An Interview With Ludivine Sagnier

Few words in French or English encapsulate actress Ludivine Sagnier's appeal quite so well as, "Ooo la la." If that sounds just a wee bit sexist ... well, sue me. Come up with something better yourself.

Sagnier can be seen on posters for Francois Ozon's smart and overtly sexy new mystery, Swimming Pool. She's luxuriating alongside a Hockney-esque pool, resplendent in her itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny bikini.

If this image doesn't sell tickets, nothing will.

Like her still-hot-at-58 co-star, Charlotte Rampling, Sagnier is one of the director's favorite leading ladies. She's enjoyed prominent roles in Water Drops on Burning Rocks and 8 Women, while Rampling did an Oscar-worthy turn in Ozon's Under the Sand.

Swimming Pool is Ozon's first foray into English-language filmmaking, although there's enough French dialogue to keep Franco-philes from storming the box office to demand their money back.

Rampling plays a tweedy Brit mystery writer -- not unlike Patricia Highsmith, P.D. James or Ruth Rendell -- who tries to find inspiration in and around her publisher's country home in the south of France. While there, she finds the splendid isolation shattered by his wildly hedonistic daughter, who seemingly has yet to meet an inhibition she couldn't surmount.

Things turn interesting when the uptight novelist discovers the young woman's journal and begins to take a maternal-bordering-on-Sapphic interest in her former nemesis. The ensuing intrigue can best be described as a mystery within a mystery. If one weren't trying to avoid clichés, it probably would appropriate to call Swimming Pool Hitchcockian.

In Ozon's vastly different 8 Women, Sagnier played the tomboy daughter of an industrialist who's stabbed to death by one of eight women left snowbound in a French country estate. After that assignment, the director said he "wanted to spoil her with a sexy new role … a sort of Marilyn Monroe for the south of France."

Sagnier claims to have worked hard to get herself in top physical shape for her portrayal of Julie, who she characterizes as a "cagolle" (defined in the press kit as the pejorative for a trashy girl from working-class districts in the south of France). In person, several months after Ozon wrapped the movie, she still looks … well, "Ooo la la."

On Wednesday, July 3, Sagnier will turn 24. A native of La Salle-Saint-Cloud, she's been acting since she was 10, and next will be seen as the title character in Claude Miller's La Petite Lili, and as Tinkerbelle in P.J. Hogan's Peter Pan.

This interview took place last month at the Mondrian Hotel.

MOVIE CITY NEWS: Based solely on the poster for Swimming Pool, it's difficult to tell if the movie is a remake of Lolita or a documentary on David Hockney's Beverly Hills period. Did the ad campaign look the same in France?

LUDIVINE SAGNIER: The image of my body was much smaller, and there was a picture of Charlotte watching me from above. But, my photo was on all the buses in Paris.

I guess they wanted to use it to make money on the movie.

MCN: I'm shocked … shocked.

LS: (Shrugs) I only want people to see Francois' movie.

MCN: I was eavesdropping on your interview with the television reporters. I imagine you spend most of your time answering questions about being nude throughout so much of Swimming Pool.

LS: They also want to know what it's like to play a sex bomb.

MCN: Americans, myself included, tend to look upon the French as being totally liberated when it comes to on-screen sexuality and nudity. Isn't going topless at the beach second nature to you?

LS: Actually, I wouldn't go naked on a beach, unless it was private and I was with my boyfriend. When I'm in front of a camera, I can hide behind my character, and that makes it easier.

MCN: So, it's all a myth?

LS: The French have their double standards. For example, I don't think anyone in France could make a movie like Larry Clark's Bully, because he combines sex and violence and humor.

And, recently, there was this photo of Christina Aguilera on the magazine covers, where she was naked from the back, wearing only a G-string. The French were shocked ... and called her bad names. It was a scandal for two weeks.

MCN: If Swimming Pool becomes a hit, you're likely to be labeled a "sex kitten," like Brigitte Bardot, Ursula Andress and Jane Fonda.

LS: I don't do nudity for fame or to become popular, because that only lasts so long. Look at Brigitte Bardot ... she's become a fascist and hates everyone.

MCN: I can't imagine that you haven't been approached by Hollywood to play the ditzy French girlfriend of Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt LeBlanc or some other American hottie.

LS: They try, yes. I've already turned down roles like that, and for lots of money.

MCN: From who mostly?

LS: My American agent.

MCN: The money doesn't sway you?

LS: I don't need much money to live the way I want to in Paris. I'm only 23, and don't have great material needs, but I do have big artistic ambitions … it's important for me to work with people like Ozon. He's a very remarkable director.

I don't act to be popular, or see my face on the cover of magazines every time I go out to get coffee. I don't want to think about me all the time, and what I look like.

MCN: When Peter Pan is released, you'll probably have to do a lot more publicity than you're required to do on this picture. Do you think you'll be able to control your image?

LS: I don't know, but I do want to control it, because I want to stay happy with myself. It's impossible to explain to people who you are in a five-minute interview on TV.

MCN: One other possible misconception we have of European audiences is that they're still willing to support so-called art films.

LS: It may be true that more people of all generations go to movies in Paris, and they are more intellectual. But, the French cinema is in crisis.

They're trying to make movies that are just like those from Hollywood, and they're aiming for mainstream audiences. That means they're trying to make movies for teenagers, and that scares me because we're losing our originality.

MCN: There is some appeal to making movies here, though?

LS: Hollywood is a wonderful machine for making big movies. In France, we make smaller and more personal films, but if things keep changing this will disappear.

The industry in Italy is practically gone. Cinecitta now is used mostly by filmmakers from others places, like Martin Scorsese.

MCN: The early word on Peter Pan is that it's going to be darker, more adult than earlier versions of the story.

LS: I think children and adults will be able to enjoy the movie. It makes Peter Pan into a more complex character than we've seen before, and the relationship between Hook and Wendy is very complex.

For instance, the same actor who plays Hook also plays Mr. Darling ... so there's this father-daughter layer, which kids may not see, but will interest adults. I just hope they'll come in with open minds.