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The Garden of Eden

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : A young American writer completes his service in WWI and travels across Europe with his wife and her attractive Italian girlfriend. Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway.

 

Interview with Actress Mena Suvari and Actress Caterina Murino

 

(Q):Why did you take the role, because it’s a rather unusual role even for a woman who breaks up a marriage.

(Caterina Murino): I read the book before I met John and the producer, and I arrived in London and decided to not accept the role because it was too much sex, it was too much nudity, and I am not very comfortable with my body, so I said no. When I arrived there they convinced me that when we were going to shoot the movie it was not going to be sex and we can adjust the scenes.

 (Mena Suvari entered in the interview room)

(Q): I asked why she took the role, because it’s a rather unusual role even for a woman who breaks up a marriage.

(Mena Suvari): Because that’s the best role to take. It’s the most exciting, right?
 
(Caterina Murino): I tried to construct a role that was not one color. I tried to give different color and everybody can see me as a snake to destroy this couple. At the beginning I’m very innocent, at the beginning she doesn’t know why she’s there. On the other side she’s somebody who is going to save him as a writer because she’s completely nuts. She’s trying to destroy him as a writer, as an artist. Then everybody can see different things. What I tried to get at is it’s a woman in the period, in 1926, it’s called in French, the crazy years, during the two wars. In that period the women were trying to rebuild their status in society.

They cut their hair, Chanel started to bring various dress, and freedom of body, freedom of mind. Marita is a very rich woman, an heiress, and she doesn’t have a place where she stays. She spends life from Cannes to Nice. She’s there to enjoy the life and she breaks up like nothing with the girl friend and she jumps into a new adventure. At the beginning I believe she’s just there for fun. She never thought behind this new adventure for summer would be a tragedy. She’s just there and she’s been involved, and in the beginning she’s the director of this ménage à trios, and after a little while she finds a place that as a snake destroys the couple but as an angel saves him as an artist.
 
(Q): You didn’t come across as a snake at all. In fact, I thought you were rather nasty. Such an angelic face, but you were jealous of his art, you were jealous of his ability.
 
(Mena Suvari): It’s a concern of mine. I don’t want people to see her as nasty or cold or mean because I feel like people should see beyond that as to why she’s acting that way. I feel like a lot of that for Catherine stems from her insecurity, her sense of loss really. She’s trying to find her own identity and make sense of all of this.
 
(Q): Both of these women are so wealthy and self-indulgent. They don’t have to work.
 
(Mena Suvari): Yeah, but that doesn’t mean anything. You can have everything in the world and not have any confidence.
 
(Q): You can be bored, even if you have everything.
 
(Mena Suvari): Yeah, well I think Catherine, she’s well off, and I think there was this sense of, back then, go to Paris and live this bohemian lifestyle. When you meet her she’s done that independently. She’s there by herself the way that she looks as this young woman, and just even to really do that was a bit new. You find out that her parents have passed away and it’s this tragic event that happened in her life, and I think there’s just always been this seed inside of her that she’s been unhappy and she doesn’t necessarily know who she is and she’s struggled with that. And a lot of her behavior is this overcompensation.
 
(Q): Control.
 
(Mena Suvari): They’re traveling around, they go to the South of France, or let’s go to Madrid, or let’s go here, and then the city’s too big. I think she feels uncomfortable and insecure when she’s being looked at or kind of gawked at, or she perceives it that way. And so she feels the most comfortable when they find this shut down hotel where she can isolate her husband. That to her is the most control that she can have, but I think a lot of it she’s not even fully aware of it.
 
(Q): Because she is sorry in the end. The letter that she writes him.
 
 (Mena Suvari): Yeah, but she’s not even capable of even understanding. She’s laying with him before she leaves in bed and she’s like “Well I just know that I’ve done something wrong to you.” But I don’t think she fully understands how she affected him. I feel like some people might think that my husband, David, his character is somewhat weak, and I don’t see it as that at all. I see it as a really beautiful relationship in a sense where someone just absolutely, unconditionally just loves another person. He allows her to express herself, but he doesn’t even see how far it’s going to go. And then it’s like it’s just too late; she’s just gone off.
 
(Q): How close is the final product of the movie compared to when you first read it?
 
(Mena Suvari): When I read it there wasn’t really any of the Africa in it.
 
(Caterina Murino): No, it was not in it. They decided in the middle to put on Africa.
 
