It looks like a vision: multifaceted, unpredictable and ethereal. Tilda Swinton continues to surprise and enchant the Cannes Film Festival 2021 with the many transformations on the big screen (as well as on the red carpet). The last, in chronological order, of the films presented on the Croisette, Memory, closes his long, indeed very long professional presence at the French event which also included a passionate female talk at the invitation of Salma Hayek for Kering’s Women in Motion. In Memory, set in Colombia, she plays an English woman in Medellin who runs a flower shop.
Momentarily in Bogota to visit her sick sister in the hospital, she soon realizes that something is wrong and that that moment could change her life. The story, written and directed by the Thai Apichatpong Weerasethakul, boasts an incredible emotional and visual impact. As well as social, as the cast on the red carpet of the premiere showed off the Colombian flag with the words SOS to raise awareness of the deaths of young people on the street during the ongoing human rights protests. During the meeting with the foreign press, the actress really sent a love letter to this poetic country that hosted the shooting of the film.
Today he wears the colors of the Colombian flag, red, yellow and blue. What do they represent for you?
«It is as if I had on my chest a huge photograph of the crew we worked with for Memoria and which cannot be in Cannes with us today, but it is close to my heart, I love it and I dedicate a special thought to it. It is a very young community that loves cinema like me, an extraordinary atmosphere that immediately transformed a group of strangers into members of a family. These guys are so devoted to art that they seem almost kamikaze to me ».
In short, she found the perfect dress to express these feelings.
“I actually had it specially created. I asked for the colors to be changed and to recall Colombia. It is another privilege of my life to have designer friends who offer to dress me for these occasions ».
What else is life grateful for? Only in Cannes did he present a range of different and incredible stories.
“It’s true, every film is different and unique, a particular microcosm is created and for Memoria the artistic energy was palpable. I really felt like I was at home, among my people, in my tribe, among brothers and sisters in art. Colombia has a lively and vibrant spirit ».
When did you find out?
“The director sent me a text message from Cartagena when he visited it years ago and I too decided to go there to find out what the place lived. I understood it immediately: here the places talk to the people, they permeate their soul ».
When did you start talking about the film?
“We never talked about the specific plot, but about the atmosphere we expected to find in the project, a kind of psychological limbo of people who, for different reasons, feel detached from the world”.
What do you mean?
“My alter ego is a foreign woman, but also a tourist, a world traveler, we know that she is a widow but it is not clear what stage of mourning she is in”.
What question did you ask yourself?
«I wanted to understand what it feels like to be almost suspended in the world, to live it without really being part of it. Jessica really looks like underwater to me. ‘
Why is Apichatpong Weerasethakul the perfect story twist?
«Each director has his own“ frame ”, his own frame, and I am lucky that an exceptional talent wanted to have me in that painting. That’s where the magic comes in, something incredible happens, an almost musical rhythm that comes to life and I, as if I didn’t have a shape, let myself be molded ».
He said earlier that he intentionally knows almost nothing about the woman she plays in the film. Why?
«Because I find it liberating not to know the answers or, better still, to say: ‘I don’t know’. This is true freedom ».
Did you learn any Spanish?
“What I call ‘cinematic Spanish’, but when I repeated those words in Spain they told me that the Colombian cadence was very strong and I was quite proud of it. Being able to express yourself in the language that is not yours is a gift, because you have to strive to be understood and you know that it might not happen at all.
She is said to be so good at changing skin in roles because she is an alien and free goddess.
“In fact, this film is really about the concept of being alien and free from preconceptions. It seems to me that I am walking on fresh snow, removing obstacles but never looking elsewhere that is not ahead of you. You continue to walk in a pure way, without barriers, in a free space. And yesterday, at the premiere of the film, the audience joined our steps, they let themselves go, they accepted the challenge. What’s better?”.
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