The great thing about all of these Tilda Swinton interviews that are popping up is that it gives us the rare opportunity to listen to the intelligent actress wax philosophic. ¬†Interviews can mostly be, and are mostly by-the-numbers – and that’s fine. ¬†The point of them is to make the reader (or the writer) feel like they know the person and if they know them they’re more involved with them. ¬†But every once in a while someone comes along who gives good interview – Twilda Swinton is one. ¬†Here she is talking to the Star Ledger’s Lisa Rose about I Am Love, a project she’s been developing with Luca Guadagnino for more than a decade:
Q. Pasolini is pretty sensational.
A. If it’s Hitchcock, you’re on the edge of your seat or if it’s Douglas Sirk, your heart is wringing out. Luca and I also talked about love and we wanted to make a film about the revolutionary capacity of love and about nature, beyond food, into the garden and into the trees. It’s about not only the glory of nature but also the brutality of it and the fact that love can tear you apart.
Q. I thought that was an interesting dichotomy the way you see these formal settings in the mansion contrasted with natural settings. The two things are juxtaposed against each other. I think that reflects a character looking for where she belongs. Am I reaching?A. No, you’re going into the world of it. It’s seeping into your pores. We were looking into the particular denial that is the benzene of high capitalism — I’m driving into the curve here, but there’s something deeply inhuman about all that wealth and the way in which it’s predicated upon denial. You have that in the scenario and in the heart of it you put this depth charge of love. When Emma tells her husband she loves Antonio, he says to her, “You don’t exist.”
More Tilda here. I Am Love opens next weekend.
Meanwhile, my favorite Tilda Swinton role ever after the cut.