(Mena Suvari): So that was a big change.
 
(Caterina Murino): And I think it was a good idea.
 
(Mena Suvari): Just incorporating more of David’s motivation.
 
(Q): What was fascinating about this movie was the reversal of genders. Back then it was obviously more of a male dominated society and in this one it’s actually your characters that get David to dye his hair, or when you’re having sex it’s the woman on top. I was just curious, was everything in the script or did you guys do some kind of improv to add more?
 
(Mena Suvari): No, that’s part of the book. It’s an amazing book.
 
(Caterina Murino): The book is very close to the movie.
 
(Mena Suvari): That was important that we were able to carry the book over into the film.

(Caterina Murino): The hair and all the styles were very important for the period. To cut our hair for me was very difficult, I don’t know for you, and also to dye your hair the color of a pearl was not very easy. It was important, it was part of the character, and to cut our hair physically, not just have a wig, was very important to understand the period and the freedom I was talking about before. It was not just the dress. I’ve done so many movies and I think not one single movie that I’ve done, the costumes, the hair and everything was so important to understand the character. Then everything was already settled. Everything was already in the script and in the book.
 
(Q): The interesting this is this is obviously a period piece, but I don’t know if you realize that right now those exquisite costumes, those fashions, and the short bobs are back in style. It’s 2010 and that’s what we’ve revolved to.
 
(Mena Suvari): Everything recycles. It’s all cyclical.
 
(Q): It’s so interesting because Emma Watson just cut off her hair and cut it in a bob.
 
(Mena Suvari): It’s liberating for a woman. For me it was like a psychological experiment. It was really interesting.

(Q): And I find it liberating to have long hair because at one time I had none.

(Mena Suvari): Well now I’m at that point. Now I’m like, if I had known my hair would take so long to grow out. But it was really interesting. As an example, I remember going through customs and this one immigration officer was looking at my passport. It was this picture from when I was like 17 and my hair was down to here, and of course my hair’s not even an inch. And he looked at it and he said “Aw, and you’re such a pretty girl,” and it was really shocking to me. I really had no idea. I’ve always been passionate about these roles and been committed to them. I’ve always wanted to put myself 110% into it and always keep it real. So I was game for cutting my hair off. It wasn’t a question for me really.
 
(Q): I think you look wonderful with it cut off, but men traditionally like longer hair.
 
(Mena Suvari): Even women. It was very shocking. I would get a lot of reactions like they could just not believe how I could just cut my hair off. They couldn’t understand being able to do that, and I didn’t realize the expectations that are put on women, especially nowadays, to look a certain way.
 
(Caterina Murino): It will grow again. Who cares?
 
(Mena Suvari): Yeah I mean I would think it’s just hair. It was really so liberating, I’m glad that I experienced that. I feel like almost every woman should in a sense and just see.
 
(Q): In a way when we talk about cutting off the hair I think that hair is a source of power for women a lot of times. It’s very sexual, it’s very flirty and everything, gives them a sense of power. Do you think that helped you find, especially since you played such a powerful character, different sides or different layers versus the ones that you were god-given and used to?
 
(Mena Suvari): I think so. For me the hair, the makeup, the costume, and putting all of that on and being in the location, all of that really influences me.
 
(Caterina Murino): Yeah, it helps a lot.
 
(Q): And the locations were beautiful.
 
(Mena Suvari): Good memories.
 
(Q): Who wouldn’t want to be on the French Riviera making a film?
 
(Caterina Murino) : It was not in France, but it looks like it. It was Spain.
 
(Q): Even in Spain. It was gorgeous.
 
(Caterina Murino): Yeah, it was gorgeous.
 
(Q): And the weather was nice so you must have had an enjoyable time filming at least, rather than being ice-frozen.
 
(Caterina Murino): Well three months are very intense.
 
(Mena Suvari): No, it was beautiful.
 
(Q): Did you develop a real friendship on the film or did you click beforehand?
 
(Mena Suvari): I think so.
 
(Q): You seemed very realistic.
 
(Mena Suvari): Oh that’s good, that’s good to hear.
 
(Caterina Murino): We’re good actresses.
 
(Mena Suvari): I had known Jack; I had actually worked with him on this film called “Factory Girl” years before in Shreveport, just for maybe like a couple of weeks. And then we had, was it like a week or a week and half when we got there to hang out?
 
