We are in Dubai, a mirage city that seems to have been designed for a video game, and it is blazing hot on a beach where we are waiting for Penélope Cruz for a
Madame Figaro shoot.
A private beach, but a real beach with sand, waves and an infinite horizon, not like the artificial lagoons that surround the air-conditioned palaces of the capital of luxury shopping. If the Spanish actress is there, it's for Chanel. The next day, the Cruise 2021-2022 collection designed by Virginie Viard, who is stopping off in the United Arab Emirates, will be presented there, and Mademoiselle Cruz, house ambassador, will be seated in the front row.
It was not written in the cards of fate that Penélope Cruz would one day wear tweed suits from the venerable house on rue Cambon. Born in the northern outskirts of Madrid, Penélope Cruz is the daughter of a hairdresser and a car dealership. Her parents will divorce, but, in the meantime, the young girl grows up in a happy home and is destined to dance. At the Cruz's, we like artistic disciplines, cinema in particular. For the moment, the little ballerina is not thinking about it yet, but as in all film stories, we will come and get her. She was 18 when she was promoted to young national idol: she starred in the very sexy
Ham, Ham,
of Bigas Luna, facing Javier Bardem (who will become her husband much later, in another life, and the father of her two children).
We only see her.
Her fine dancer's body and this magnificent face which lingers in adolescence, the hemmed lips and this look of fawn or vamp - it is according to -, the woman-child, the lethal weapon on the big screen.
Penélope Cruz will not leave him anymore.
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The call of the sea
Long slit dress in printed silk crepe, Chanel.
Matthew brookes
The call of the sea
Long slit dress in printed silk crepe, Chanel.
Matthew brookes
Nice game
Denim and T-shirt jumpsuit, Chanel.
Camélia ring, in white gold and diamonds, Chanel Joaillerie.
Matthew brookes
The camera gaze
Bouton de Camélia ring, in white gold and diamonds, Chanel Joaillerie, and personal rings.
Chanel t-shirt.
Matthew brookes
The tailor effect
Shards of Grace
Penélope Cruz, the cover story
Behind the scenes with Penélope Cruz
Behind the scenes with Penélope Cruz
Behind the scenes with Penélope Cruz
Behind the scenes with Penélope Cruz
See the slideshow
11 photos
Awarded in Venice
She becomes "the" Spanish star of the moment and will not cease to be so. In the 2000s, she was the companion of Tom Cruise (an affair that almost everyone has forgotten), a
love affair
that led her to Hollywood, where she made a few films culminating in an Oscar for best supporting role. , received in 2009 for
Vicky Cristina Barcelona,
by Woody Allen. But the main thing is elsewhere, in Spain with Pedro Almodóvar. The director and his muse. Like Rossellini with Ingrid Bergman, Antonioni with Monica Vitti, Cassavetes with Gena Rowlands, the alchemy is magical. Almodóvar draws the best from Cruz, her sensuality, her magnetism, and pushes the game of her emotions to the climax: she upsets in
All About My Mother
as a pregnant nun suffering from AIDS, the second film of their precious alliance which today leads her to
Madres paralelas,
their seventh collaboration. In Venice, where the film was presented, Penélope Cruz won the Volpi cup for best actress, and we are talking about her for a nomination for the next Oscars.
On the beach in Dubai, we evoke with her the strength of the themes dear to Almodóvar, motherhood, transgression, family and social pressure.
She has tears in her eyes when she thinks of her mentor.
The sun is falling in the Persian Gulf, the bottom of the air is pink, and Penélope Cruz, the nomad with a well-trodden path, has already left for other horizons.
An international star, she appeared in
355,
an
action movie
with a mainly female cast, Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o, Diane Kruger, Fan Bingbing.
Penélope Cruz is as comfortable in Hollywood as in Madrid.
Or in Dubai that night.
The genius of Almodóvar
“Pedro is part of my family. It was he who made me want to become an actress. At 14, I had already seen all his films, and I felt the freedom that emanates from his stories and makes them universal works. He knows like no other how to both dissect the society in which he lives and unravel souls. For me he is the Iberian Fellini. Both have a very personal universe associated with memorable scenes, which make them recognizable at first glance. For Fellini, these are the tears of Gelsomina in
La Strada,
a midnight bath in the Trevi Fountain in
La Dolce Vita,
the nuns on roller skates in a fashion show at the Vatican in
Fellini Roma.
For Pedro, it's Marisa Paredes in
Stiletto heels
singing
Piensa en mí
or Victoria Abril in
Attache-moi!
In Pedro's cinema, everything is framed to perfection to make each image a painting.
I like his way of directing.
He makes us rehearse a lot - more than four months for the last film.
He pays attention to everything, neglects no detail, even the color of the laces.
For me, this requirement is a courtesy with regard to his art and his actors.
In video, the Chanel 2021-2022 cruise collection with Penélope Cruz
The strength of women
“Pedro knows how to honor women, because he loves them and knows them better than anyone.
He makes them beautiful, strong, essential.
Whatever their role - wives, mistresses or prostitutes.
Me, I played everything for him.
