We celebrate the multiplicity of French star Emmanuelle Seigner in our five favourite of her film roles
The luminous Emmanuelle Seigner graces the new issue of AnOther Magazine in a beautiful story styled by Karen Langley and shot by Charlie Engman. In a candid accompanying interview, the star of Frantic, Bitter Moon and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly reflects on her extraordinary career, from her first role in Jean-Luc Godard’s Détective, through to her creative collaborations with husband Roman Polanski. Here we celebrate five of her finest film moments.
Frantic
This stylish Paris-set thriller, helmed by Polanski, was Seigner’s first major outing as an actress. Playing an underworld waif enlisted by Harrison Ford to help find his missing wife, Seigner is an enchanting mix of vulnerable and tough, with a killer wardrobe to boot. In one of the film’s most iconic scenes, the pair dances to Grace Jones’s I’ve Seen That Face Before in a seedy nightclub, Seigner chic and beguiling in a red body-con dress.
Bitter Moon
Polanski’s second film with his wife, Bitter Moon, pitted Seigner against actor Peter Coyote in this riotous tale of amour fou. They are Mimi and Oscar, a bizarre couple taking a cruise holiday to Istanbul. He’s older, raddled, mysteriously confined to a wheelchair; she’s vital and alluring. They draw a respectable but frustrated British couple (played by Kristin Scott Thomas and Hugh Grant) into their dark orbit, with tragicomic results. Polanski's narrative is as unpredictable as the choppy seas, and Seigner perfectly matches each change of tack.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Seigner took the role of Céline, the long-suffering wife of paralyzed Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, in Julian Schnabel’s achingly beautiful 2007 film. In one especially touching scene – one of many – Céline translates for her husband as he takes a call from his mistress and Seigner is the picture of heartbreaking forbearance. She even sings on the soundtrack: her song (with the band Ultra Orange) Don't Kiss Me Goodbye accompanies a flashback from happier times.
In the House
Playing against type in François Ozon’s acclaimed In The House, Seigner is Esther, a suburban housewife in a spiralling narrative concocted by a teenage boy for the delectation of his teacher. Seigner brims with reigned-in desire as she drifts around the titular house, before things start to take a series of unsettling turns.
Venus in Fur
Polanski’s most recent film with his wife, based on the play by David Ives, won a standing ovation when it was premiered in Cannes in 2013. In this meta-fictional mille-feuille, Seigner plays an actress named Vanda vying to get the role of Vanda in a stage adaptation of Sacher-Masoch’s novel Venus in Furs. Seigner gives a career-best performance – by turns voluble wannabe, poised artiste, and avenging fury – yet never quite gives up the mystery of who, or what, she really is.
