The French actor has directed her first film, a historical drama about women experimented on at a psychiatric hospital in Paris. She talks about the shocking story – and its resonance for women today
Twelve years ago, Mélanie Laurent was shooting Inglourious Basterds, playing a Jewish fugitive on the run from diabolical Christoph Waltz. At the end of each day’s shooting, Quentin Tarantino played music on set. After one particularly arduous day, David Bowie’s Cat People boomed out of the speakers. “We would dance. It was glorious,” she recalls.
On the film’s release, Laurent was touted as France’s next big thing. Peter Bradshaw wrote: “She could easily be the new French star to make the crossover into the Anglo-Saxon film world, like Catherine Deneuve or Juliette Binoche or Emmanuelle Béart or Marion Cotillard.”
