Adèle Exarchopoulos first entered the public imagination when the racy, queer coming-of-age film Blue Is the Warmest Color won the Palme d’Or and made her both star and sex symbol. She spent the next few years adjusting to fame and reckoning with the movie’s controversial legacy while deepening her range in all sorts of projects, mostly in her native France. Her latest film, Passages, sees Exarchopoulous returning to the type of stormy, sexual romance that helped launch her career, but this time, as she tells the French movie star Isabelle Adjani, she’s battle-scarred and battle-ready.

ADÈLE EXARCHOPOULOS: Hello Isabelle. Can you hear me?
ISABELLE ADJANI: Yes, Adèle.
EXARCHOPOULOS: I think they’re using an app to record, as far as I know.
ADJANI: It’s a little like the FBI or the CIA.
EXARCHOPOULOS: Yeah. How are you doing?
ADJANI: Not so bad, and you?
EXARCHOPOULOS: I’m fine. I’m with some friends and our children on vacation.
ADJANI: You have a 5 or 6-year-old, right?
EXARCHOPOULOS: Yeah, I’ve got a 6-year-old boy. How old are your kids?
ADJANI: The youngest is 28, so—
EXARCHOPOULOS: I see, little men.
ADJANI: Are we supposed to wait for someone to log on? I thought there was a moderator.
EXARCHOPOULOS: I called using the app, but I think it’s just recorded that way.
ADJANI: Okay. It’s just between us. By the way, I didn’t prepare anything as if I were a journalist. I am an actress.
EXARCHOPOULOS: Obviously.
ADJANI: I did two covers for Interview. The last one was for Camille Claudel, and the other was a very long time ago. For me, it was a kind of incredible prestige. Because when you’re 20 and you’re in Andy Warhol’s magazine, it’s a very powerful thing to experience. I wanted to know if Interview had a place in your imagination.
EXARCHOPOULOS: To be honest, it almost felt like too much, and even more so when I found out it was you, because that’s rare.
ADJANI: Me? I’m just the one imported into this mix. I wanted to know if Andy Warhol exists as an artist, a visionary, in your imagination. Does he occupy a place in your life?
EXARCHOPOULOS: I think he’s one of those people you have to admire. He conveys a strong sense of freedom. I like the candor.
ADJANI: I only met him briefly. He was very shy, and I was intimidated by his shyness. But I did run into him in New York, and I have a photo that we’re both in. I think he would have liked you a lot, because he liked actresses who went beyond acting, or weren’t exactly actresses. I’m not going to call them creatures, because that might sound a little pejorative and superficial.
EXARCHOPOULOS: No, but it’s—
ADJANI: Creative forces that turn a person into a creature. So when this person walks into a room, the energy of the room changes. Warhol had extraordinary antennae and he would have jibed with you, because you have this unique charisma. I find that very, very rare, but you’ve got it. There’s something powerful and in sync about your presence.
EXARCHOPOULOS: I’m not really aware of what I’m giving off. Like, for example, you read an interview with yourself, and you say, “Oh, people see me like that?” It’s something between fantasy and projection—
ADJANI: I know. It’s like a cat. A cat doesn’t think, “Oh my, I’ve got a feline way of walking, isn’t that great?” But you have that. Is this interview about your whole career? Or does it have to do with the release of Passages in particular?
EXARCHOPOULOS: It’s a bit of both. The occasion is the release of this film I made with Ira [Sachs, the director of Passages]. He was working on a project in the United States and the lockdown meant that he had to rethink things and shoot in France, where we met. He talked to me about these two actors, Ben Whishaw and Franz Rogowski, and wanted to make a kind of love triangle between a gay couple, who out of boredom and curiosity, begin having a relationship with a woman. I’m really extraneous to their relationship and at the same time I also have feelings. I play a young teacher who falls in love with one of them. I have to admit that I never tire of love stories, either in my own life or in films. And there’s something very gentle and nonjudgmental about Ira. It’s rare these days for people not to judge either their characters or the people they meet, and I find that very touching.
ADJANI: Do you prefer to shoot with directors that have an unconventional approach, either in the way they help you develop your character or prepare a scene?
EXARCHOPOULOS: I was very influenced by one of my first film experiences with Abdellatif Kechiche [the director of Blue Is the Warmest Color]. The shoot lasted eight months, and there was some controversy behind it, but what I remember in terms of the set was an immense freedom of improvisation. I was arriving from a classic school with normal codes, and I was lost! Normalcy was reversed, and I told myself, “Well, I’m not going to make it. I’m face to face with real cinema”.
