Apocalypse, Wow
It's the End of the World as They Know It, and Kirsten Dunst Feels Fine
There are two parties in Melancholia, and neither one of them is much fun. Lars von Trier's latest film opens on an opulent wedding that unravels as the mentally ill bride (Kirsten Dunst) does. A few days later, a cosmic body hurtles toward Earth, and the bride and her sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg) plan to break out the booze—then stop to argue about whether they should be sipping wine on the terrace as the planet prepares to meet its doom.
The co-stars were on hand last night for the film's U.S. premiere at Lincoln Center, as part of the New York Film Festival. Gainsbourg admitted after the screening that she and Dunst made for unlikely siblings—"but I think it works anyway, even with the accents being so different," she said. Toward the film's climax, she added, von Trier started demanding more of her: "It was torture, and I enjoyed it." But after the explosive violence of Antichrist, her last film with the Danish provocateur, her suffering here must have felt like tickles.
Dunst's character faces the prospect of extinction with comparative calm. "I'm not one to mimic, but I'm definitely inspired by other actresses, like Charlotte Rampling, to do movies like this," Dunst explained at the after-party at Stone Rose. And luckily, Rampling was in the cast, the better to provide on-set inspiration. She wasn't at the premiere, but her co-star Alexander Skarsgard was, and he seemed to have located the bright side to playing the stoic groom who doesn't last. "It enabled me to watch the second half of the movie, which I thought was beautiful, as a member of the audience," he said. And the nice part about doing every scene in the same tuxedo? "It makes the fitting pretty brief."
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