1998)
Sindrome di Stendhal, La (1996)
Compagna di viaggio (1996)
Cielo è sempre più blu, Il (1995)
Reine Margot, La (1994)
Perdiamoci di vista! (1994)
DeGenerazione (1994)
Trauma (1993)
Condannato a nozze (1993)
Amiche del cuore, Le (1992)
Chiesa, La (1989)
Palombella rossa (1989)
Zoo (1989)
Demoni 2 (1986)
"Sogni e bisogni" (1984) (mini).
Rome's city registry office refused to acknowledge ''Asia'' as an appropriate name, and instead officially inscribed her as Aria Argento.
She grew up in the entertainment industry. For three days following her birth, her parents projected Gone with the Wind on the living room wall.
As Asia grew older, she was gradually exposed to other genres of film, notably her father's slasher movies, beginning when she was six years old with a viewing of Deep Red -- a film which, incidentally, starred her mother. She received the David di Donatello (Italy's response to Hollywood's Academy Award) for Best Actress in 1994 for her performance in Perdiamoci di vista!, and again in 1996 for Compagna di viaggio, which also earned her a Grolla d'oro Award. In 1998, Asia made her American film debut in the movies B. Monkey and New Rose Hotel, alongside Christopher Walken.
Asia has also proven her ability to work in multiple tongues, adding French to the list of languages in which she has performed, with a role in 1994's La Reine Margot. That same year, she made her first foray into directing, calling the shots behind the short films, Prospettive and A ritroso. In 1996, she directed a documentary on her father, and in 1998 a second one on Abel Ferrara, which won her the Rome Film Festival Award. Her feature directorial debut came in 2000's Scarlet Diva, a film that she also and starred in.
In 2001, a great deal of attention was drawn to an alleged hit-and-run that Asia was involved in, and her position in this incident wasn't helped by the fact that a bottle of absinthe was found in her car (the liqueur was to be used as a prop in a music video that Asia was directing). In June of 2001, Asia gave birth to her first child, Anna Lou. The father is musician Marco Castoldi (''Morgan'') from the Italian band Bluvertigo. Asia has appeared in many movies such as,
Une Vieille Maitresse (2007)
Boarding Gate (2007)
Go Go Tales (2007)
MARIE ANTOINETTE (2006)
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2006)
Land of the Dead (2005)
Last Days (2005)
The Doll Is Mine (2005)
Milady (2004) (TV)
The Keeper (2004)
Live Freaky Die Freaky (2003)
Ginostra (2002)
xXx (2002)
Sirène rouge, La (2002)
Morsures de l'aube, Les (2001)
Assenzio, L' (2001)
Loredasia (2000)
"Misérables, Les" (2000) (mini) TV Series
Scarlet Diva (2000)
Tua lingua sul mio cuore, La (1999)
Fantasma dell'opera, Il (1998)
B. Monkey (1998)
New Rose Hotel (1998)
Viola bacia tutti (1998)
Sindrome di Stendhal, La (1996)
Compagna di viaggio (1996)
Cielo è sempre più blu, Il (1995)
Reine Margot, La (1994)
Perdiamoci di vista! (1994)
DeGenerazione (1994)
Trauma (1993)
Condannato a nozze (1993)
Amiche del cuore, Le (1992)
Chiesa, La (1989)
Palombella rossa (1989)
Zoo (1989)
Demoni 2 (1986)
"Sogni e bisogni" (1984) (mini).
Asia has also been directing movies, music videos, and documentaries as well as acting. She has directed some of the films she has been in. The Music Videos she has directed are by well known artists such as: La Tua Lingua Sul Mio Cuore- Rylz
Loredasia- Loredana Berte'
S(AINT)- Marilyn Manson
Bad Girl- Trash Palace
L'Assenzio- Bulvertigo
The Movies she has directed and also have stared in is:
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
Scarlet Diva
DeGenerazione
Documentaries:
Abel/Asia
La Scomparsa
In addition to her accomplishments in the world of film, Asia has written a number of stories for magazines such as Dynamo and L'Espresso, while her first novel, titled I Love You Kirk, was published in Italy in 1999.
Loredasia- Loredana Berte'
S(AINT)- Marilyn Manson
Bad Girl- Trash Palace
L'Assenzio- Bulvertigo
The Movies she has directed and also have stared in is:
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
Scarlet Diva
DeGenerazione
Documentaries:
Abel/Asia
La Scomparsa
In addition to her accomplishments in the world of film, Asia has written a number of stories for magazines such as Dynamo and L'Espresso, while her first novel, titled I Love You Kirk, was published in Italy in 1999.
