Delevingne, hopeless romantic actress – ‘Valerian’ star lives up to the spirit of ‘Laureline’
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LOS ANGELES, July 20, (Agencies): The world’s press are gathered at a news conference for Luc Besson’s “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” and Dane DeHaan is waxing lyrical about co-star Cara Delevingne.
The pair spent six months in Paris filming as intergalactic special ops agents Valerian and Laureline in the $180 million blockbuster, which comes out Friday, and DeHaan was clearly bowled over by Delevingne’s infectious joie de vivre.
“I was just so happy to see her every day and be around her and feed off that energy,” DeHaan told reporters at the event in Beverly Hills.
It sounds like the usual mutual back-slapping in which actors indulge on promotional tours but he is clearly being sincere, and in any case it is the kind of observation frequently made by people who have worked with the 24-year-old Londoner.
One of the world’s most in-demand models, Delevingne has earned millions of dollars walking the runways of London, Paris and Milan for the likes of Burberry and Chanel, and graced countless covers of Vogue. But acting has always been her first love.
Her rise in movies since her debut in Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina” (2012) alongside Keira Knightley has been swift, with starring parts in teen fable “Paper Towns” and the super-villain blockbuster “Suicide Squad.”
Making the transition into acting when you are already well-known is not as easy as it looks. Former sports stars and other celebrities often observe that while their famous faces get them auditions, they have to work twice as hard to be taken seriously.
Two years ago, Delevingne appeared on a local US morning talk show to promote “Paper Towns” and was asked a series of patronizing questions, including whether she had read the source novel by John Green.
Not only had she done her homework, but she has since written a coming-of-age novel of her own.
“There will always be people like that, no matter what,” she told AFP in an interview after the news conference.
“I think it’s just another opportunity for me to stand my ground and prove I have done the work. I do work very hard and I’m determined to prove those people wrong.”
Struggling
An influential voice on social media with more than 40 million Instagram followers, Delevingne has been praised for being a beacon to teenagers struggling with their emotions by speaking openly about her bisexuality and her battles with depression as a 15-year-old.
“I’m very blessed to have a strong influence with young girls and teenagers,” she said.
“That’s been my goal since I was younger, to be a role model, for young girls to be able to look up to me, because I’m following every single one of my dreams that I’ve had in my life through hard work and determination.”
When he was casting for the part of Laureline, Besson immediately thought of Delevingne as an actress who could live up to the spirit of empowerment her brave, whip-smart character embodies as Valerian’s crime-fighting equal.
“She became a model by accident because a scout guy met her and said, ‘You will take good pictures.’ But she’s not made for that,” Besson told AFP.
“She succeeds at that because she’s funny but for me she’s a natural born actress. I was amazed by her capacity and I think she’s at the beginning of a long, long career.”
Critics have observed that the character of Laureline is something of a paradox — an intrepid, independent woman who nevertheless defines her happiness in terms of her success in finding love.
“That’s what I love about life generally, the dichotomies of everything. Of course I understand the whole thing of wanting to be a woman who can look after herself and be completely independent,” Delevingne told AFP.
“But also, at the end of the day all I want is to go home and have someone that loves and cares for me or that I love and care for and end up one day having a family.”
Laureline, she says, embodies the new reality that romance is no longer the zero sum game it once was for women, pitting family life against the possibility of a career.
“I do relate to her in the sense that I, for sure, am strong and independent and all these things, but at the end of the day, I’m a complete hopeless romantic,” she said.
“Some people deny it, but aren’t we all?”
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LOS ANGELES: “Landline” may be set in the ’90s, but director Gillian Robespierre couldn’t help contrasting the film’s themes of gender, infidelity, and dishonesty to current events.
“We’ve been told that, if you look at our election, women cannot lie,” Robespierre said at the film’s premiere on Tuesday at New York City’s Metrograph. “So many things we’re not allowed to do and we don’t get to win elections because of our gender.”
Co-written by Robespierre and Elisabeth Holm, “Landline” follows two sisters, Dana (Jenny Slate) and Ali (Abby Quinn), who suspect their father (John Turturro) of cheating on their mother (Edie Falco). The film deals with both male and female infidelity, a theme that Slate, who worked with Robespierre and Holm on 2014’s “Obvious Child,” also juxtaposed with the recent election.
“I feel that in society, generally when a man cheats, we’re a bit more forgiving because we tend to think men need to satisfy their needs. Whereas if women cheat, they are liars, insidious or insecure,” Slate said. “We have a president now who won an election because he bragged about cheating, lying, and assaulting people, and a woman who lost because she also was untruthful. One was elevated and one was denigrated.”
Robespierre chalks up this common societal opinion to how cheating men are portrayed on-screen in comparison to women.
“Most movies, there’s a midlife crisis with a male lead and he cheats on his wife. That’s almost in half of the movies. You still root for him,” she said.
Quinn touted Robespierre for subverting that narrative by depicting women who are multi-dimensional.
“Women for a very long time had to be one way. I think all of Gillian’s movies, that’s not the way women are portrayed,” Quinn said. “She’s not afraid to make unlikable characters. For a long time, society has been paranoid with doing that.”
As for how to depict life more accurately, Robespierre advises “showing that people lie, cheat and steal doesn’t have to vilify them” and is “trying to write characters without judging them.”
“Landline” hits theaters July 21.
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