Charlotte Gainsbourg on Melancholia, Kirsten Dunst and Lars von Trier: 'He's Always Right'

This week finally brings Melancholia to limited theatrical release in the US, where prospective viewers have spent the five months since its Cannes premiere attempting to parse the great, fraught, near-instant mythology of director Lars von Trier’s latest masterpiece. Finally the work can speak for itself — or mostly speak for itself, anyway, with help from co-star and modern-era von Trier muse Charlotte Gainsbourg. Melancholia features Gainsbourg and Kirsten Dunst and Claire and Justine, sisters brought together at the former’s house for the latter’s wedding only to see its opulence and joy flushed away by Justine’s debilitating depression. Meanwhile, Claire’s short-tempered husband John (Kiefer Sutherland) studies the approach of a new planet named Melancholia, which may or may not be on a crash course with Earth. Justine’s convalescence dovetails with Claire’s apocalyptic panic, setting off the sisters’ epic exploration of the outer limits of love, family, faith and hope. Dunst’s performance earned her Best Actress honors at Cannes — the same prize Gainsbourg received in 2009 for her wrenching turn in von Trier’s Antichrist. Movieline recently spoke with Gainsbourg about that winning tradition, the maddening filmmaker and why America’s a nice place to visit yet she wouldn’t want to live here. What was your reaction when you saw Melancholia for the first time? It was the same as with Antichrist: I wasn’t sure… It was weird. And that’s what I told Lars: “I thought it was really weird.” I don’t get to see the film the way it is then. Seeing it in Cannes really helps because there’s a real audience. There’s something quite magical in Cannes when it happens — the nervousness you can have being in the middle of that kind of screening. But I can’t say I have the right perspective when I watch the film. I’m happy whenever I’m not on screen. I’m happy looking at the scenes where Justine is and I’m not. Then I was able to really watch. Otherwise I’m too much a part of it. Do you have siblings? Yeah. Did being a sister inform this role? Sure, but more than that… Having siblings, yes. Being a mother, too — even with Justine. There’s a relationship of protectiveness. Lars really pointed that out. He asked me to watch Persona, which had that relationship — nurse to patient. So that was interesting. And we did a few hours of rehearsals with Kirsten playing around that — taking care of her, and her being a patient, and I being a nurse. That’s the relationship we worked on. And then of course it’s completely the other way around. Well, not the other way around; I get to the place where she was in the beginning at the end of the film. Once she doesn’t need me anymore, that’s when I fall apart. That’s interesting. I mean, what kind of relationship did you want to cultivate with Kirsten herself before the film? How close do you want to be to her? It’s all instinctive. We don’t need to pretend that we’re sisters in real life. We had a glass together, and we joined up after the shoot, and we had dinner, and we were quite close. But we didn’t need to work on that. It’s written in the scenes, and it’s obvious. There was something very obvious in the way I could touch her. She’s a very loving person. There’s a sensuality with her figure that made me want to hold her in my arms. There’s something very natural in the scene where I try to give her a bath, and she let’s go completely. It was obvious that you wanted to protect her. I didn’t have to go far pretending. It was there. Is that type of sensuality something you’ve instinctively drawn from in general — with other actors and other situations? I think it’s very important. Also, how comfortable you are using your hands — touching someone. I kind of like that. Sometimes people make you feel very uncomfortable, and you’re very shy touching them. I remember shooting with a little girl, and it was so tough to get together. I was playing her mother, and we were so shy, one to another. We couldn’t touch each other. In the scene she had to brush my hair, and it was so hard. The physical aspect of touching someone’s skin is really hard. Is it? Yeah. To get the confidence, yeah. But you strike me as such a courageous, confident actor. I’m not confident. But when I know what I have to do, and if it’s a question of pushing yourself? I love pushing myself. But I need a little push. And Lars is pretty good at that. Yeah! He makes me feel very uncomfortable, but I think that’s what I like: to be very unbalanced, to be put in an awkward situation, very unsure of myself, to be in need of his acceptance or his indications and his validation, really. Really being in his hands. That’s personal to you, though — Charlotte Gainsbourg. You need that for yourself. I need that from him. I’m sure he’s aware of it, but it’s not something we’ve discussed. I trust him so much, that I need to let go with him. I don’t think I’d do this with someone else. Have you ever felt that element of your working relationship compromising the characters? Where he wants to push to one point, but you have another in mind? No, not at all, because he’s always spot-on. He has a judgment that I trust completely. He has a way of listening that is so accurate and so precise. He’s always right. That’s a lot of trust. It is, but it’s great to be able to work in those conditions. You need to trust a director. If not, you can’t let go. You can’t explore a scene. You’re going to be bad at one point; you need to trust that the director is not going to use it. You can explore a scene and go too far. Sometimes, when I’m not comfortable, it’s being too aware of yourself and fearing ridicule too much. You need to get there in order to go back to something maybe more accurate. You have to push yourself a little too far, I think.