Friday, September 24, 2010
The Last Mistress
Starred in three films which were screened at 2007 Cannes Film Festival; Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress Olivier Assayas's Boarding Gate, and Abel Ferrara's Go Go Tales.
One of Italy's most famous actresses, Asia Argento is the daughter of legendary horror director Dario Argento and stage actress Daria Nicolodi. She has a daughter, Anna Lou, born in Lugano on June the 20th 2001 with rock and roll musician Morgan from the Italian band, 'Bluvertigo.'
She starred in her first film at the age of nine, getting her start performing in many of her father's horror films. She has become known as an actress in her own right, winning two David di Donatello awards (the Italian Oscar) and two Ciacks (the Italian Golden Globe). Argento has acted for a number of non-Italian directors, most notably Patrice Chéreau in "La Reine Margot" (1994) and Michael Radford in B. Monkey (1998).
She gained an international following after starring in XXX, playing Vin Diesel's mysterious love interest.
In addition to acting, Argento is also a screenwriter and director. She wrote, directed, and starred in Scarlet Diva, (2000) a semi-autobiographical story that journied into the frenzied mind of an actress fueled by excess. She recently completed filming The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004). Argento directed the film, and co-wrote the screenplay with fiction writer J.T. LeRoy based on a collection of his stories. She stars in the film with a large ensemble cast that includes Winona Ryder, Ornella Muti and Peter Fonda. She portrayed Comtesse du Barry in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoniette. Asia Argento also starred in controversial French director Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress which premiered at Cannes and screened at the New York Film Festival. Argento currently has three films in production, Mother of Tears: The Third Mother, De la guerre, and Coin Locker Babies, an adaptation of a Japanese novel.
One of Italy's most famous actresses, Asia Argento is the daughter of legendary horror director Dario Argento and stage actress Daria Nicolodi. She has a daughter, Anna Lou, born in Lugano on June the 20th 2001 with rock and roll musician Morgan from the Italian band, 'Bluvertigo.'
She starred in her first film at the age of nine, getting her start performing in many of her father's horror films. She has become known as an actress in her own right, winning two David di Donatello awards (the Italian Oscar) and two Ciacks (the Italian Golden Globe). Argento has acted for a number of non-Italian directors, most notably Patrice Chéreau in "La Reine Margot" (1994) and Michael Radford in B. Monkey (1998).
She gained an international following after starring in XXX, playing Vin Diesel's mysterious love interest.
In addition to acting, Argento is also a screenwriter and director. She wrote, directed, and starred in Scarlet Diva, (2000) a semi-autobiographical story that journied into the frenzied mind of an actress fueled by excess. She recently completed filming The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004). Argento directed the film, and co-wrote the screenplay with fiction writer J.T. LeRoy based on a collection of his stories. She stars in the film with a large ensemble cast that includes Winona Ryder, Ornella Muti and Peter Fonda. She portrayed Comtesse du Barry in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoniette. Asia Argento also starred in controversial French director Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress which premiered at Cannes and screened at the New York Film Festival. Argento currently has three films in production, Mother of Tears: The Third Mother, De la guerre, and Coin Locker Babies, an adaptation of a Japanese novel.
"The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things"
Pros
Young actors Jimmy Bennett, Dylan and Cole Sprouse are phenomenal
Daring - and squirm inducing
Cons
A very, very difficult film to watch
Description
Commentary by director Asia Argento and producer Chris Hanley
NY Film Premiere and Party
'JT Under Cover' featurette - Footage from the Cannes Film Festival
DVD Release Date: June 6, 2006
Guide Review - "The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things" DVD Review
Asia Argento adapted the screenplay, directed and stars in "The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things," the story of a young boy who goes through a series of tragic, traumatic events at the hands of his mother and her endless parade of male friends.
Argento plays Sarah, the unfit birth mom of Jeremiah (Jimmy Bennett). Until Sarah re-inserts herself in his life, Jeremiah is happily getting by with a foster family. But once Sarah forces her way back into the young boy's life, any semblance of normalcy or happiness quickly becomes a thing of the past.
The DVD Bonus Features
The commentary track is worth listening to but feel free to skip over the other miscellaneous featurettes. The audio portions of the 'JT Under Cover' and the New York Film Premiere coverage are difficult to understand and the videos are all over the place.
Actresses Who Write: Asia Argento and Franke Potente
Franka Potente (still best know for Run Lola Run) and Asia Argento (shocking as always in The Last Mistress) are always interesting. For who they are. For the movies they make. In Argento's case, the films she has directed. Now they are branching out on new literary paths.
