by Helen Barlow
Stacy Martin, 34, is an unusual French actor, in that she is bilingual in French and English. The daughter of an English mother and a French father, she grew up in Paris and Tokyo and has lived in London for the past 16 years.
From an early age, she was brave in her choices, first appearing in Lars von Trier’s 2013 nudity-laden Nymphomaniac Volume I and Volume II. We spoke to her then and she was surprisingly self-assured, as she was last year in Cannes, when we discuss Martin Provost’s French film Bonnard: Pierre & Marthe, which stars Vincent Macaigne and Cecile de France as the titular characters.
In a film which is divided into four parts (the early days, 1914, 1918 and 1942), Martin plays the painter Pierre Bonnard’s young student model, Renee Monchaty, who invigorates his sex life with his partner and muse, Marthe de Meligny, by engaging in a ménage à trois. It ultimately proves unsatisfying for Renee, who convinces Pierre to leave Marthe and move with her to Rome. Left alone to her own devices, Marthe realises her own potential as an artist and when Bonnard returns to her, they marry.
While we discuss the film in our interview, the first question is about her blonde hair. It turns out she had dyed her locks for Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, which earlier this month won Corbet the best director prize in Venice. An ensemble piece which stars Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce and Joe Alwyn, the film marks Martin’s third film with the director after 2015’s The Childhood of a Leader and 2018’s Vox Lux where she appeared alongside Natalie Portman and Jude Law. Like The Brutalist, Corbet’s previous films premiered in Venice where Martin also was a member of the 2019 jury.
Tell us about The Brutalist.
“It’s about a Jewish Hungarian architect, played by Adrien Brody, who immigrates to America and is taken under the wing by this extremely wealthy American philanthropist, played by Guy Pearce. It’s about their relationship and the complications between the philanthropists and who they give money to and it’s also about immigration and identity. It’s right up Brady’s street. He’s a really fantastic, special director. I play one of Guy Pearce’s children.”
We interviewed Brady when he was a young actor, and he was so smart.
“He was already a director in the way he talks, even in interviews when he was a kid. For me, knowing him now, why didn’t anyone see this coming? It’s wonderful to see him finally do the things that he wanted to do.”
So how was it to work with Guy?
“Guy’s wonderful. I knew a lot of his work. He’s in so many films that I’ve loved. He really blends in with the character. I met him and as the days went by, I slowly unravelled how much I admire his work. But it’s fascinating to see him take on a role like he did, because in real life he’s extremely charismatic. It’s a hard role because it’s quite dark and I hadn’t really seen him do something like that for a while. At the same time, he has a very strange relationship with his two twin children. Joe Alwyn plays the other twin. It’s an ambitious film and having actors like Guy, who you can trust, was great.”
What attracted you to the Renee role in Bonnard: Pierre & Marthe? She’s not very nice…
“I wouldn’t say she’s not very nice. For me, Renee arrives at a very specific point in their life. I think they’re all in very different stages of loving each other and what they want out of life. Pierre and Marthe’s relationship is unique and visceral, but it’s also about how sometimes things fade. And Renee arrives at that point. She’s someone who is a lot younger and she has all these wonderful dreams, where everything’s possible. She’s studying to be an artist and she’s now with one of the artists who has completely changed her life. So, she has a sense of almost euphoria to what’s available to her. And slowly she sort of crumbles. She’s grown up in a society with pressures that she didn’t realise were on her, to have a child, get married and to be a good wife in a monogamous relationship. I think all of those things caught up with her, and ultimately were denied. I like that contradiction, because she’s so free at the beginning and you think that to enter this situation, you have to have some sort of openness and curiosity. She eventually realises that maybe it’s not enough.”
There’s a ménage à trois scene.
“It’s very, very brief.”
Still, you also appear in the nude. You seem fearless in that regard, ever since Nymphomaniac.
“I’ve actually said no a lot of times [to nudity]. You have to or you get typecast. Sometimes, the body doesn’t need to be shown. I think with this specific film with Martin, I’ve always been a big fan of his work, especially Seraphine, and I like the way he films. With this film, you feel like you’re in a painting and you’re understanding what the world of Bonnard is. It is a biopic of course, but it’s also a sort of visual telling of what his paintings are. So, the nudity in this didn’t mean anything. It was a very different type of nudity. It was a lot more joyous at times and there’s something about celebrating the love and celebrating the joy of living.”
Bonnard specialised in painting nude women, mainly Marthe.
“Yeah, he was so intense. But it wasn’t sexualised at all for him. He was just so intent on his work. I think he’s someone who was very strange. And you can see it in the way that he paints. And actually, Vincent [Macaigne, who plays Bonnard in the film] was saying earlier that the woman who did the paintings for the film, when she started to learn how to do them, she found it really hard, because a lot of is very, very technical and precise. And yet there are moments of madness. Whereas when she’d worked on Van Gogh paintings, it was actually a lot easier, because his technique was quite loose and free. I thought that was a point of entry into Pierre sometimes, like when he would suddenly make big decisions and leave Marthe and go to Rome and think they could live life like this. And then he realises that he couldn’t. I think he was someone who would sort of explode, but who would always come back to what ultimately makes him feel safe, and what benefits and defines his paintings, which is Marthe, sadly for her.”
Did you know of Bonnard before making the film?
“I knew of him, but I didn’t know everything. I did a deep dive into his life and work and there was so much joy and melancholy in the way that his life turned out. I thought that Martin’s wonderful enthusiasm and his softness towards the way that he films things was such a wonderful combination. I really appreciated how he spoke about each character and never in judgment. He was always very curious and very, very gentle.”
Bonnard: Pierre & Marthe is in cinemas now. The Brutalist is screening at the Brisbane International Film Festival on 26 October 2024, more info here.