(Caterina Murino): Two days we were in the beautiful place, like a huge hotel just for us to know each other and to prepare the role. Then we knew each other very, very well.
 
(Mena Suvari): We’d go to dinner.
 
(Caterina Murino): And spend time together.
 
(Q): Did you have a lot of rehearsal time?
 
(Mena Suvari): Yeah I think so.
 
(Q): That had to be fun.

(Caterina Murino): Yeah, and it was a lot of preparation for the hair, for the color. It was a lot of long preparation for that, it was not just one day. It was a huge preparation for that, for the costumes.

(Mena Suvari): My hair couldn’t get white enough, I remember that.
 
(Q): But when you see it it looks so stunning. Everything looks so stunning on film. It does.  

(Mena Suvari): Alexandra Byrne, our costumer, was amazing.
  

(Caterina Murino): John Irvin studied this period a lot and was very particular for each detail. Like for absinthe, what’s she drinking every, every, every day, every single moment of the day, and now it’s completely forbidden because it was discovered that it can harm some part of the brain and was very, very dangerous.
 
(Mena Suvari): It’s actually back now.
 

(Caterina Murino): And absinthe didn’t help at all. Everything was full of details in the move to help to understand the period and why she became like that.
 
(Mena Suvari): We actually walked through with our props department where they had set everything up, and Jack and I would go through and kind of pick out the glasses that we wanted to wear. He picked out his pocket watch; I mean they would have everything there. And then there was the table where there was the real absinthe and the fake, and because he’s got to pour it in the one scene he learned how to do it. So we went through all of that with our prop department. And he picked out a lot of the objects, typewriter, everything, that we were going to use. A lot of the personal items.
 
(Caterina Murino): The car was the real one. I just went to their museum and there’s a special video about Hemingway, and it’s exactly the same car.
 
(Q): What I want to know about the car – I loved it – did you have trouble learning to drive it?
 
(Mena Suvari): It is a replica, the one that we used, but yeah I didn’t necessarily grow up driving stick.
 
(Caterina Murino): In Europe we just drive with that.
 
(Mena Suvari): Yeah, I know. There were a few scenes, especially the one where I have to drive down this hill to approach the dock when he’s gotten the fish, and there were sandbags to make sure that the car would stop. A couple of times I would stall it because the specific coordination, especially with that car, and I’m wearing the heels, and to make sure that I’m pressing the right amount and releasing.
 
(Q): Well it didn’t show.
 
(Mena Suvari): They’d be like “Cut! Next! Again!”
 
(Q): It came across perfectly. But I did wonder about that because I have driven stick in Europe.

(Mena Suvari): Once I got it going it was fine, but when you’re taking off or when you’re stopping you just stall.
 
(Q): I would imagine it made you more nervous with all those people watching on the set.
 
(Mena Suvari): It also made me nervous because I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I was like “I’ve got to get this right in one take!” So it would stall and I’d be embarrassed.
 
(Q): Are we allowed to talk about your careers in general?
 
(Mena Suvari): No, absolutely not. Of course. (LOL)
 
(Q): Well I just wanted to say – I’ve already talked to Caterina about her career to some extent – but how could you’ve been, well we all know about “American Beauty,” but I hope everyone has seen “The Dog Problem,” with Scott Caan, and “Stuck.”
 
(Mena Suvari): Scott’s a friend of mine. Oh thanks; that was a twisted movie.
 
 (Caterina Murino): He saw this strange movie that nobody has seen in America. He saw all my movies that I don’t know how he can get them.
 
(Q): They’re good films; they should be seen I think.
 
(Mena Suvari): Well they’re small movies. I was just mentioning earlier that the business has changed so much, especially in the last couple of years. There’s just not that many films getting made, there’s just not that many independent films getting made, and when they are, I mean I’ve been attached to things and all of a sudden they’ll lose financing on one end. And then to distribute a movie now costs a lot of money, and that’s the thing that upsets me about the business aspect of what I do.
 
 (Caterina Murino): If they don’t think it will get a lot of money they will never invest.
 
(Q): It’s interesting, because at the New York Film Festival there were some wonderful films and none of them had distribution deals, and they still don’t. I was speaking to someone from MoMA, and MoMA, in an attempt to help them is running some of these films as specials at the museum to draw people in to see if they can get distribution deals for them.

(Mena Suvari) : It’s things like that. I would feel so depressed about the business.
 
(Q): it is depressing to see a wonderful film that has been made and shown and commercially can’t get distributed.
 