Argento recently published Victims They Know So Well, a collection of personal breakup letters addressed to her by lost loves in different cities. Potente published Zehn, a collection of stories set in Japan. Argento's texts, in English and French, are beautifully annotated with drawings and photos -- by Argento. Potente's stories are -- unfortunately for those who do not speak the language -- in German.
Rosario Dawson and Asia Argento Get Their Freak On
So here are some pics from a private party for the Diesel clothing line over in Florence, Italy. If you’ve ever wondered what goes on at these celeb shindigs, this pic of Rosario Dawson and Asia Argento pretty much sums it up. Yes folks, there’s acts of lesbian foreplay going on in every corner of these affairs. *Sigh* I made that up. How the hell would I know what goes on at these things? You’d think that running a pretty big celebrity gossip site would get me invited to these things once in a while. Fat chance! Actually I was invited to attend Kevin Federline’s CD launch though. Frankly I was appalled and offended by the offer, but no one said life’s fair. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, back to Rosario and her friend. Sorry they aren’t exactly the best looking of broads, but a little faux-lesbo action from a couple of sixes is better than nothing right? Oh and lastly, notice the man hands on Rosario. I bet she’s the top.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
The World of Asia
In Catherine Breillat’s “Old Mistress,” playing a Spanish courtesan entangled with a pretty-boy aristocrat in 1830s Paris, she consummates the affair by hungrily lapping the blood off her wounded lover’s chest. They later have tearful sex next to their dead baby’s funeral pyre.
As an ex-prostitute in “Boarding Gate,” a transcontinental thriller by Olivier Assayas, she ensnares a former lover (Michael Madsen) in S-and-M mind games that turn increasingly physical. The highlight is a complicated maneuver involving handcuffs, a belt and a whole lot of nerve.
The real showstopper, though, is in Abel Ferrara’s “Go Go Tales.” As an exotic dancer — introduced as the “scariest, sexiest, most dangerous girl in the world” — she storms a strip-club stage, pet Rottweiler in tow, and proceeds to entwine tongues with the slobbering dog.
With her feral magnetism, Ms. Argento, 31, is indeed sexy and, for some, undoubtedly scary. But her taste for the outré, easy to dismiss as provocation, hints at a deeper fearlessness, apparent in her headlong performances as well as in her willful career choices. In a series of conversations during Cannes (and after the festival, by telephone from Rome) she openly discussed the pleasures and risks of self-exposure and the tension between person and persona.
“In Italy people think I’m a cliché,” she said. “The dark lady, the bitch from hell. All they can see is that I’m naked.”
If there is a theme in Ms. Argento’s career, it’s that there’s more than one way to be naked. The daughter of the Italian horror maestro Dario Argento, she is also a filmmaker and has created for herself a pair of flamboyantly lurid star vehicles: “Scarlet Diva” (2000), a Eurotrashy psychodrama about an actress who wants to be a filmmaker, and the full-throttle J T LeRoy adaptation “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things” (2004), in which she plays the mother of all monstrous mothers.
For Ms. Argento directing is partly a way to control her own image and by extension the course of her career. “It could have gone one way or another,” she said. “I was doing these mainstream comedies in Italy when I was a teenager and winning awards. I was a golden kid. And then I did ‘Scarlet Diva,’ and everyone was like, ‘Whoa, who is this?’ ”
Her English-language film career began in the late 1990s, in the under-the-radar indies “B Monkey” and “New Rose Hotel.” In 2002 she appeared opposite Vin Diesel in the blockbuster “XXX” and landed on the cover of Rolling Stone. (“She Puts the Sex in XXX.”) But instead of building on her new action-babe status, she moved toward smaller, quirkier roles.
She skulked through Versailles as Louis XV’s louche mistress in Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette,” blended into the hangers-on entourage in Gus Van Sant’s doomed-rocker elegy “Last Days” and — working with George Romero, an old colleague of her father’s — battled zombies in “Land of the Dead.”
Ms. Argento’s latest films, which prompted festivalgoers to crown her the “queen of Cannes,” are the most generous showcases yet of her charms. “An Old Mistress” and “Boarding Gate” feature the trademarks that have made her an all-purpose mystery lady — her salacious scowl, her damaged-goods vulnerability, her unplaceable exoticism, her many tattoos — while also throwing fresh challenges in her path.
In her decidedly uncorseted costume drama, Ms. Breillat positions Ms. Argento as a destabilizing force of nature, peeling away clothes and hypocrisies in a single swoop. Mr. Assayas creates a fanboy valentine, testing his star’s talent for erotic bravado and athletic action, even in lingerie and spike heels. (“Boarding Gate” will be released here this winter by Magnolia Pictures and is so far the only one of Ms. Argento’s three Cannes films with an American distributor.)
