“The way we shot this film was just insane. The guy is just nuts,” said Seydoux, referring to controversial director Abdellatif Kechiche.
Léa Seydoux made history as the first actress, alongside “Blue Is the Warmest Colour” co-star Adèle Exarchopoulos, to win the Palme d’Or instead of just a director. why? Because Seydoux’s performance of her braved the reign of director Abdellatif Kechiche on set.
The French star, who returns to Cannes this year with David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future” and Mia Hansen-Love’s “One Fine Morning,” said that the famed seven-minute “Blue” lesbian sex scene required over 100 takes for a single shot and took 10 days to film.
When asked now, almost a decade later, if an intimacy coordinator would have changed the dynamics on set, Seydoux told The Hollywood Reporter, “No, not really,” offering up a shocking laugh.
She added, “It was beyond. It was the whole film, not only the sex scenes. The way we shot this film was just insane. The guy is just nuts.”
Upon the Cannes premiere of the film in 2013, the French production crew issued a union statement calling out the “anarchic” work environment under Kechiche. The director in turn threatened legal action against Seydoux for sharing “slanderous” information about the set. The leads have been adamant about what a discomfiting experience shooting the movie was, and Kechiche continued to drum up controversy with his sexually charged “Mektoub” films in the years after.
However, Seydoux maintains that her favorite Cannes experience was indeed “Blue Is the Warmest Colour,” due to winning the coveted Palme d’Or and being recognized as a co-author of the film along with Kechiche.
“It took a year of my life and I gave everything for that film,” Seydoux said. “It really changed my life on many different levels.”
And she carries that with her when approaching new projects, like “Crimes of the Future” and collaborating with Oscar winner Cronenberg.
“When I’m about to start working with a director, I never know what I’m going to do,” Seydoux added. “And I’m scared. I’m fucking scared. But I’m up for it.”
“Crimes of the Future” has already made waves with a truly eye-popping trailer showing a man’s eyelids being sewn shut. Kristen Stewart and Viggo Mortensen also star in Cronenberg’s body horror psychological thriller about performance artists who believe the key to human evolution is transforming — and repurposing — internal organs. Cronenberg already warned the Cannes attendees will most likely walk out within the first five minutes due to the graphic, bloody surgery scenes because, as the trailer promises, “surgery is the new sex.” But no intimacy coordinators needed there.
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