ADJANI: Real cinema! [Laughs]
EXARCHOPOULOS: I’ve managed to adapt to it, but the script already informs me a lot about [a director] and how they want to tell their story. I like people who aren’t trying to win you over, who defend their character and the honor of their story above all else. I now adapt very quickly when I’m on a set. After working with Abdellatif, I felt a bit lost, but at the same time, I was immediately given opportunities that I’d never been given before.
ADJANI: What strikes me in what you’re saying is that you think of yourself as very malleable and adaptable; you’re a kind of emotional contortionist. I often wonder, when a person is an actress, if they’re capable of overcoming everything that’s inflicted on them. For example, you made that film with Abdellatif Kechiche, which was, as you say, very controversial, and there was also an acknowledgment of pronounced trauma for the two actresses in question [Léa Seydoux and Exarchopoulos], and I wonder how you recovered from that? I remember—if you’ll allow me to offer a comparison from my own career and some situations with [the director] Andrzej Żuławski—there was something of great violence that I agreed to take on. But I’ve realized over the years that it’s something I could never accept again, and it’s part of everything that my subconscious has been swallowing and incubating. I wonder if acting has been a bit unhealthy during certain periods of my life, no?
EXARCHOPOULOS: Right.
ADJANI: I consider myself a survivor for a lot of reasons. So, I was wondering if you see yourself as a survivor too, as someone who brings her life into her work.
EXARCHOPOULOS: Of course. With Abdel, at the end of Blue Is the Warmest Color, he could clap his hands and I would cry. I don’t know how to explain it. It was completely linked to my emotional makeup. And yet there was no fear or terror. For six straight months, we were sharply in the middle of things, and well, there was something to do with exhaustion and the unconscious. I think you’ve had to go through that too, with the roles you’ve had.
ADJANI: Of course.
EXARCHOPOULOS: It’s very hard for me, when someone tells me I have to cry. I’m a very empathetic person, as are my parents. But I need to really understand the character, and sometimes that heartbreak really affects me. Sometimes characters are like friends for whom I’d have a lot of empathy. It’s shitty actually.
ADJANI: What’s beautiful is to make a place within yourself for a character, without that character turning into a negative entity, but sometimes your life gets blown apart like that. Great actresses have been devoured from the inside. It’s a kind of self-cannibalism. And that’s what I find so beautiful about you, is that you have a fervor, a spontaneity, a life force. I read in an interview that you live in the same building as one of your best friends you made through the Canal+ series. I’ve always been a loner, probably as a result of my own doing, and I really envy that. This ability to live with people, I’ve never experienced that.
EXARCHOPOULOS: Really?
ADJANI: No, not at all. I’m always on my own. But friendship is very important.
EXARCHOPOULOS: In the end, I think the difference is that I’m an actress, and you, beyond being an actress, are an icon. And whether you like it or not, because it doesn’t come from you, and it’s not a choice, it must have distorted your relationships. There’s something that goes beyond you, something you represent and embody. I remember when I watched La Reine Margot, I paused the film and said to myself, “I’ve never seen anyone like that in my life”. And I believe that, whether you like it or not, there’s a connection that it has with the other humans you come into contact with. But I have to admit that I’m lucky, friendship is a big part of my life.
ADJANI: Yes, it’s magnificent.
EXARCHOPOULOS: It works because we tell one another the truth a lot. My friends can tell me about my work or my life choices, and they know that as long as there’s good will, they can tell me, “You’re making a very bad choice”, or, “I don’t recognize you”, or, “You should be careful”.
ADJANI: That’s great. But this is a generation of mutualism, and that’s something I haven’t experienced. My generation was one of rivalry. I wish I were 30 today. I’d feel more like myself.
EXARCHOPOULOS: That, I understand. I also think there’s no specific age for meeting great friends. But I’m a little old-fashioned in the way I see things. Today, the way people consume things in general, whether it’s love, sex, or work, is quite disconcerting when you’re a little sensitive. And that, I know, is very much part of our online generation.
ADJANI: I have a great fear of social networks. My youngest son, he’s completely unsubscribed from social networks. He no longer has Instagram and all that. It’s a relief. As a mother, I think to myself, “Wow, he’s escaping this tyranny of staging his personality”. By the way, I saw in an interview that you said you didn’t want to take your son to shoots. You didn’t want him to know what you were doing.