Mr. Assayas, who wrote “Boarding Gate” especially for Ms. Argento, said he had been impressed with her unpretentious openness. “She doesn’t distinguish between high and low art,” he said. “When she acts, it’s an amazing combination of pure instinct and virtuoso technique.”
Both of those qualities are on full display in the talky sequences that she and Mr. Madsen partly improvised. These long bouts of kinky one-upmanship got so extreme that she sometimes left the set in tears. In one particularly intense scene, “he bit me,” she said, providing unprintable specifics about where and how.
“He’s a brilliant actor, but he’s a manly man,” she said. “It was difficult for him not to be in charge.” To get the desired response she would try surprising her co-star, whom she called, with a laugh, “Mad-sen.” “There was a scene where he just couldn’t say the word ‘slave,’ so I started masturbating,” she said. “He was so taken off guard. It felt like the only thing I could do to make it work.”
Ms. Argento’s usual sense of control was demolished when she worked with Ms. Breillat, who has a reputation for putting her actors through the wringer. “I thought, I’m such a soldier, she’s not going to hurt me,” Ms. Argento said. “But she did. She knew how to push my buttons.” Ms. Argento referred to Ms. Breillat variously as “a tough cookie,” “a great intellectual,” “a control freak,” “like my mother” and “a crazy bitch.” Ms. Breillat, sitting a few tables away at a Cannes restaurant, offered her own cool appraisal. “I chose Asia for her explosive subconscious, so I worked with her subconscious,” she said. “We had a few horrible blowups. She can terrorize people. She doesn’t like to be dominated. She would burst into tears and go, ‘Catherine doesn’t like me.’ And I would say, ‘Look, your tears are costing us time.’ ”
When the conversation turned to acting, Ms. Breillat spoke glowingly: “Put her in front of the camera, and she gives entirely of herself, body and soul, without any ego.”
Ms. Argento has been acting since she was 9, and she joined the family business partly as a way of joining the family. “I was shy and weird,” she said. “Making movies was the only time I belonged to something.” A defining moment came at the age of 5, when her mother, the actress Daria Nicolodi, showed her Tod Browning’s “Freaks.” She felt a strong kinship with the sideshow performers.
As a child she reached for the high shelf where videos of her father’s movies were stored and covertly screened them for her friends. As a teenager she started working with him, playing an anorexic orphan in “Trauma” (1993) and a rape victim in “The Stendhal Syndrome” (1996). Mr. Argento, speaking by telephone from Rome, said he was used to questions about subjecting his daughter to on screen torments. “I tell people it’s a movie,” he said.
Judging from the two features she has directed, Ms. Argento’s take on the intersection of life and art is more complicated. Her interest in confessional fiction backfired when J T LeRoy, author of the purportedly autobiographical tale of abuse, “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things,” was revealed to be the creation of a writer named Laura Albert. “On a human level I’m glad the story didn’t happen to somebody,” Ms. Argento said. “But I feel incapable of writing a movie now, and it’s a result of that deceit.”
After stints in Paris and Los Angeles, she now lives in Rome with her 6-year-old daughter (whose father is the Italian musician Marco Castoldi), but her relationship with the news media and the film world there remains contentious. “Italy to me is like the mean mother,” Ms. Argento said. “Whatever I do, it’s never good enough. People say I’m the queen of Cannes, but in Italy I get turned down for work.”
Her first Italian production in nearly a decade is a kind of family reunion. She stars alongside her mother in her father’s latest feature, “The Mother of Tears,” the final chapter of a trilogy that began with his 1977 classic, “Suspiria.”
Ms. Argento is very much her father’s daughter. “If I ever get too mainstream,” she said, “I feel like I’m neglecting his legacy.” Still, she has stepped out of his shadow, to the extent that “I think he’s kind of scared of me now,” she said. “He’s like, ‘Who is this monster I’ve created?’ He said to me once that ‘The Heart Is Deceitful’ is so extreme. And I’m like, ‘Look at your movies, Dad.’ I’ve realized that I also make horror films, but I deal with real life and not the fantastic.”
THE FILMMAKER GUIDE TO ASIA ARGENTO
Filmmaker has been a big fan of Asia Argento -- as an actress and a director -- over the years, and on the occasion of her BAM retrospective, "Sexy, Scary and Often Naked: Asia Argento," which opens today, I thought I would throw up some links to our coverage of Argento over the years.
Back in 2000 Travis Crawford interviewed Asia about her directorial debut, Scarlet Diva, and the article was illustrated by original Richard Kern photos (one of which I've included here).
