The director Léa Seydoux calls a “great, radical stylist”
Spanning the worlds of arthouse and blockbusters, Léa Seydoux can do it all. Throughout her career, the roles she’s taken on have always been considered and surprising, building out a varied CV. Having worked with some of the most influential directors around, Seydoux is clearly a film buff as she picks out one master as a key influence.
Ever since her breakout in the 2006 French film Girlfriends, the top directors in Hollywood have scrambled to cast the actor. Ridley Scott, Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Yorgos Lanthimos; she’s worked with them all. Whether she’s starring as a romantic lead or a Bond girl, a rebel leader or a prison guard, Seydoux’s enchanted audiences and directors alike.
Part of her magic seems to lie in a certain timelessness that sits in all her roles. Maybe it’s her dreamy French looks or her ability to shapeshift in costumes, but it’s easy to imagine Seydoux on screens way back in the 1950s and long into the future. When it comes to her own personal tastes in filmmakers, though, she prefers to look back into cinematic history.
While Seydoux is a darling of French cinema, one of her favourite directors was vital in shaping the film history of a different country. She picks out Yasujiro Ozu, the Japanese writer and director, as a pioneering force and major inspiration for her.
When choosing her favourite films for Le Cinema Club, Ozu’s Good Morning ranked high on the list. The 1959 comedy has a sweet and simple plot line as two kids take a vow of silence until their parents buy them a TV. It’s a small story, but Ozu’s direction makes it a triumph.
That’s what appeals to the actor as she points out his sense of style. “Ozu is a great, radical stylist,” she said. “He paints his characters as if they’re in a Japanese print. And with an incredible tenderness.” Drawing attention to the director’s use of vibrant colour and precise props, Seydoux values him for his details.
Along with his other films like Tokoyo Story, Late Spring and Early Summer, Ozu helped redefine Japanese cinema. Helping it move from silent black and white films into full-colour pictures with dialogue, the director brought simple yet fresh stories to life in a new way.
Ozu’s style is a clear influence on the work of Wes Anderson, whom the actor has collaborated with extensively. Both directors fill their films with meticulous staging and specific details, helping to build their own distinct and recognisable cinematic world, which is clearly something Seydoux admires.
She fits into it perfectly. By now, Anderson even writes roles specifically for Seydoux, such as her role as Simone in The French Dispatch. Much like the work of Ozu, Seydoux describes Anderson’s film: “It’s funny, and at the same time it’s deep, it’s moving; there are many contrasts,” allowing her to honour one of her biggest inspirations in her current work.
