SAYS HER MEMORY OF 'LOVE CRIME' IS TAINTED BY THE PAIN OF CORNEAU'S DEATH
The Guardian's Xan Brooks interviewed Ludivine Sagnier about her career and her work on Alain Corneau's Love Crime. Here is the passage in which they discuss that film, and Brian De Palma's remake of it:In her latest film, Love Crime, Sagnier plays a corporate worm that turns. For the first half she's the supplicant, sweating through an agonising, quasi-sexual relationship with her implacable boss (Kristin Scott Thomas). For the second she's the agent of change, apparently martyring herself in the service of committing the perfect crime. "Human beings are so complicated," grumbles the detective called in to clean up the mess.
Sagnier explains that she actually shot Love Crime three years ago and that her memory of it is coloured by the subsequent death of its director, Alain Corneau. "I mean, I do like the movie," she stresses. "But for me it's tainted by frustration and so much pain, because he died on the very week it got released in France." Corneau, she now realises, was suffering from lung cancer while the picture was being shot. In hindsight this explains a lot.
"In France we have a saying: 'He never put his arms down.' Forward, forward, never stop, which was very difficult for me and Kristin. He was like a little boy playing with iron soldiers and we were the soldiers. He wouldn't talk, wouldn't listen, and we had to do exactly what he wanted. It was like he only had so much energy to spare. He must have known he did not have much time left."
The film, she adds, has just been remade by Brian De Palma, as Passion. She's eager to see it; she wants to know if the sexual undercurrent has been brought to the fore.
What if the new version is better than hers? Wouldn't that make her mad? She gives an airy shrug. "I would not be surprised."