In 2005 Crawford interviewed Asia again in 2005 for her second feature, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, and, unfortunately, this interview is not online. However, if you subscribe to Filmmaker's new digital edition you can read it as subscriptions give you access to all interviews back through 2005.
This year Nick Dawson interviewed Catherine Breillat about The Last Mistress, and Brandon Harris interviewed Olivier Assayas about Boarding Gate. Both star Argento and are in the BAM series. And, finally, also this year, Travis Crawford interviewed Argento's father Dario, director of Mother of Tears, upon the release of his latest film, which starred Asia.
Italian actress Asia Argento in bikini on TheGrumpiest
TheGrumpiest, a famous American gossip blog has just published a few pics of Italian actress Asia Argento in bikini. Here’s what the blogger wrote about her and her tattoo!
Here are a few pictures ofAsia Argento, yet another woman I know absolutely nothing about, she could be a f@#king bus driver for all I know, but she’s wearing a bikini so you don’t have to ask me twice. She’s got a pretty slutty looking tattoo on her lower belly so she’s either a stripper or a pornstar, either way you might want to use a little hand sanitizer. Enjoy.
http://www.gossipblog.it/galleria/asia-argento-in-bikini-piace-ai-blogger-americani/5
Here are a few pictures ofAsia Argento, yet another woman I know absolutely nothing about, she could be a f@#king bus driver for all I know, but she’s wearing a bikini so you don’t have to ask me twice. She’s got a pretty slutty looking tattoo on her lower belly so she’s either a stripper or a pornstar, either way you might want to use a little hand sanitizer. Enjoy.
http://www.gossipblog.it/galleria/asia-argento-in-bikini-piace-ai-blogger-americani/5
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Asia Argento
It's a trait she seems to have inherited from her father, Dario Argento, the George Romero of Italy Italy
The Emperor's new clothes that have hidden the naked mediocrity of Dario's work for so long then fell to Asia as hand-me-downs. To see her without knowing anything about her is to behold a generally unremarkable woman distinguished only by her mural-like tattoos. But wrapped in the mantle of drama and controversy as she has been since her birth (when the registration office refused to accept her name and christened her "Aria" instead), she starts to look a lot more interesting. Between her acting awards (she's been acting since she was nine), music career, frequent nudity in print and film (including one infamously directed by her own father), alleged hit-and-run incident, her family's involvement in the horror biz ("Sometimes I think my father gave me life," she once said, "because he needed a lead actress for his films"), and her own horror flick credits, Asia's image in Italy, as near as I can tell, has become a colorful and compelling mix of Christina Ricci, pre-Charmed Rose McGowan, and Marilyn Manson. "Aria" Argento is someone I might not think twice about if I saw her in a film, but "Asia " Argento, Dario's little girl and the Devil's spawn, is harder to ignore.
Also sprach Golem.
Asia Argento By Caroline Ryder
From birth, it was practically guaranteed that Asia Argento would grow up to be someone interesting. She was born into an Italian horror movie dynasty, for a start. Her father, Dario Argento, has made some of the blackest and bloodiest movies of the genre – slasher flicks like Suspiria, Profondo Rosso, and Tenebre. Her mother, Daria Nicolodi, an actress, met a gruesome end in many of them. The only things her father would read to her at bedtime were his movie scripts, and as a treat on her sixth birthday, little Asia was allowed to watch Poltergeist. Growing up Argento was clearly a barrel of laughs. “My father did horror movies and my mother was always being killed in these movies – but my childhood was not as extreme as you would think,” says the 30-year-old Asia (pronounced Ah-shee-a). “I had a certain detachment from it, and a lot of pride. I thought it was really cool.”
While her unusual upbringing made it pretty safe to bet Asia Argento would never be boring, no one could have predicted just how beautiful she would become. Today, Argento is worshipped by men and women alike. Her sultry looks, heavy eyeliner, and tattoos (most of which she got between the ages of 14 and 17) combine to make her something of a thinking man’s Angelina Jolie. But the teenage Asia, who shaved her head and wore boyish clothes, spent much of her time convinced she was not much better looking than one of the corpses in her father’s movies. “I was the ugly one,” she says, “the weirdo, the geek, the freak.”
An introvert, she immersed herself in books as a way of making up for having virtually no friends. While the kids at her school were obsessing over Madonna and Duran Duran, Argento was crushing on Dostoyevsky and Baudelaire and watching the films of Roman Polanski. “Those were my youth idols,” she says. At age eight, she had already published a book of poems. She persuaded her father to let her act, making her debut when she was only nine years old in Sergio Citti’s 1984 Sogni e Bisogni. She worked with her father for the first time in his 1993 film Trauma, playing an anorexic girl looking for her parents’ killers. By the age of 21, she had already appeared in 14 movies, winning two Donatello awards (Italy’s equivalent of Oscars) for best actress as a paraplegic in Carlo Verdone’s Let’s Not Keep in Touch and Peter Del Monte’s Traveling Companion.