EXARCHOPOULOS: I didn’t lie to him, but I did tell him a story for a long time. That is, when they were taking photos of me in the street, he’d say to me, “But who are these people?” I’d say, “They’re my friends”. I didn’t know them at all. I see the dangers of this environment, I see the loneliness it can create for certain artists, and I see the disconnection above all. My son isn’t an aspiring actor, but my relationship with acting used to make me very anxious. I used to say to him, “Mom tells stories to grown-ups, that’s all, but it’s never going to be our story”. And then, at some point, he understood. To be perfectly honest with you, I had to justify my absences. One day, I said to myself, “Wait, he has to know that I love what I do, that it’s important”. So I started explaining to him that I play characters and that sometimes people get attached to these characters, but I don’t take him to set. The first set I took him to while I was shooting was Mélanie Laurent’s film [Wingwomen], because I thought he’d laugh at the explosions. Mélanie, who’s very sweet, said to him, “Do you want to come with me and watch Mommy on the screen?” He said, “No, I’m going to the park”. I was so happy.
ADJANI: I had the same fears with my sons. I was afraid of an imbalance. And then there’s the incomprehension of a child seeing his mother put herself into emotional states that don’t correspond with what she wants in real life. It’s a real dilemma, being absent and so dedicated to it. My sons reproached me for it. It was resolved, but there was always, “You weren’t there”. And that’s horrible.
EXARCHOPOULOS: Yeah, it’s tough.
ADJANI: They know they’re being a bit unfair when they do that, but we’ve made a choice and we’re not going to pretend we haven’t. And that’s that.
EXARCHOPOULOS: Film kind of happened to me, I didn’t really expect it. I didn’t know anything about that world, but somehow it fell into my lap. Lately, I’ve been working a lot with people I love, and I’ve had one chance after another, but at the same time, I’m thinking to myself, “There are people who pray all their lives to have what I have today, and at the same time, I feel a visceral lack of the mundane”. I need those moments of banality when I pick up my son from school, or when I’m at the bank.
ADJANI: I made it so I wouldn’t have to work all the time, and I was criticized for it. They said, “Why don’t you make more films?” It was because my parents were ill and needed me, and my children needed me. I even forgot that I was an actress at certain times. But that, too, isn’t forgiven. Basically, there’s no way out.
EXARCHOPOULOS: Yeah, but at the same time, I like mystery in someone, especially in an actress. We’ve all had an overdose of someone we see too much of. I love not having all the answers from someone, especially someone who has many faces, many emotions.
ADJANI: Of course.
EXARCHOPOULOS: It’s a job where you can quickly accumulate a lot of regrets, and I’m not made for regrets.
ADJANI: It’s not a job that facilitates a happy frame of mind, quite the opposite. That’s why it’s important to be surrounded by friends who can be angels, but also conscientious objectors. Otherwise, you can lose yourself.
EXARCHOPOULOS: Of course.
ADJANI: I love Wingwomen. Mélanie Laurent is one of my favorite directors ever, and I was so sad not to have any real scenes with you.
EXARCHOPOULOS: I was disappointed not to be shooting with you, too.
ADJANI: Ira said you’re a mixture of [Brigitte] Bardot and Jeanne Moreau, but also, you remind me of my cats. I have one cat that’s an Egyptian Mau, it’s a sublime breed of cat, and the other one I got off the street. She’s a kind of savage, on the lookout for everything, but with an incredible vivacity. But I loved what you were doing in Wingwomen, you were a wildly unleashed sniper.
EXARCHOPOULOS: I had fun, even though someone broke my nose. It’s still not straight. I had the operation the next day, but in real life if you look very closely from the front, it still goes a little to the right.
ADJANI: I’m sure it’ll heal. But I think you’re nutty in this film. Anyway, I feel the same about all of your films. Thank god I haven’t seen them all. I’m glad there’s still things to see. You like all of your films, don’t you?
EXARCHOPOULOS: I love them, plus I’d really like to work together. I love All Your Faces—I laughed at that—and I love Zero Fucks Given. The last two.
ADJANI: There you go. Jeanne Herry is an extraordinary director. I’ll get to see Zero Fucks Given.
EXARCHOPOULOS: Thank you for doing this. Let’s have dinner with Mélanie soon.
ADJANI: I’d love to. Many kisses.
EXARCHOPOULOS: I’m sending you a big hug.
ADJANI: Me too. Bye-bye Adèle.

