Writing on Film - Article 4 - Charlotte Rampling

For my Writing on Film class I had to write an article on a scene from the film 'The Look'. The clip involved an interview and the article I had to write was interview preparation. In the clip the actress Charlotte Rampling talks to the photographer Jurgen Teller. The article is below: 

INTERVIEW REVIEW

Taken from the 2011 film 'The Look', actress Charlotte Rampling and photographer Juergen Teller have an open conversation on the subject of 'Taboo', with the audience feeling like a fly on the wall listening to a private conversation. The subject matter clearly engages the pair as they ask each other questions and deliberate the past; crossing the boundary of interviewer and interviewee.

The location is not glamorous, they are perched on a somewhat run down staircase, with Rampling very much aware of the camera and occasionally coming over as candid. Her body language and uncomfortable position suggests she may be guarded, but her openness in conversation proves otherwise.

The pair view photographs (taken by Teller) of one another and seem comfortable in the nudity and playful nature of the imagery. Rampling is again in control when a set of photographs, taken by the legendary fashion photographer Helmut Newton are deliberated. Rampling states that the shots were Newton's first nude photographs and it is a bold statement to suggest she had creative control during a Newton fashion shoot.

A degree of vulnerability is shown when Rampling and Teller discuss suicide (both have lost close ones) and this vulnerability is emphasised, less dramatically, when Rampling mentions an unfavourable review, by prominent critic Pauline Kael, of her 1974 film The Night Porter. Rampling is clearly taken aback when recalling the negativity.

Footage from The Night Porter is exhibited with a scene presenting a provocative Rampling teasing Nazi soldiers. Definitely a Taboo image, showing Rampling again in control.