Then, in her early 20s, people started noticing that Argento was actually something of a minx. She was offered a part in Michael Radford’s B Monkey, and was required to learn how to be ultrafeminine for the role. Argento transformed herself into a gothic femme fatale, and found that she rather enjoyed the attention. A tendency toward soft-core in later movies resulted in Argento gaining a bit of a bad-girl reputation among the Catholic purists in her home country of Italy. Not that she cared. “I was very young when I started being naked in front of people – 21 or so,” she says. “From being someone who only cared about studying and reading all these books and then all of a sudden being the sultry bitch from hell, it was funny to me. Being a sex queen was funny. Today, I see it as my insecurity and my fragility manifesting itself. But at the time I thought, ‘This is the real power – look at my pussy.’”
And look we did, until Argento decided she had something more powerful than her body to offer the world: her mind. In 2000 she wrote, directed, and starred in Italy’s first digital film, the explicit, semi-autobiographical Scarlet Diva. The film came out in 2002, the same year she appeared opposite Vin Diesel in xXx. Suddenly an action babe, Asia found herself working out, wearing designer clothes, and lunching with Hollywood agents. It just wasn’t her. At the same time, becoming a mother in 2001 had also had a profound effect on her outlook. She and her daughter’s father, Marco Castoldi, had taken some “rancid” photos of each other, but Argento realized this was not the kind of stuff she ever wanted her child to see. “It’s kind of bourgeois and idiotic,” she says, “but I thought, ‘There is going to be a stage in my child’s life where she is going to see that and be really embarrassed.’”
The time had come for a new chapter. She continued to act, appearing in Gus Van Sant’s Last Days in 2005, but toned down the T & A. And she ventured into other areas, like directing music videos. “I always regarded acting as a simple job,” she says. “I am not a princess; I am a worker. I don’t want my ass to be licked. Maybe that’s why I do a million other things. Acting is not hard – that’s a lie that many actors tell. They feel embarrassed to be appreciated for something that isn’t very hard. So they can become spoiled brats. I fell into this trap for a while myself.” Director Abel Ferrara, with whom she had worked, had been a big influence for her. “With him, I saw another way of working, more free and more communist, where people can bring ideas and actors are not elite.”
Asia’s second directorial effort, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, was adapted from the book by J.T. LeRoy, with whom she had a well-publicized friendship. She directed and starred in the movie, but did not call on her father Dario for directing advice— they had a falling out after she refused to star in his last movie. It is not known whether she is still buddies with LeRoy either, since it was recently revealed that he is, in fact, a made up person. The author had fooled everyone (including Argento, apparently) into believing he was a former child truck stop prostitute with AIDS, when “he” was really a former phone sex operator named Laura. Naturally the press had a field day over this literary “scandal,” but we’d bet it was just business as unusual for Asia Argento.
Friday, September 3, 2010
On the Wings of an Angel
On the Wings of an Angel is a brand new book written by Darran Mann about our one and only Asia Argento. He has been working on this book for many years and his love and dedication truly show. This is the first ever book about Asia Argento. While this is not an official biography, this is a must-have for her ever growing legions of fans.
Act fast to buy your copy – with only 500 copies produced it will not take long before this book is sold out!
The book can be ordered from:
Starchild Publishing
38, Foster Street
Lincoln
Lincs
LN57QF
UNITED KINGDOM
Price is £25 or euros which includes postage or $45 us which also includes postage.
Starchild Publishing
38, Foster Street
Lincoln
Lincs
LN57QF
UNITED KINGDOM
Price is £25 or euros which includes postage or $45 us which also includes postage.
Actresses Who Write: Asia Argento and Franke Potente
Franka Potente (still best know for Run Lola Run) and Asia Argento are always interesting. For who they are. For the movies they make. In Argento’s case, the films she has directed too. Now they are branching out on new literary paths.