(Mena Suvari): It’s because you have these corporate heads.
 
(Q): Well, so many of the independent film companies have been bought and they’re not independent. Now there’s the big money behind them, whether it’s Fox or Warner Brothers or whatever.
 
(Q): But if you think about it, those of use who are sitting around this part of the table rather than that part of the table, every week you’re in New York there are like 15 films that open. I don’t remember it being like that in the old days. Not that many.
 
 (Caterina Murino): What kind of movies?
 
(Q): They’re small, tiny little films. There are some mainstream, but there will always be half a dozen, sometimes eight.
 
(Caterina Murino): In Paris it’s exactly the same thing every Wednesday.
 
(Q): It’s hard to keep up with everything. I can’t even do it. I’d see everything if I could but I can’t. So we’re lucky in that way, I think.
 
(Q): We’re lucky yes, but I teach at Tisch, which is NYU’s school, and a lot of those films, I have students who have a film in theaters now. They made it with their video camera, they edited it on a Mac, and Falco actually did the PR for them and they got it into IFC.
 
(Mena Suvari): Well look at “Paranormal Activity.” It’s inspiring people to make films literally with like their BlackBerry.
 
(Caterina Murino): Like “The Blair Witch Project”; it was exactly the same. The success of that movie was amazing. I hate it.
 
(Q): But the point I’m trying to bring out is they didn’t get a license to film in the city, although they shot it on city streets. They just went out with a camera and when no one was looking they did the scenes on a bicycle or whatever.
 
(Mena Suvari): I think that’s cool.

(Q): Are you going to be doing anything else with Allen Ball?
 
(Mena Suvari): Oh god I would love to.
 
(Q): Anything in the works with that?
 
(Mena Suvari): I leave it up to him. No, not just yet.
 
(Q): Because he is amazing.
 
(Mena Suvari): I know, he is amazing. I’m continuously a huge fan of his and I would be honored.
 
(Q): Can you both tell us what your next project will be?
 
(Mena Suvari): I’ve actually been working on some amazing projects on tv. I just worked on this show that’s premiering in January called “The Cape,” which is like a Batman. Instead of Gotham City it’s Palm City and I play this character named Dice who’s a superhero villain. That’s been awesome; I’m having a lot of fun with that.
 
(Q): Is this for cable or network?
 
(Mena Suvari): It’s for NBC?
 
(Caterina Murino): I just finished “XIII: The Series” that we did like three years ago with Stephen Dorff. We’re doing the long series for 13 episodes for American television with Stuart Townsend. And for BBC I’ve just done for English television with Rufus Sewell “The Mysteries of Auerlio Zen,” and it’s going to be released here in April or May for CBS.
 
(Mena Suvari): There’s amazing material on tv. So many people and directors and producers and actors and everybody’s gone. We put our heart and soul into this movie and then like four years later we’re here. You want to know that you’re working on something and people are seeing your work and you’re being acknowledged for what you do. It’s a reward when you know that you’re going to set and you’re working and that people are going to be affected by that.
 
(Q): It was four years ago that you actually filmed this?
 
(Caterina Murino): Three years ago 2007.
 
(Q): Caterina said that she didn’t accept the part immediately because there’s too much sex and nudity. When you read the script were you inclined to accept the part or did you hesitate?
 
(Mena Suvari): No, I loved it. I didn’t single out the sexual aspect of the film. I really took Catherine and the story as a whole. I was just so affected by her personal struggle, and then when I read the book, to me it’s one of my favorite books. I think it’s so beautiful written and so poetic. Again, I didn’t look at it like it was too gratuitous. And then meeting with John Irvine, who I’m madly in love with, we just formed this amazing relationship and I felt so supported by him. That’s all you really need.
 
(Q): I didn’t think it was gratuitous, the sex.
 
(Mena Suvari): No, no, no. But people see things like that.
 
(Caterina Murino): We worked on that and we decided how it was going to be shot, where the camera was going to be. For my sex scenes we tried to work on that.
 
(Mena Suvari): Definitely. But people will always kind of be affected by that and single that out, especially in America. I really hope that people see the story beyond that.
 
(Caterina Murino): The sex comes after the story. It’s not the first thing you come out with in your mind after you’ve seen the movie. There are so many things inside, there are so many details, so many parts of history, so many things that you don’t come out with the image of sex.
 
