The movie Chloë Sevigny calls “punk as fuck”
Known as the ‘it girl’ of 1990s New York, a style icon, and indie cinema royalty, Chloë Sevigny has been a benchmark for alternative cool since she emerged on our screens a few decades ago.
After being scouted on the street, Sevigny started modelling as a teenager, making her first appearance on video as the star of Sonic Youth’s ‘Sugar Kane’ music video. Sporting incredible short hair, Sevigny didn’t adhere to stereotypical expectations of femininity; instead, she blended masculine and feminine styles to achieve her signature look.
Around this time, she became close with Harmony Korine, who gave the actor her debut role in Kids. Korine, who was just a teenager himself, had penned the script, which dealt with youth culture and AIDs in ‘90s New York. Sevigny’s performance is arguably the best part of the movie, helping to kickstart her career in the film industry.
Later, she collaborated with Korine again, this time starring in the controversial film Gummo, his directorial debut. Sevigny’s star status began to rise as she continued to appear in hard-hitting, offbeat or shocking movies, solidifying herself as the perfect on-screen antidote to Hollywood glamour and commercialism.
Sevigny performed genuine fellatio on Vincent Gallo in The Brown Bunny, played the girlfriend of a transgender man who is brutally murdered in Boys Don’t Cry, and learnt French for the erotic thriller Demonlover. Essentially, Sevigny’s filmography boasts few credits that could be considered mainstream Hollywood fodder. Taking on complex roles in films that deal with marginalised characters and subversive themes is Sevigny’s main area of interest, and it’s no surprise that most of her favourite movies are also subversive and experimental.
One of Sevigny’s favourite movies is A Very Curious Girl by Nelly Kaplan, released in 1969. Kaplan is credited as one of the only female filmmakers to have been associated with surrealism and – in the ‘60s – was one of the very few female directors working in the industry as a whole.
A Very Curious Girl stars Bernadette Lafont as Marie, a young woman who becomes a sex worker in the face of adversity from the locals. Kaplan hits out at the misogynistic men who frown upon her yet jump to use her as a sexual object – treating her as a mere piece of meat. According to Sevigny (via Le Cinema Club), the movie is “perfectly described” by Kaplan “as about ‘a witch who doesn’t let herself be burned.’”
Kaplan not only wrote and directed the film, but she also edited it too. Despite having the makings of an auteurist filmmaker, Kaplan’s name is sadly not well-known, and A Very Curious Girl remains criminally underseen.
For Sevigny, the movie is “punk as fuck” and “a feminist call to arms”. Although the movie predates punk, Kaplan’s film is shamelessly unapologetic and revolutionary, harnessing the movement’s ethos several years before it began. Going against societal norms and questioning the potency of the patriarchy, it is not hard to see why A Very Curious Girl is one of Sevigny’s favourites.