Argento recently published Victims They Know So Well, a collection of personal breakup letters addressed to her by lost loves in different cities. Potente published Zehn, a collection of stories set in Japan. Argento’s texts, in English and French, are beautifully annotated with drawings and photos — by Argento. Potente’s stories are — unfortunately for those who do not speak the language — in German.
http://www.odetoazia.com/?p=1558
Argento recently published Victims They Know So Well, a collection of personal breakup letters addressed to her by lost loves in different cities. Potente published Zehn, a collection of stories set in Japan. Argento’s texts, in English and French, are beautifully annotated with drawings and photos — by Argento. Potente’s stories are — unfortunately for those who do not speak the language — in German.
http://www.odetoazia.com/?p=1558
Thursday, September 2, 2010
DANGEROUS BEAUTY
Receiving its North American premiere in Toronto was Italian actress Asia Argento’s directing debut, Scarlet Diva. Mixing humor and self- laceration, Tortoise and Nina Simone, Argento uses the tools of digital video to create a thoughtful aesthetic distance from her own semi- autobiographical lead character. Travis Crawford talks with Argento.
One could be forgiven for approaching Scarlet Diva with a healthy degree of skepticism. The writing-directing feature debut of 25-year-old Italian actress Asia Argento, the film is co-produced by her father, renowned horror filmmaker Dario Argento, and is a largely autobiographical chronicle of young actress Anna Battista and her odyssey through a haze of sex and drugs as she seeks to liberate herself from her self-proclaimed title of "the loneliest girl in the world."
But those who assumed Scarlet Diva would be a vanity project subsidized by a prosperous parent should be prepared for a shock: the younger Argento’s film is actually a remarkably confident and vibrant work, a colorful and stylish primal-scream ride through life’s excesses that plays like a trip-hop cover of Chantal Akerman’s Les Rendez-vous d’Anna. If Argento’s film is guilty of crimes of self-indulgence (as some critics have averred), then these transgressions are rooted in boundless enthusiasm for the possibilities of cinema – it’s no accident that she cites Alejandro Jodorowsky as an influence – and not empty narcissism. And there’s another element to the film that perhaps nobody anticipated: Scarlet Diva is often riotously funny.
Argento’s film follows Anna as she careens through Rome, London, Paris, Amsterdam and Los Angeles, her life an increasingly chaotic tribulation of failed relationships and the hazards of celebrity: a formerly talented writer friend has now become a bitter heroin addict, and a meeting with a Hollywood producer (artist Joe Coleman) becomes the ultimate casting-couch nightmare. Events seem to change when Anna becomes pregnant by an Australian rock star, but this "impossible love" doesn’t materialize, sending her deeper into loneliness. As the material moves into progressively darker territory, Argento shifts the tone of Scarlet Diva into a hallucinatory overdrive that mirrors the drug-addled Anna’s fever-dream state of mind, but she never jettisons the black comedy that ensures that Anna’s predicaments, however outlandish, remain recognizably human. Argento’s adroit juggling of these multiple stylistic approaches marks her as a filmmaker with a great degree of promise.
Argento has directed before – two short films, and documentaries on her father and Abel Ferrara – but she has become known in recent years as one of Europe’s most popular young actresses, particularly in her native Italy, through the success of such films as Peter Del Monte’s Compagna di Viaggio and Giovanni Veronesi’s Viola Bacia Tutti. Her Italian work however, has been little seen outside of that country, except for the trilogy of films in which she was directed by her father: the American-lensed Trauma, the vastly underrated The Stendhal Syndrome, and the misguided Phantom of the Opera. Although she has appeared in two English-language films – Michael Radford’s long-delayed Miramax-botched B. Monkey and Ferrara’s flawed but fascinating New Rose Hotel – Argento has become most known outside Italy as a Euro "It"-girl and icon of sexual desire, her undraped tattoo-covered form appearing in various men’s magazines which cite her as one of "The 50 Sexiest Women Alive." Argento’s physical appearance may be striking, but after talking with her for only a few minutes it immediately becomes the least compelling thing about her; one is soon impressed by her intelligence, razor-sharp wit, and passion for cinema. We spoke at the Toronto International Film Festival: Filmmaker: Since so much has been made of Scarlet Diva’s autobiographical angle, why don’t you tell me what isn’t autobiographical about the film, and how are you different from Anna?
Asia Argento: Everything in the film is autobiographical, but then again everything is not. I think that every film is autobiographical in that you have a very personal reason to tell the story. Even if I were to write a story of Martians coming to Earth, it would have to be autobiographical. But the fact that there isn’t a father figure is a difference. I wanted to save my father, since here I am only talking about the worst things that have happened in my life.
Filmmaker: But you asked your own mother (Daria Nicolodi) to play your horrible mother in the movie!
Argento: I know. But it was an interesting psychodrama for us. I asked her to play my agent in the film, but she wanted to play that part [instead], which was fantastic of her. But I’ve mixed everything, too: the character of the writer is many writers I’ve met; the producer is many producers I’ve met even though that one does remind me of someone particularly.
Filmmaker: And an experience that was similarly horrible?
