The Look

To this day, and for many people, Charlotte Rampling is still the most erotic woman in cinema. She is compared only with the greatest female stars, with Garbo and Lauren Bacall. With her roles, that she actually "lived", she embodies extreme women in extreme emotional situations and with them writes cinematic history. She has been portrayed by the best photographers. And all of them, all, were mesmerised by her gaze, and by her presence, restrained, while simultaneously imposing a tangible physical presence, dominating the room, the others and the camera. She, and only she, has it: THE LOOK. Then fame and "total exposure" turned against her. She withdrew - for ten years. And then made a come-back with her sensational embodiment of a mature woman, portraying exactly that: the loneliness, the helplessness. In François Ozons film "Under the sand" she acts, once again, as she did in her famous early films, with directness and a shocking presence. This film was conceived as a self-portrait. In chapters and encounters (with Paul Auster, Peter Lindbergh and her son...) she talks about fundamental questions, openly and honestly: EXPOSURE, TABOO, DESIRE, BEAUTY, DEATH, LOVE...