Source : interviewmagazine.com

When we first meet the character of Agathe, a schoolteacher living in Paris in the drama Passages, she’s in a club, tired of pretending to be interested in the needy guy who’s nominally her boyfriend. Impulsively, she ditches him, swirling around a stranger on the dance floor, their bodies inching closer. Agathe doesn’t care that he’s married. She’ll go to bed with him later that evening, and screw him again the next time their paths cross. The sexual attraction is too hot — the moth will find its flame.

This is merely the opening salvo of the combustible new romantic triangle from director and co-writer Ira Sachs. Adèle Exarchopoulos plays Agathe, who has no idea of the passion and misery she’s brought into her life by embracing Tomas (Franz Rogowski), an acclaimed but temperamental filmmaker.

Exarchopoulos delivers a performance that’s simultaneously controlled and free, conjuring comparisons to the similarly unbridled and delicate turn she gave 10 years ago in Blue Is the Warmest Color, the heartbreaking, sexually frank film that made her name, earned endless accolades and attracted plenty of controversy — including a public spat between director Abdellatif Kechiche and co-stars Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux, who both claimed he put them through hell during filming. (In 2018, an unnamed actress accused Kechiche of sexual assault, although French authorities decided not to pursue an investigation, saying there was insufficient evidence. Kechiche denied any wrongdoing).

On a Zoom call in mid-July, Exarchopoulos no longer registers as the teenage ingénue who, in 2013, journeyed to the Cannes Film Festival for Blue, going home with the Palme d’Or (becoming the youngest person to win that award ever). Turning 30 in late November, the French-born actress occasionally has trouble with her English, but her soft-spoken thoughtfulness is always apparent.

And although American audiences may not have noticed, Exarchopoulos has lately come into her own, delivering a string of superb turns in a series of diverse international films: gripping in the character study Zero F— Given, frayed and raw in the spooky drama The Five Devils, delightful in Quentin Dupieux’s endearingly oddball comedy Smoking Causes Coughing and calmly compelling as a police officer facing off against mutants in this summer’s French hit The Animal Kingdom.

Each one is its own beguiling proposition, but Passages feels like a fitting summation of how far she’s come since Blue while staying true to the searching spirit of her breakout moment. “This past two years, I’ve had a chance [to be] in really good movies”, Exarchopoulos says. “Good stories, good directors, good characters. When you have this luxury, it’s wow”.

She insists there was no master plan behind the dizzying range of these recent films. “I think it’s really the chance to explore completely different playgrounds and also put [myself] into situations where I have different work to do before the shoot”, she explains. “It’s the pleasure of playing”.

Exarchopoulos talked to The Times about the challenges of her Passages character, the importance of using intimacy coordinators and why she’s stayed in touch with Blue director Kechiche. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You have the trickiest role in Passages. Agathe gets swept up in Tomas’ charm, only to realize that she’s in a relationship with a manipulative narcissist. It’s easy for your character to come across as weak or foolish. How did you navigate that?
My challenge was that I didn’t want her to be a victim and for people to see her like, oh, she chose to suffer. I wanted to make someone with dignity and empathy. Even if she doesn’t understand all the reasons why she’s falling for this guy, you can relate to her. The first time I read the script, that was one of my concerns.

Was there any particular moment where it was especially hard for you to achieve that?
The scene where I hear [Tomas] in the house [having sex in the next room], I was like, “No, Ira, how she can stand that? Why is she leaving in the morning and not now?” And he told me, “Adèle, sometimes we know that the best thing would be to do this — but [we’re incapable] of doing it. We’re waiting for someone to save us, but it’s never coming”.
We show the character at the end being brave and having dignity, but it’s also cool to play someone who doesn’t have dignity. When you have the vulnerability to fall in love, it’s hard to keep it sometimes.

Sachs hadn’t seen Blue Is the Warmest Color before casting you. Did that surprise you?
It was funny that he didn’t see it. When he told me, of course I never dared to say, “You should watch Blue!” I think Ira wanted something really natural, and he chose well: Ben [Whishaw, her Passages co-star] has this natural mystery, Franz has this kind of femininity and masculinity and I was the Parisian girl, but in a natural way — not just something chic. He’s able to really observe, and he’s someone with no judgment.

