Ralph Fiennes As You’ve Never Seen Him in ‘A Bigger Splash’

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

A Bigger SplashAn ailing rock star and her supportive yet mysterious boyfriend make love in a sumptuous home on an Italian island. But their sun-dappled idyll is abruptly interrupted when the star’s old record producer – an old flame – arrives with his daughter in tow, forcibly ushering in a blast from the past from which there can be no return.

That is the scenario for director Luca Guadagnino’s “A Bigger Splash,” which features the enigmatic Tilda Swinton as a singer who has literally lost her voice, Matthew Schoenaerts as her boyfriend, Ralph Fiennes as the unhinged producer and Dakota Johnson as his hot daughter.

Under the Mediterranean sun on the island of Pantellaria, the goings on amongst this foursome combined to create a cinematic portrait of jealousy, desire and intrigue.

For Fiennes’ character, Harry Hawkes, it’s the latest chapter in a life where the party apparently never stops– despite the fact that he’s only recently discovered that he is the father of Johnson’s character, a woman who could be mistaken for his girlfriend.

“A Bigger Splash” was inspired by the iconic 1969 French New Wave film “La Piscine,” which centered on a French couple whose idyllic holiday at a private villa turns deadly after the unexpected arrival of an old friend.

Guadagnino was intrigued by the character’s relationships and worked with screenwriter David Kajganich to shape them.

“I was a bit shy about engaging in the process until I realized that in this story of these four people who fight over their own passions and their sense of propriety towards each other lies something that is truly an invisible force – desire,” the director said.

The result was a film that was philosophically different from its source material. “Luca wanted thematically for this to be really about revolutions in people’s lives and whether they are in control of them or not,” Kajganich said.

Fiennes

Hawkes is particularly out of control – like a take no prisoners bull in the proverbial china shop– who seems to have no concept of how he is affecting the others, particularly Swinton’s character Marianne, who is recovering from vocal surgery and being cared for by her devoted boyfriend.

“It’s a very interesting relationship because they have been each other’s savior in a way,” Swinton said. “They’ve come to this point where they have reached this delicate equality. Being on the island was meant to be a period of rest or they could revel in their equality.”

In flashbacks it is revealed that Marianne played huge arenas and that her boyfriend was a videographer who was first introduced to her by Hawkes.

Swinton herself shaped the character, who was originally intended to be a British movie actress attempting to learn an American accent. “I didn’t want to play in actress and I didn’t really want to talk at all,” she said. “I then proposed this idea of being a rock star who had lost her voice.’

“It makes every line she says interesting because it’s such a choice – she’s risking herself when she speaks. So every line she says, even if it seems innocuous, carries some weight with the audience because they know she’s not doing it casually,” Kajganich said.

Fiennes, who also costarred with Swinton in “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” said that beyond her artistic talent she was “incredibly smart and very perceptive about the script and about what Luca was doing, so her overview was really great.”

In addition to the inherent tension that develops between their two characters because of their passionate past and their professional entanglements over the years, unexpected drama ensues between her boyfriend and his daughter.

But getting back to Fiennes, an actor whose greatness became apparent in the mid-1990s with “Schindler’s List” and “The English Patient ”– before a new generation got to know him as Lord Voldemort in the “Harry Potter” films– his acting is a revelation.

He displays a supremely uninhibited persona, one whose antics included strutting around naked with absolutely no embarrassment and seducing a crowd with his karaoke performance.

Yet his powerful life force, which includes a huge dose of antagonism, is one that inevitably charts a course for an unexpected and violent end to this powerful saga.

(“A Bigger Splash” (Fox Searchlight) is rated R and is now playing in limited release.)

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedintumblrmail

Author: Hillary Atkin

Share This Post On