Argento: Oh, yeah, yeah. It was so horrible it was funny, really.
Filmmaker: So are you really the loneliest girl in the world?
Argento: Not anymore, actually, but I used to be. I was sick for a while; I was agoraphobic. I was afraid to go out of my apartment for a long time, I could only go out to work. But I was not lonely. I was alone. It was my choice – well, I had no other choice. But now I have a love for the first time in my life, and that makes me feel a little less lonely, even though there are some things I know I could never share with anybody.
Filmmaker: Did you ever have a Kirk in your real life, an "impossible love"?
Argento: Sure. And I did this film to be loved by this person, who never read the script, who has never seen this film. And we’re not together anymore – as soon as the film was over, the need for that impossible love was over. When you’re alone and you fantasize about love, it’s the purest form of love. The person needs to be either dead or unattainable, because the other person’s love is going to ruin your love. But now I believe differently, so maybe this film has cured me, or saved me somehow.
Filmmaker: In the past few years, you’ve become one of Europe’s foremost young actresses. What precipitated the move to directing?
Argento: I never acted out of ambition; I acted to gain my father’s attention. It took a long time for him to notice me – I started when I was nine, and he only cast me when I was 16. And he only became my father when he was my director. I always thought it was sick to choose looking at yourself on a big screen as your job. There has to be something crooked in your mind to want to be loved by everybody. It’s like being a prostitute, to share that intimacy with all those people. Filmmaker: I don’t know, there still has to be a certain nobility to the profession.
Argento: No, no, no. That’s the lie that actors tell to non-actors to elevate a job that’s very easy to do. Yes, of course there’s a nobility in the way that children are noble and sensitive and need guidance. But actors are not noble. On the contrary, like Brando said, acting – not prostitution – is the oldest profession in the world. But if I had any ambition, it was over when I worked with Abel Ferrara – he was always one of my favorite directors, so after that, I had nothing to desire anymore. So I decided to go back to what enchanted me as a little girl, which was writing.
Filmmaker: So do you only want to direct now, or will you still act in other people’s films?
Argento: I’ve gone back to it because I need to pay the rent [laughs]. And it’s a challenge. I just did this French vampire film by Antoine du Caunes, Les Morsures de L’Aube, and I don’t speak French, so I had to learn the language. But I think I’m a better actress now that I don’t have personal ambition, because I work for the film and not to build my own career. I work for the director, like a cab driver just driving his cab, a professional, a mercenary. When you’re directing, it’s years of your life, for one thing, and I think that is noble.
Filmmaker: When are you going to direct again?
Argento: In a month I am going to start directing a porno film.
Filmmaker: You’re directing it but not acting in it, correct?
Argento: Yes. I’ve seen a lot of porno films, but they are never very interesting. So what I want to try to do is have a strong story, just with real sex. I think it’s a rebellious act – not political, but rebellious against the kind of cinema that is done in Italy, which has been so useless for at least 20 years. I think my father and Sergio Leone tried to fight through genre filmmaking, one with horror, the other with westerns, and I think the only genre left for me is porno.
Filmmaker: Unlike the works of most young first-time filmmakers, Scarlet Diva seems more influenced by the rhythms of real life than by other films. Having said that, were there films that shaped your approach to the film?
Argento: Actually, another vow of chastity I took before this film was to watch only silent films for one year. I watched every one I could get my hands on. Pabst, Dziga Vertov, Dreyer, the original color-tinted version of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – it’s so beautiful it makes you want to cry. Abel Gance’s Napoléon is my favorite film of all time. Apart from these silent films I watched to purify myself, I was looking at a lot of photography. That’s what inspired me the most.
Filmmaker: Some of the imagery in the film reminded me of Nan Goldin’s work.
Argento: Yes, definitely! She’s one of the people I really admire, along with Diane Arbus and Richard Kern. But I wasn’t really thinking of that. Even though I had very clear storyboards, I allowed myself to destroy them on set, and everybody could come up with something if they felt it. This was a freedom that I never had when I worked as an actress with other directors – to bring out the truth from my characters and the location was the only goal I really had in acting.
Filmmaker: Did you take anything from your father?
Argento: I wish I could have his talent with the camera. Horror is much more precise, it’s like mathematics. When he shoots, nothing is left to the atmosphere of the set. He knows exactly what he wants and he’s going to get it. You are just there as an instrument. I love his use of color, and I think you can see that inspiration in my work.
Filmmaker: Scarlet Diva deals heavily with issues of female disappointment towards men. Let me ask you simply, what do women want from men?
Argento: Well, just deal with that genetically. We have a hole that needs to be filled.
http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/issues/fall2000/features/dangerous.php
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