In Wes Anderson's new star-studded film The French Dispatch, Léa Seydoux (No Time to Die) plays a prison guard who becomes a muse for an inmate.
It's the latest in a long line of sultry, enigmatic heartbreakers the in-demand actor has embodied since her breakthrough role in 2008 French arthouse film La Belle Personne, and honed in subsequent films as varied as Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, Cannes-acclaimed lesbian romance Blue Is the Warmest Colour, and Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol.
Her recent turn as Daniel Craig's secretive lover Madeleine Swann – whom critics have dubbed "the antithesis of the Bond girl" – is perhaps the epitome of her mercurial on-screen persona.
"For some reason people think that I am mysterious. Which I am not, at all!" the actor laughs, speaking from Paris via Zoom.
"I don't know… I think it's because I am melancholic," she says, quietening.
"I have a certain melancholy, and so I often have this distance towards reality."
In The French Dispatch, Simone is a mixture of fire and ice. A guard at the Ennui prison, she poses nude for Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio Del Toro), an artist serving a life sentence for murder, providing the inspiration for the radically abstract paintings that bring him world renown.
"Simone is Benicio's inspiration; she is the object of creation," Seydoux explains.
Back in uniform, she snaps her fingers and sharply orders him about.
Anderson wrote the part for Seydoux, who is now a regular amongst his ensemble, having most recently voiced the glamorous poodle-King Charles cross Nutmeg in the French version of Isle of Dogs.
For their latest collaboration, Seydoux says the few lines that Anderson sent her initially were "rather abstract" – but he goes above and beyond in bringing them to life for his actors.
"He's funny, Wes – not many people know, but he makes a little animated film of the script. When you arrive on set, it's on an iPad, so you can watch the film before it's even [made]. It's like a beautiful piece of art," she explains.
"He does all the voices, he plays all the characters. So he already played Simone."
Seydoux describes Anderson's new film as "like a comic book", and its vision of her home country as "idealised".
"But I think that works… I mean, it's part of Wes," she says.
In this cinematic wunderkammer, even the smallest detail is crafted with care, from the dandy-fine stitching of Simone's fitted uniform, to the artful poses she strikes (composed with veteran choreographer Philippe Decoufflé) in a series of tableaux: hanging from the ceiling like an acrobat; perched on one leg on a stool; or bending, in profile, arched like a cat.
Seydoux appears in the first of the film's three extended chapters and has only a handful of lines. But amongst the Hollywood-heavy ensemble, her presence is arguably the most memorable; her glacial stares and borderline mechanical movements are infused with unexpected humour and pathos.
"It's a small part, but it's very rich, it's true," she says.
"It's funny, and at the same time it's deep, it's moving; there are many contrasts. It was great fun to do."
The paradox
When I ask Seydoux if she recognises herself in Simone, she answers in a jokey tough-guy voice: "Oh, I'm as tough as Simone, yes, I'm really like that," and then bursts out laughing, flashing a radiant gap-toothed smile.
"No, no, not really…" she says, suddenly turning shy.
This switch in temperament recalls the way many of her performances spin on a dime from gutsy determination to intense vulnerability.
"When you act in a film you always have your subjectivity," the actor says.
"What I liked about this character is that she's very tough and dry – or she's totally in it, and suddenly she opens up. Like the scene with Benicio [Del Toro], when we lay down and he says, 'I love you', and I say, 'I don't love you' – at the same time I have tears in my eyes.
"It's always a balance between this distance and very close, like 'first degree'. I like this paradox," Seydoux explains.
"Sometimes when I act I retain things, I hold back, a lot. And then I give everything. It's always very extreme."
Playing the muse
Alongside The French Dispatch, Seydoux starred in three other titles this year at the Cannes Film Festival (though she was unable to attend after testing positive for COVID).
She received particular praise for her performance as a celebrity news anchor in Bruno Dumont's satire France – a piece of casting that perhaps tilts at the Seydoux family's links to major French film studios Pathé and Gaumont.
And she appeared as a muse – again – in Arnaud Desplechin's Philip Roth adaptation Deception, playing an adulterous English lover to a writer named (ahem) Philip.
Both films are due to reach Australian screens in 2022. (The busy actor also graces upcoming movies from auteurs David Cronenberg and Mia Hansen-Løve.)
Directors and casting agents might associate Seydoux with a certain inscrutable, femme fatale-like figure – but she seems amused by the image that is being built around her.
"In France, you have many actors who have a strong nature. It's not like the American cinema [whose actors] tend to perform. It's the opposite in France; they don't really perform, they play with their own nature.
"I think that I'm a mix; I am a nature but also I like to transform. So maybe it's hard for people to put me in a box. I think that's why they fantasise about me a little bit, like I'm a blank page.
"But I've always thought that an actress should be a blank page, that you have to be able to project your own desire onto an actress."
In the past, she's suggested that this ability to transform on-screen allows her to slip naturally into a filmmaker's universe, which is where she says she feels most at home.
Critics, struggling to articulate her allure, have likened her to iconic French screen sirens such as Brigitte Bardot, Juliette Binoche and Catherine Deneuve.
Flattering as the intent may be, she says of these comparisons, "I can't recognise myself".
"Perhaps it's pretentious to say, but I think that maybe I've invented my own way of acting," Seydoux reflects, before collapsing into fits of laughter at herself once again.
The French Dispatch is in cinemas now.
No Time to Die is in cinemas now.