In British director Peter Strickland’s fetish
psychodrama, The Duke of Burgundy – a sort of thinking person’s 50 Shades of
Grey – Knudsen plays
Cynthia, the dominant partner in a sub-dom relationship with her younger
girlfriend, Evelyn (played by the Italian actress Chiara D’Anna). “I don’t
understand this world at all,” says Knudsen, whose only stipulation over taking
the role was that there would be no nudity. “But I am fascinated by it. And the
script is so different from anything I had done.”
That
sounds like Danish understatement. Indeed, fans of the wholesome and
power-suited PM Nyborg might be somewhat shocked by Cynthia’s role-playing antics,
but within the slightly surreal trappings of a Seventies art-porn film lies a
tender, funny and very truthful dissection of the mechanics of power within
most relationships.
One of
the publicity stills for Knudsen’s first Danish production after Borgen,
the sweeping TV history epic 1864, is also suggestive of sexual role-playing, as,
dressed in a corseted 19th-century gown, Knudsen stands on the chest of a prone
Nicolas Bro (The Killing). There is, however,
little overtly kinky in this curious tableau – it is just one of many
expressionistic scenes in this lavish new series from DR, the publicly funded
Danish state broadcasters who brought the world The Killing, Borgen and The Bridge.
Like those
shows, however, BBC4 has snapped up the UK broadcast rights. 1864 takes its title from the year
of Denmark’s catastrophic defeat at the hands of Bismarck’s Germany, when the
Danes lost forever a sizeable chunk of territory. The war’s effect on the
Danish psyche is still felt today, says Knudsen. “We refer to it as the war
that really changed our identity as a nation,” she says, when we meet in the
Copenhagen cinema where 1864 is being unveiled to the local press. “We were
really humbled and it led to us thinking that maybe we should just stay where
we are, in our own backyard – that kind of mentality.”
She portrays
Johanne Luise Heiberg, the most celebrated actress of her day. “She was famous
for playing these furious, crazy women… her Lady Macbeth was legendary,” says
Knudsen. “She played many male roles in her younger years, and was considered
very brave and very modern although in this show she has a very specific
function.” And that function is to be one of the ultra-nationalists urging the
Danish leader, Ditlev Gothard Monrad (played by Nicholas Bro – hence why,
rather fancifully, her Heiberg is standing on Bro’s chest and haranguing him),
to fight Bismarck for Schleswig-Holstein.
After such
attacks you wouldn’t be surprised if Knudsen turned her back on Denmark for a
while and concentrated on more international projects – after all, she speaks
fluent English and French, and Borgen was
as big a hit across the channel as it was in Britain.
Knudsen lived
and worked in Paris for six years during her early twenties, and has recently
made a French film due for release later this year, L’Hermine (which translates as “the stoat”),
playing a juror who catches the eye of a feared and lonely president of a
criminal court (played by Fabrice Luchini).
Once again she
has shown a keen eye for an idiosyncratic auteur: L’Hermine was written and
directed by Christian Vincent, who made 2013’s Haute
Cuisine, a droll foodie thriller starring Catherine Frot as President
Francois Mitterrand’s private chef. Does she speak good French? “I thought so,”
she says. “But it’s been 20 years and I’m pretty rusty.”
It’s not all European art
cinema, however; Knudsen has also been in Morocco and Egypt, filming opposite
Tom Hanks in an upcoming movie of Dave Eggers’ existential novel, A Hologram
for the King, about a Willy Loman-esque American salesman having one last
throw of the dice in Saudi Arabia. Hanks has obviously taken a shining to
Knudsen, because she’s also been filming with him in Italy, in Ron Howard’s Inferno,
the follow-up to The Da Vinci Code and Angels &
Demons, in which Hanks once again plays Dan Brown’s Harvard symbologist, Robert
Langdon. Knudsen plays Dr Elizabeth Sinskey, the fictional head of the World
Health Organisation – a role that is presumably no stretch for a former
fictional prime minister.
“We are
expanding,” she says of modern Denmark, but she might as well be talking about
her own career. “We travel and we explore, but up until now there has been this
code of fake modesty we’re supposed to carry with us. We have the same
under-doggish attitude as you English people… so in a way, we’re a bit like
you. They don’t have that in France, you know.”
Knudsen’s
horizons have always been broad (or abroad), and her English is impeccable,
even by the high standards of Danes in general. The daughter of a photographer
and teacher, she learned the language while her parents did volunteer work in
Africa in the 1970s. “I went to school in Tanzania for two years, from five to
seven,” she says. “I started off in my mother’s school with a lot of African
children – but then I was put into the international school.”
“Sidse Babett’s
years at Lecoq were formative,” says Lars Mikkelsen (The
Killing, House of Cards), who has a similar grounding in
physical theatre and mime (his early ambition was to be a clown), and who is an
old friend. “She did a lot of improvisation, and her sense of realistic
presence is unsurpassed in my view.”
Knudsen returned
to Denmark from France to act in the theatre, finally coming to prominence
domestically at the age of 29 (she is now 47) in the improvised 1997 comedy Let’s Get
Lost, one Danish critic noting her “special ability to capture the modern
woman’s uncertainty and strength.” She has made two acclaimed movies with
director Susanne Bier (including the Oscar-nominated 2006 film After the Wedding),
and too But it was Borgen that
made her a star – albeit a resolutely private one. “I never talk about it,” she
says firmly but politely when I ask about her home life, although she is
reported to have a longterm partner and a 12-year-old son. And Borgen spread
her name internationally – a name that is pronounced Sissay – as in the French
footballer Djibril Cissé and not, as she is apparently called when she comes to
London, Caesar.
“I was happy to
let her go,” says Knudsen of Borgen’s Birgitte Nyborg. “I had spent enough time
with her, but now I’m starting to miss her again... that closeness, that
knowing your character so much. I had very few days on this project [1864], and I loved the character, but I had no way
of showing it. It’s so amazing to have the chance to show your character all
round, 360 degrees; I do hope I get the chance to do it some other time.”
Perhaps with a new series of Borgen? “You never know. We said ‘no, no, no’ – but
people have said that before and things happen.”
k the role later played by
Nicole Kidman in Lars von Trier’s Dogville: the Pilot.
No comments:
Post a Comment