(Q): Mena, you mentioned that you really hope that people don’t see her as just mean or hard. I think that’s a strong point. The women in this film are very strong and ambitious. In life, in acting and in choosing your parts, if you’re a strong, beautiful, strong, woman there are hard sides to that too. Can you speak about being strong, beautiful, powerful women in the industry as actors and what that means to you?

(Mena Suvari): It means a great deal to me and it’s important to me. I think part of why I identify with Catherine is that I’ve always felt this struggle within myself to feel a different way than people perceive me. I have three older brothers and I kind of grew up in this certain environment and I’m extremely independent, yet I happen to be five foot four and look a certain way. So I came to understand, because after “American Beauty” and this whirlwind I had to learn about the business very, very fast, and I came to understand the dynamic between men and women in the business.

It’s a bit unfortunate to me but it’s a reality that it’s very male driven, and that can be very difficult. There are times where I’ll meet on a project and they’ll be interested in me but we have to cast the guy first and we have to cast the woman and the guy. I think that’s why it was so exciting and it wasn’t so much a question for me for having a script like this come my way when it was a strong female character, because you don’t find that many. That’s why I was interested in “Stuck.” You don’t have that many opportunities, at least from what I’ve seen, of women carrying a film. I would sit down with my manager and he would tell me there are less than five women in the States who can finance a movie, and that’s really upsetting. I don’t understand why that is.
 
(Q): It’s self-fulfilling prophecy on some level because if women’s movies are not given the chance, which they generally aren’t, then of course they’re not going to succeed, because half the time they’re not even there.
 
(Mena Suvari): But the thing that’s always really driven me and taken me down this winding path instead of just doing studio films and only that or whatever medium, is that I always followed my interests and challenging myself, and a lot of that material lies in other areas. I didn’t necessarily want to be the arm candy all the time. I didn’t want to just be the girlfriend on the side who is one dimensional.
 
(Caterina Murino): In Italy I did a movie where it’s built up around my character and I think maybe Europe still has some kind of movies where the female role is more important than the male role. But you asked at the beginning about the strength of a woman, I came from an island where the mother and women are more important than the man, and for me it’s my culture. This is the reason why I am lucky as an actress. I have a lot of roles where I am very powerful. I did also roles where I’m the wife of, but I did a lot of roles also where I am the character that’s going on in the movie. And I say thanks to my island, because it gave me this in the culture.
 
(Q): Do you find LA shocking then?
 
(Caterina Murino): Yeah, I’m not working in American business all the time and I feel lucky as an actress because I’m always trying to do what I want to do. For example, I am in the theater, and currently I have two men around me and I control them. I feel like I’m lucky for that and maybe I think the industry in Europe is a little bit different.
 
(Q): Could you talk about the collaboration of working with director John Irvin? He’s been around for a long time.
 
(Mena Suvari): I love John. I love him dearly. I feel like he completely supported me 100% throughout the making of this whole film and just being able to connect with him. That meant a lot to me because I really needed it. My character was very intense and he carried me throughout that. I think he’s wonderful with actors. We called him Papa on set because he even dressed the part.

(Caterina Murino): He looks like Hemingway.
 
(Mena Suvari): And he’s so well-versed in Hemingway that it was wonderful.

(Caterina Murino): He taught me something very important because I was very stressed about my accent, about English, and every time I did a take it was like “Can you understand? Do you get what I’m saying?” And he was like “Caterina, you have to learn something. To be an actress it’s more important the way you’re acting when you’re listening to your colleague, when he is acting, than when you are speaking. Please try to be concentrating completely on your role when you are listening to your colleague and not when you are acting.”

(Q): Speaking to that point, did you guys feel like as you were going along you had to continually adjust your performances? And was that hard?
 
(Caterina Murino): I never take the script on set with me. I prefer to learn my role before, and with this movie yes. My script was with me because it was very important because we didn’t shoot from the first scene to the end to understand where their relationship was. And it was very, very important because it could be like a piece of theater because we’re always in the same place and just us and the relationship in between changing a little bit every day. And this was very complicated; it was not easy at all.
 
(Q): Were you living together during the filming? Were you at the same hotel?
 
(Caterina Murino): The same hotel, yeah. It was strange because it was a huge hotel and nobody else on the production was with us; it was just the three of us. It was like living together, meeting together all the time.
 
(Q): So did you hang out together?

(Caterina Murino) Yeah.

End.