Was it liberating for you that he hadn’t seen Blue? It’s not like you’re resting on that film’s laurels.
With time, I realize [Blue‘s legacy] is more a pressure for directors than it is for me. It’s a part of my life — it brings me to this world of cinema — but I can feel in some directors’ eyes, they have this weird feeling that I don’t really understand. They’re saying to themselves, I’m going to do better than Blue. It’s a challenge for them.

It’s interesting they feel competitive with a film you made so long ago. Have you sensed that some directors just saw you as your Blue character?
If I felt they were thinking this, I haven’t worked with them. I love people who don’t get seduced by actors, but are seduced by roles.

After Blue‘s acclaim at Cannes, I have to imagine you were courted by Hollywood, but you didn’t start popping up in American films. What happened?
I remember my American agent brought me to L.A. — all these meetings. It was funny because all the producers had seen [Blue] and they were like, “We will work together one day!” After the first meeting, I called my dad: “I’m going to work with Paramount!” And one hour after, I [had] a meeting with Sony and they told me the same, so I understood. I called back my father: “They’re just saying this. It’s just a way of working in America”. So I was like, “OK, don’t think about it, Adèle — it’s not the time”.

One of the sharpest criticisms against Blue came from the LGBTQ+ community, arguing that you and Léa Seydoux, two straight women, didn’t have the right to tell that story. How did that charge feel?
I was young — I was 18 when I went to Cannes. [Lesbians] were saying, “We don’t have sex like this”. But this is a movie about first desire — a first love story. I think, in my small experience, there [is] one language that is unique — how you have sex with someone. So, for me, it was really stupid. I didn’t really see the [argument].

Nowadays, there are intimacy coordinators for sex scenes. I wondered if that might have made shooting those sequences in Blue a little less fraught if the film had been made today.
I don’t think it was the sex that was hard. It was not discovering that I would be naked. The process of Blue was hard because it was like a documentary. It was exhausting: the time, the takes, the fact that we didn’t even know how the story will end, by the fact that a lot of different [people] were getting fired or [left] the movie. That was hard.
But, of course, I think sexual intimacy coordinators are important because it’s hard to [discuss] in front of 10 people, “Are you agreeing to [take off] your bra?” I think you are even more free when there are boundaries and limits — otherwise, even for the male, he doesn’t know what he should do, should not do. Everyone gets scared. You can find more creativity when you know the territory than when you explore with clumsiness and with no coordinator. It’s a good thing, to be honest — I don’t think it will block inspiration.

Actors often have to fight against being typecast. Did Blue‘s success mean you got offered nothing but roles where you’d have to do intimate sex scenes and play characters like that?
The first year after, yeah. I said no to everything. But what is funny is no one [will] put Léa and I in another movie without playing lovers. She could play my sister or she could play my friend. One day I spoke to her: “I want to work with you again”. And she was like, “Yeah, but I think no one will dare to do it”.
It was like when I made my first comedy. People were like, “Oh, you waited all this time, you didn’t want [to do] comedy before?” It tells a lot about the industry. Sometimes they put us in a box.

You had to prove you were more than that character — that you had other tones and roles you could play.
To be honest, I didn’t know what I could do after. I was like, now that I’m without Kechiche, will I succeed on a normal shoot? My first shoot after, I was lost — I remember texting him, “Whoa, I’m dead. Without you, it’s hard”.

Do you and Kechiche still talk?
Yeah, I saw him, I don’t know, six [months] or one year ago. We went to the same cafe that we were at a long time ago, and we spoke a lot about stuff that we never dared to before.

Like what?
I don’t know, feelings or regrets. It’s hard to explain such an intimate link with someone, but I will always have a lot of tenderness for people that were part of Blue Is the Warmest Color. I have no regrets about the movie.

People may be surprised to read that. After all the harsh words exchanged after Cannes, I could imagine you and Kechiche never speaking again.
Of course, there was all this context of the movie and all the troubles after. But when you live something really deep and powerful with someone — even if you don’t see them each month or each year — you will always have this feeling of familiarity. He will never be a stranger for me.

In Blue and Passages, you play women who are open, who are willing to be vulnerable, but there’s also a toughness to them. Would you describe yourself the same way?
I’m really bad about analyzing myself. But with people that I love, I can be tough for them — I can fight for them. But for myself, I feel more vulnerable.

Has that gotten easier over time? Have you learned to fight for yourself?
When I became a mother, I was like, how can I be scared of anything? [Motherhood] gives you the sense of life and priority.

Source : latimes.com