2017 Cannes: At Home With Monica Bellucci
At her Paris home during the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, Monica Bellucci reflects on personal style, cinema, family, France and the changing place of women on screen.
![<p>Dressed in a curve-hugging black knit dress by Alexander McQueen, the actress, with her classical beauty, oozes dolce vita glamour, but is quick to brush off such allusions, saying she likes to keep her style effortless. “Maybe unconsciously it’s very Italian. I use simple lines most of the time because my body is shapely, and change the colors, but my style is quite classic.</p><p>When I pick up my daughters from school, I wear a T-shirt and jeans,” she shares. Bellucci, who modeled through to her mid-20s before pursuing an acting career, attended the recent Met Gala in New York on the arm of Valentino Garavani — “the epitome of class.” But when asked who her favorite designers are, she replies: “There are too many to mention.</p><p>I don’t follow fashion as such, but I look for fashion that works for me.” Even in hanging-at-home mode, glamour comes naturally to Bellucci. Before getting ready for the shoot, the actress snacks on mini croque-monsieurs in her kitchen, dressed in a red and white kimono with Christian Louboutin mules (she recently bought a residence in Portugal, near Louboutin’s home.)</p><p>In full-on “mamma” style, the actress passes around cakes. At the table, her personal assistant, Silvia, sits patiently removing modeling clay — the handiwork of one of Bellucci’s daughters — from an Azzedine Alaïa belt with a fork as the team gathers round the television to watch the French presidential inauguration, exchanging comments. For hairdresser John Nollet, France’s new first lady, Brigitte Trogneux, could have done with a fresher, more natural ’do; Bellucci praises her “great legs,” saying: “I think they make a lovely couple.”</p><p>But for all the banter, the event, says Bellucci, whose eldest daughter goes to school near to where one of the recent terrorist attacks took place, sends a strong message of hope. “French people with this vote really proved they needed a big change, and young people love [Emmanuel] Macron so much. It shows that you don’t have to be old to make things happen, it’s a symbol that maybe we should have more confidence in youth, which is beautiful,” she says.</p><p>Finding beauty in hard times is the theme that drives her latest movie, “On the Milky Road,” directed by Emir Kusturica and billed as a love story between a Serbian milkman (played by the director) and his Italian-Serbian object of desire, which is her character. With past film roles that have included Mary Magdalene in “The Passion of the Christ” (2004); a Bond “girl” — at age 51 — in “007 Spectre” (2015), and an opera singer for the 2016 Amazon-funded series “Mozart in the Jungle” — Bellucci had to learn to speak Serbian for her latest incarnation. “The Balkans is a very dangerous place, there’s this sense that it can all kick off at any moment.</p><p>It’s a land full of beauty, but also so much sadness because you feel the war. Even though it’s not there, it’s palpable,” she says. “Kusturica does those films where you feel the duality of reality and poetry because through the poetry, it’s as if you can exorcise darkness and things such as a war.”</p><p>For her next project, Bellucci, who has appeared in films directored by Francis Ford Coppola, Sam Mendes, Spike Lee and Gaspar Noé, among others, plans to produce a film about Communist Italian photographer Tina Modotti, who was active from the Twenties to the Forties. “I’m fascinated by her modernity and courage. She was so poor but had the courage to go to America and travel around the world to Mexico, Russia and Spain during the civil war.</p><p>She was a muse to many artists, from Edward Weston to Pablo Neruda to Diego Rivera, and from muse she became an activist, and a great photographer. She was a woman of passion with a freedom of spirit which, for the time in Italy, when a woman could not exist without a man, was so pioneering.”</p>](/_next/image?url=%2Fassets%2Fimg%2F2017-cannes-monicabellucci3.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
Dressed in a curve-hugging black knit dress by Alexander McQueen, the actress, with her classical beauty, oozes dolce vita glamour, but is quick to brush off such allusions, saying she likes to keep her style effortless. “Maybe unconsciously it’s very Italian. I use simple lines most of the time because my body is shapely, and change the colors, but my style is quite classic.
When I pick up my daughters from school, I wear a T-shirt and jeans,” she shares. Bellucci, who modeled through to her mid-20s before pursuing an acting career, attended the recent Met Gala in New York on the arm of Valentino Garavani — “the epitome of class.” But when asked who her favorite designers are, she replies: “There are too many to mention.
I don’t follow fashion as such, but I look for fashion that works for me.” Even in hanging-at-home mode, glamour comes naturally to Bellucci. Before getting ready for the shoot, the actress snacks on mini croque-monsieurs in her kitchen, dressed in a red and white kimono with Christian Louboutin mules (she recently bought a residence in Portugal, near Louboutin’s home.)
In full-on “mamma” style, the actress passes around cakes. At the table, her personal assistant, Silvia, sits patiently removing modeling clay — the handiwork of one of Bellucci’s daughters — from an Azzedine Alaïa belt with a fork as the team gathers round the television to watch the French presidential inauguration, exchanging comments. For hairdresser John Nollet, France’s new first lady, Brigitte Trogneux, could have done with a fresher, more natural ’do; Bellucci praises her “great legs,” saying: “I think they make a lovely couple.”
But for all the banter, the event, says Bellucci, whose eldest daughter goes to school near to where one of the recent terrorist attacks took place, sends a strong message of hope. “French people with this vote really proved they needed a big change, and young people love [Emmanuel] Macron so much. It shows that you don’t have to be old to make things happen, it’s a symbol that maybe we should have more confidence in youth, which is beautiful,” she says.
Finding beauty in hard times is the theme that drives her latest movie, “On the Milky Road,” directed by Emir Kusturica and billed as a love story between a Serbian milkman (played by the director) and his Italian-Serbian object of desire, which is her character. With past film roles that have included Mary Magdalene in “The Passion of the Christ” (2004); a Bond “girl” — at age 51 — in “007 Spectre” (2015), and an opera singer for the 2016 Amazon-funded series “Mozart in the Jungle” — Bellucci had to learn to speak Serbian for her latest incarnation. “The Balkans is a very dangerous place, there’s this sense that it can all kick off at any moment.
It’s a land full of beauty, but also so much sadness because you feel the war. Even though it’s not there, it’s palpable,” she says. “Kusturica does those films where you feel the duality of reality and poetry because through the poetry, it’s as if you can exorcise darkness and things such as a war.”
For her next project, Bellucci, who has appeared in films directored by Francis Ford Coppola, Sam Mendes, Spike Lee and Gaspar Noé, among others, plans to produce a film about Communist Italian photographer Tina Modotti, who was active from the Twenties to the Forties. “I’m fascinated by her modernity and courage. She was so poor but had the courage to go to America and travel around the world to Mexico, Russia and Spain during the civil war.
She was a muse to many artists, from Edward Weston to Pablo Neruda to Diego Rivera, and from muse she became an activist, and a great photographer. She was a woman of passion with a freedom of spirit which, for the time in Italy, when a woman could not exist without a man, was so pioneering.”
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