Section:GDN 12 PaGe:8 Edition Date:190906 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 5/9/2019 17:05 cYanmaGentaYellowblac

• The Guardian
  8 Friday 6 September 2019

Ramsay has made four features in

two decades, each in their way a

masterpiece. But right before

meeting her, I run into Steven

Soderbergh. And over that same

period he has cranked out 23.

“Why am I not making more?”

she says. “I suppose it’s all a money

thing. Getting fi nance together can

take a while. Getting everything

right can take a lot of time.” She

grins. “Also, I’m not a brilliant

multitasker.”

For years she nursed a desire to

make a big metaphysical science-

fi ction movie, with a plot freely

adapted from Moby-Dick. This

strikes me as the perfect text for a

director whose career has been a

saga of prolonged deep dives and

sudden, splashy reappearances.

She still thinks she would like to

do it, but probably not for the

foreseeable future. She has yet to

catch Ad Astra , James Gray’s

acclaimed space saga, starring

Brad Pitt as an astronaut on an

obsessive search for his father. But

she suspects that it might have

slightly stolen her thunder.

“Every director has a labour-of-

love project,” she says. “It’s like

Stanley Kubrick always wanting to

do Napoleon. So maybe I’ll make it

when I’m 80 or something. But Ad

Astra does feel a wee bit close to

home. So yeah, James Gray probably

got there fi rst.”

Naturally, there are other factors

at play here as well. Ramsay was

scarred by her fractious experience

during the US production of Jane

Got a Gun, eventually jumping ship

at the 11th hour in early 2013. Her

marriage broke down; she went to

live in Greece for four years. And she

gave birth to a daughter, who is now

about to start school. “That was

probably the main thing,” she says.

“It’s nice to be able to spend some

time with my daughter.”

But she is aware that life is short;

she says she probably needs to get

cracking. Over in Costa Rica, she had

been working on an original idea.

The script is now done; the fi nancial

situation looks hopeful. “So I hope

to get up and running with another

feature next year,” she says. “Maybe

even sooner. Because I would like to

make more , I really would. And I’ve

actually got four or fi ve ideas on the

go, enough projects to last me the

next 10 years.” Her eyes have taken

on a faraway cast. She says: “Maybe

this is going to be the most prolifi c

time of my life.”

Brigitte is available online now

PHOTOGRAPH: KATHERINE ANNE ROSE/THE GUARDIAN

L ynne Ramsay

crash-lands on an armchair on the

terrace – hair fl ying, skirts swirling –

looking as though she has just been

blown in from the sea. She was out

late last night at some ritzy Venice

fi lm festival soiree or other. “Dancing

with Joaquin, ” she says, scrunching

her face in embarrassment. The

upshot is that she is totally

knackered today.

No one is going to begrudge the

woman a night on the tiles. All the

same, it feels weird to have the

director – arguably the toughest,

purest voice in modern British

cinema – wafting around the photo-

calls and champagne receptions like

some glamorous social butterfl y.

Any festival competition that doesn’t

include a Lynne Ramsay picture

feels, on some nagging, illogical

level, like an opportunity missed.

It is now 20 years since Ramsay’s

debut picture, Ratcatcher , led us on

its throat-catching child’s eye tour of

her native Glasgow; 15 since Morvern

Callar proved that she was no fl ash

in the pan. But since then, devotees

have grown accustomed to waiting

long years for the director to make

contact. She has struggled to get

Loving

the

alien

some projects made; ruffl ed industry

feathers by bailing out of others.

“I suppose I’m a bit of a perfectionist,”

she shrugs, which is such a whopping

understatement it almost makes me

choke on my coff ee.

Without a feature to bring to this

year’s festival, Ramsay has come

with a short fi lm instead. It is a

documentary study of the French

portrait photographer Brigitte

Lacombe , commissioned as part of

Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales series.

Ramsay’s approach is typically

curious and mercurial, crossing the

line in both directions as the fi lm

shows her shooting Lacombe while

Lacombe shoots her. Both women

normally hate having their picture

taken. Both have always loved

making images of others.

“I asked her how many pictures

she takes a day and she wouldn’t tell

me,” Ramsay says. “It was so many

that it was like she was embarrassed.

It’s like an addiction for her and I’m

a bit like that too. I get really into

things, totally obsessed. They

thought I was deaf when I was a kid

because I was always totally off in

my own little world.”

Actually, she adds, she has known

Lacombe for years. They fi rst met in

2011, when Ramsay was in Cannes

with her elegant adaptation of We

Need to Talk About Kevin. They

were hanging out together in Poland

when Ramsay received word that

Joaquin Phoenix had signed on to

take the lead role of wonky,

dangerous Joe in 2017’s You Were

Never Really Here , which meant

that the project was fi nally up and

running. I tell her that Phoenix’s

latest turn in Joker seems to carry

trace elements of his collaboration

with Ramsay and she nods and

smiles to humour me. “Joe’s

scarier,” she says fi nally.

When Ramsay got the call to make

the Lacombe documentary she was

holed up in Costa Rica. She was hard

at work on a script, starved of human

company. “Writing’s so hard,” she

says. “Someone once said that it’s

basically like vomiting and then

bending down to pick out the good

bits. And I always want to keep my

hand in shooting stuff. Being on set,

shooting a fi lm – that’s the part of

the process I love the most.”

Which begs the obvious question:

why isn’t she doing more of it?

Ly n ne R a m s ay i s

best known for

Ratcatcher, set in

the slums of 1970s

Glasgow, and

Mor vern Callar,

about the aftermath

of a suicide. But, she

tells Xan Brooks ,

what she really wants

to direct is sci-fi

Stills from

Brigitte,

Morvern

Callar and

You Were

Never Really

Here

om

,

n

and

re

Really

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