Lynchian myth since
Blue Velvet
and
Sailor and Lula,
pop culture icon since
Jurassic Park,
furious lawyer in
Marriage Story,
with an Oscar at stake, or businesswoman proud of her success in the series
Big Little Lies,
Laura Dern portrayed many unforgettable characters.
The filmmaker and playwright Florian Zeller offers him a new one in
The Son,
his second film adapted into English, like
The Father,
of a part of his family trilogy which had triumphed at the theater.
The American actress plays the mother of a suicidal teenager who, with her ex-husband (amazing Hugh Jackman), tries to find solutions.
An intense score for a fascinating actress.
In video,
The Son,
by Florian Zeller, with Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern, the trailer
Miss Figaro. –
Tell us about your meeting with Florian Zeller...
Laura Dern.
–
When I spoke to him for the first time, by interposed screen, everything seemed so easy, familiar.
Florian is a poet, an artist in the noble sense of the term, who questions you about your work, your emotions, your life, and not about show business.
He also writes universal stories.
The scene in which my character and her ex-husband talk about their son at the restaurant and talk about their past love is one of the most beautiful I've ever read about love, marriage, the feeling of abandonment.
Anyone who has ever lost love will be able to identify with it.
Do you identify with your character?
Joint parenthood with an ex, the desire to want to do well despite the divorce, is something that many of us know, including me (
she had two children with singer
Ben Harper,
editor's note
).
As a mother, even if I didn't experience the situations in the film, I also understand the despair, the terror and the heartbreak faced with the impossibility of relieving her child of his suffering.
I've always refused to play sidekicks, maybe because I'm an actor's daughter
Laura Dern
Powerless and exhausted, your character is relieved by the departure of his son...
The injunctions made to women, including in terms of maternity, are numerous and it takes a lot of courage to admit that we don't have the answers, that, perhaps, to save his child, he must be let go.
It's all the more difficult to fight when it comes to mental health.
Parents tend to blame themselves, to think that their education or their divorce are solely responsible for the child's ill-being.
No doubt this is a way of keeping control because, if they are not guilty, if no one is, how to deal?
Your career is punctuated by characters who refuse to submit to diktats. How do you explain it?
I am looking for roles of women whose voices deserve to be heard, because they have never been given a voice, because they are marginalized in
boys' clubs
because of their independence, their ambition, their flaws… I have always refused to play the sidekick, perhaps because I am the daughter of actors (
Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern, editor's note
) and the goddaughter of an actress (
Shelley Winters, editor's note
).
As a child, I accompanied my parents on film sets and, without being aware of it, I built myself by observing the cinema of the 1970s, free and daring, by strolling on the sets of Sydney Pollack, Martin Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock… And then I experienced a miracle.
When Audrey Diwan directs
L'Événement,
a fabulous, essential film, she recounts your past.
For us, it's the present...
Laura Dern
That's to say ?
I went to castings at a very young age, but my first two acting experiences, at 11 and 16, I had with Adrian Lyne and Peter Bogdanovich.
When I was 17, I met my friend and mentor David Lynch, who hired me for
Blue Velvet.
What better teachers could I dream of?
David taught me to push the limits, took me into worlds where comedy and trauma can coexist, made me understand that one could be true in a totally crazy universe.
I was chosen by a filmmaker who built his work on transgression, on the desire to move the cursors.
It paved my way.
Do you have projects together?
As long as David will create, I will be there, even to hold a microphone or play the fourth roles.
“I was mostly raised by women and I live surrounded by friends”
You mentioned
boys' clubs.
Is the cinema one of them?
I discovered it by becoming a producer but, as an actress, I was able to evolve without worrying about it thanks to my family of cinema.
I also had the chance to be part of a
girls' club
: I was mainly brought up by women and I live surrounded by friends from the profession and musicians I met when I lived with the father of my children.
The sisters I have chosen have a special place in my life.
This is also what my mother experienced, an only daughter and actress at 16, like me.
We've written a conversation book about that, it's coming out for Mother's Day.
How was this book born?
My mother became very ill after prolonged exposure to pesticides and doctors advised her to walk to rebuild her lungs.
I accompanied her and we talked about her career, her childhood, her influences: Simone Signoret has always been her favorite actress… I recorded these discussions when I realized that I had never had them before I was afraid to lose her.
Did your mother give you a feminist upbringing?
Feminism is an interesting concept.
In France, you don't need the word, like us.
When Audrey Diwan directs
L'Événement,
a fabulous, essential film, she recounts your past.
For us, it's the present, because young girls have secret abortions every day.
If an American director had made this film, it would have had difficulty raising the money and would only have been screened in a few theaters.
It's tragic.
And if a woman had directed it in Hollywood, the film would have been labeled "feminist."
But, with you, it is “simply” perceived as a great film about a young girl who wants to choose her fate before the civilized world wakes up.
Which, alas, never really happened in the United States.
In video,
L'Événement
, by Audrey Diwan, excerpt