I was a little non-plussed when I started watching Angelina Maccarone’s new documentary on actress Charlotte
Rampling as instead of the usual career review the movie was in 9 different
sections each with an ominous sounding title such as ‘exposure’, ‘desire’, ‘beauty’, ‘resonance’,
‘death’, ‘love’ etc. with Ms. Rampling talking with an interesting array of
friends and artists about her life.
After the first section
‘exposure’, when the conversation was between celebrated fashion photographer
Peter Lindbergh and Ms. R, I began to warm up as I enjoyed her engaging viewpoints
on aspects of her life that affected her work and her career. Equally
fascinating was ‘taboo’ with the photographer Jürgen Teller with whom she had recently participated in a project
of very explicit work that one would have not expect from a women of 62, but
then again she is Charlotte Rampling. And 'resonance' was conducted with Barnaby Southcombe her son who was just about to direct his first feature film starring his mother.
Each section was populated
with clips of some of her most important roles.
Interestingly enough the best are from opposite ends of her career. The early work included such iconic roles in ‘Georgy
Girl’, ‘The Damned’, and ‘The Night Porter’, and then her stunning resume of
the last decade included ‘Under The Sand’, ‘Heading South’ and ‘Swimming Pool’. There
are roles in the middle of her career that are best left unspoken about esp. ‘Max
Mon Amour’ where she fell in love with a chimpanzee, which for some
inexplicable reason was included in this documentary.
Miss Rampling is still a
beauty but much more important than that, she still seeks out these quirky challenging
roles at which she excels at. She
mentions that if she would never have been a film actress if she had just been
offered purely entertaining parts, and we should be so glad that she wasn’t.
This ‘self-portrait by others’
as it is billed is an intriguing insight to an wonderful actress who has continued illuminating our screens despite the fact there is usually a dearth of roles for
women of a certain age. Thank God not
for Ms R who can been seen in theaters now in ‘Melancholia’ and very shortly
in ‘The Mill and The Cross’. And hopefully for many more years to come.
★★★★★★★
