Charlotte Rampling interview

Dave Calhoun talks to the star of 'Heading South', a new film about sex tourism in the 1970s.

Jun 23 2006

Judging by her screen appearances of late, Charlotte Rampling spends a lot of time either lying on the beach or lounging by the pool. Think of François Ozon's 'Under the Sand' in which she plays a woman who dozes on the dunes while her husband does a disappearing act in the ocean. Or 'Swimming Pool' (also by Ozon) in which the actress plays a frustrated novelist who lingers in a house in Provence in the company of an attractive young house-guest (Ludivine Sagnier).

In recent years, Rampling's swimsuit and beach appearances have become badges of renewed honour. They are symbols of both a resurgent interest in her work from directors and audiences and what she calls, in French, une mutation to a new stage in a career that started way back in 1965 with a small role in Richard Lester's Palme d'Or-winning 'The Knack... And How To Get It' and which has seen her pass through Italy and America, paired with directors including Luchino Visconti ('The Damned') and Woody Allen ('Stardust Memories') and, finally, now, landed her firmly in the welcoming arms of the new French cinema.

'I'm completely bilingual, I married here, I brought my kids up here, I'm completely integrated,' Rampling explains in her clipped English accent (she's the daughter of a colonel) while sitting in the lounge of a hotel near Paris' Champs-Elysées. 'But if you're a foreigner – which I am – you have a certain distance. You retain a certain mystery, which is interesting. It suits my sense of being a stranger.'

Rampling recently completed her third film with François Ozon ('Angel' is a costume-drama set in 1900s Britain); she was on our screens last month as a frightening, depressed sexual predator in 'Lemming' by Dominik Moll, another young French director; and she even appeared in 'Basic Instinct 2' as a steely psychiatrist opposite Sharon Stone.

'That didn't turn out as fun as I thought,' Rampling says with characteristic straightforwardness. 'It was a good script but it got lost along the way and could have been much more funny. But Sharon was a bit serious – although she's not a serious person, but anyway...'

It's worth recalling the astonishing commentary with regard to her age that Sharon Stone – 12 years Rampling's junior – received when she reprised her role in 'Basic Instinct'. Yet Stone isn't even 50 yet. Rampling turned 60 this year and she's relieved that, on the whole, French filmmakers possess a more imaginative, mature attitude to older performers than their American or British counterparts. She counts this as one reason why she's happier to live and work in France, the country where she spent some of her childhood and has lived since her marriage (now dissolved) to the musician Jean Michel Jarre (yes, the lasers man) in 1976.

'In Europe, you don't have to be frightened of your age,' Rampling says, sipping her tea before suddenly interrupting herself to berate a woman who is talking loudly on a mobile phone. ('It's amazing how people think they own the world.')

She continues on the topic of age and cinema: 'France is not like America, where you're terrified that you're not going to be used as a sensual, sexual woman if you're over 40. I agree that you don't want to see older bodies humping – but there are many ways of expressing sexuality without having to see exactly what they do.'

Sexuality and humping are at the heart of Rampling's latest film, Laurent Cantet's 'Heading South' ('Vers le sud'), in which she spends much of the drama sunbathing on a beach as one of a trio of American women who travel regularly to Haiti in the late 1970s to indulge in sex with local men. Cantet's adaptation of two books by the Haitian writer Dany Laferrière offers an intelligent, provocative account of sex tourism in the pre-AIDS era.

Rampling plays Ellen, a university lecturer from the US and something of a grande dame of sexual politics on the tourist beach. She sniffs at the wide-eyed naivety of new recruit Brenda (Karen Young) yet her behaviour towards their shared Haitian lover, Legba (Ménothy Cesar) suggests an emptiness and a longing common to both their lives. Cantet's approach is not to accuse but to sketch the conflicting desires and motives that drive both the wealthy North Americans and their Haitian companions.

'It's the meeting point of two emptinesses really,' Rampling explains. 'The men would like to feel that they could get more money, escape and have a proper life, while the women have so-called proper lives but still travel to Haiti every year for sex.'

For Rampling, it's exactly the sort of role for which she's thankful: clever, sensual, unusual. She made a name for herself as a sexually charged performer in her youth, not least via 'The Night Porter' in 1974 opposite Dirk Bogarde, but she could easily have slipped into mother/grandmother/dowager roles lately. In 1999, she even played Miss Havisham in a version of 'Great Expectations' for British TV.

'There's a different appreciation of women in France, there's an admiration of the woman, whatever age she is,' Rampling suggests. 'There are lots of people of my age and younger that want to see stories about themselves. It's not only young people who go to the cinemas. People do actually live the same lives as they get older.'

Most commentaries on Rampling's career repeat the idea that she was reborn through making 'Under the Sand' in 2000 – that François Ozon allowed her to find a new avenue for herself beyond the obvious roles for a woman approaching 60. Does she accept this evaluation?

'Yeah, in a way. In terms of an actor's lifespan, we're lucky if we can go on a very long time and change and evolve. When there's a transformation, and you're no longer the sex kitten or the vamp because of the years, you change. 'Under the Sand' allowed that change to happen beautifully. It allowed me to come back into cinema with maturity. It allowed me to move as I was moving in my own life.'

'Heading South' opens on July 7.

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