In
Pain and Glory,
I even played his mother! For this film, I went to see her to tell me about him, about his anguish when he left the Spanish telephone company, his first job. She was still crying. She had been so scared that he wouldn't make it. And she repeated with pride: “You see how well he has succeeded. I did well to let him live his life.” Pedro had given me some indications: "Don't be too maternal, even be a little strict, make him understand that life is hard for you, but that at the same time he is your only treasure." Antonio Banderas played the role of adult Pedro. Since then, when we see each other, he calls me “Mom”. This is to tell you that we are a real family!
If Pedro loves women so much, it's because they raised him, his mother, his aunts, his cousins, his neighbours. In the 1950s, in La Mancha, where he grew up, the men were very absent, either at work or in the café, and the fathers were sometimes unknown. When Pedro was little, instead of playing football, he listened to them and watched them. He kept the memory of voluptuous, powerful, independent, authoritarian and at the same time very sexy women. For this reason, in
Madres paralelas
he filmed his two heroines, Janis and Ana, with the same care and knew how to make them beautiful even in extreme situations, during their pregnancy and when they gave birth.
Motherhood has always been important in Pedro's films.
He has always admired, in us women, this supernatural force that we deploy in all the moments of our lives, in joys as in trials.
He is fascinated by our capacity to love, to endure, to forgive.”
Motherhood has always been important in the films of PedroPenélope Cruz
"I did my classes on the job"
“For me, creating is as vital as eating, drinking or breathing. When I speak of creation, I don't necessarily mean that of a masterpiece. Who can claim it, anyway? For me, to create is to seek, to imagine, to reflect, to come out of oneself. As an actress, each new character is a new experience that makes me start from scratch, like in
355,
an action film, a genre that is a priori unfamiliar to me. Every time I start a film, I feel like I'm going back to college to learn. And it's an amazing feeling. Me, I did my classes on the job, I didn't study comedy, I learned the tricks of the trade by observing the clients of my mother's hairdressing salon. I watched the customers parade and kept their image in a corner of my head. Then I did dance, I was a model. But I was learning.
When I was 17, I attended the screening of
Attache-moi!
It was a revelation, and so I decided to try my luck.
I applied for a small role with Almodóvar who found me too young, but he had promised to think of me.
What he did by offering me to shoot in
Flesh and Bones,
and I gave birth in a bus the day Franco declared the state of exception.
Already, he was talking about everything that is close to his heart, the carnal component, the quivering of desire, doubt, uncertainty, pain, fear or emotion.
It was already very happy and very irreverent while being dark.
This miniscule role allowed me to continue with
Ham, ham,
by Bigas Luna.
Since then, I have never stopped.”
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The importance of roots
“My roots are in Madrid.
It is a city that gives off very good vibes, an open, generous, hospitable city and more permissive than other cities in Spain.
Probably because of the Movida, which started there.
It's important to have roots and an idea of the family romance that must be passed down from generation to generation.
This duty of memory is also one of the subjects of
Madres paralelas,
like the transmission between the ancestors and their descendants.
At the beginning of the film, Janis seeks to exhume the body of her great-grandfather, a Republican killed during the civil war and thrown into a common grave, to bury him with dignity near his family and not to forget him.
This war is always present in our hearts.
Penélope Cruz is wearing a tweed jacket, leather skirt, T-shirt, pearl and rhinestone belts, the Chanel ensemble.
Fil de Comète and Venetian Lion necklaces, Bouton de CamÉlia ring, in white gold and diamonds, and Coco Crush ring, with a quilted motif, in gold, the Chanel Joaillerie set.
Hair and make-up Pablo Iglesias.
Matthew brookes
The power of maternal instinct
“I always wanted to be a mother.
I had this instinct in me during both of my pregnancies.
It is an incredible adventure to give birth.
It is an inner revolution.
In this film, Pedro takes a stand: the maternal instinct does exist, since Janis immediately loves the child that has been placed in her arms, which turns out to be that of Ana, her roommate.
The babies have been switched.
And when Janis notices it, it will take her time to admit it to Ana, who in the meantime has lost the little girl she adored.
From this frame, Almodóvar deploys a plot as he likes them.
It will be about buried secrets, valiant motherhood, sisterhood too.
The art of transgression
“Pedro always manages to transgress all the constructs of society.
Among other things, her films highlight the female figure in all its aspects: mother, friend, mistress.
This is also the role played by the two protagonists, Janis and Ana, those of friends-lovers.
In the film, this sexual relationship is not gratuitous.
The physical rapprochement between the two women responds to their need to escape despair.
Ana because she lost her child;
Janis because she is slow to tell Ana the truth.”
Pedro always manages to transgress all the constructions of society Penélope Cruz
The grace of fashion
“I'm a Chanel ambassador, and it's a great honor.
A dream come true.
As a child, I already collected images of models from this prestigious label and I wanted to meet Karl.
He remained for me the absolute genius.
Virginie Viard, who succeeded him, took over the house brilliantly.
She knows women and their desires well, and creates chic, elegant collections for them, with a slight rock and roll twist.
All that I love."
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