A few days before we speak, Vicky Krieps, communicating remotely with Reykjavik, accepted best actress at the European Film Awards in the least glamorous fashion imaginable. Sounding indecently stuffed up, wrapped in cosy pink, she looked like a person with a cold from a comic book. Is she any better?
“I am better. I am still in bed and I am drinking tea,” she says, raising a mug. “But I am better. At least I can hear. It was weird, because Zoom is already difficult.”
That isn’t the best way to get an award.
“No, it was. Because I was in my pyjamas. Ha, ha!”
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The Luxembourgish actor, who broke through in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, received her gong for a flawless, irreverent, cheeky performance as Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Marie Kreutzer’s excellent Corsage. Serving as empress consort from 1854 until her assassination in 1898, Elisabeth remains a figure of fascination in central Europe. Between 1955 and 1957, Romy Schneider played her in a trilogy of sentimental films, beginning with Sissi, that have screened at Christmas on German-speaking TV ever since. In 1992, a production called Elisabeth became the most successful German-language musical ever without troubling Broadway or the West End. Her status as an avatar of imperial glamour is unchallenged in that part of the world. Was the young Krieps on board with the adulation?
“I didn’t grow up with these movies because my mother was very emancipated,” she says. “My neighbour was the opposite. In our house there was always loud rock music blasting out the living room. My neighbours were very Catholic. They only had classical music playing. Every Christmas they would watch the Sissi movies. Me and the neighbour were best friends. So she showed me the films. My first impression was one of the young girl I was – how beautiful the dresses are and how pretty she was.”
Then, a bit later, she read a biography of the empress. She remembered feeling there was “something behind the curtain”. She sensed a melancholy in the tale and suspected that the whole image was a facade. Krieps bought that the empress, wife to Franz Joseph I, was a notable eccentric, but she couldn’t see where that eccentricity came from. She was left with a feeling of mystery.
We wanted to get this feeling of being trapped in the body of a woman who is in the role of being the mother, the lover, the intellectual, the girl, the child. Women are put in these frames and we have to play along
— Vicky Krieps
“Later, I was working with Marie Kreutzer in Vienna, and there she’s on all this merchandise,” Krieps says. “She’s on every cup. I became even more sad. How sad this woman was never understood – and now she is selling cups. That is the last thing she would have wanted to do. They use the image of her and her beauty and everything she suffered. And that was now being used to make money. I said to Marie that we should make a movie about her.”
Kreutzer, who had grown up with the cliché, thought this was a terrible idea, but it obviously stuck with her. Two years later she sent Krieps a script with a postcard reading: “Well, here you go. I guess you were right.” Corsage could not be more different from the Sissi films. It is icy. It is abrasive. It portrays the empress as a woman who, for all her standing, fails to convince men she is worth taking seriously. It is also conspicuously and playfully cavalier with the facts. We shan’t say how Corsage ends, but this version of Elisabeth is not shot dead by an anarchist. The film seems to be in a conversation with Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. Both concern Austrian-born royalty. Both incorporate 20th century pop music. But Corsage is considerably less bouncy in its storytelling.
“Neither Marie nor I were interested in making an accurate portrait of a woman,” she says. “We didn’t want to show a copy of who she was. We had found something in her that related to us – some sort of rebellion. We wanted to get this feeling of being trapped in the body of a woman who is in the role of being the mother, the lover, the intellectual, the girl, the child. Women are put in these frames and we have to play along.”
Now 39, Krieps comes across as a someone in control of her own destiny. But life could have gone in several different directions. After leaving school, she worked in a social project in South Africa. Before that, she had thought of taking a more conventional path through life.
“Until I was 20 I wanted to be a lawyer,” she says. “My family were all lawyers. My grandfather was a big politician. He abolished the death penalty and stuff. So I had this feeling that would also be my job – maybe to help the world become a better place. It was only going to Africa and being so far from home that gave me the courage to say: ‘No, wait. Actually, there’s this other thing I really want to do.’”
The not-so-good part was the shock of suddenly being recognised. I’m not speaking of celebrity. I’m immune to that. But it was people going: ‘Oh, there is the girl from Phantom Thread.’ I wanted to be Vicky
— Vicky Krieps
Krieps seems to have landed decent roles very quickly. When we met a few years ago, she explained that Luxembourgers – growing up in a tiny nation at the junction of several larger ones – inevitably have an internationalist outlook on life. She speaks English like a native. She was immediately available for parts in any number of countries. You can see her in the Saoirse Ronan thriller Hanna and in the Daniel Auteuil film Before the Winter Chill. Early next year you can see her opposite the late Gaspard Ulliel in Emily Atef’s drama More than Ever. It was her turn as the manipulated and manipulative lover of Daniel Day-Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread from 2017 that really kicked her career up to the next level.
“That was huge,” she agrees. “To meet people who say: ‘It’s okay to be the way you are.’ There are people out there having the same understanding of art. That was very empowering. I grew working with those two men. The not-so-good part was the shock of suddenly being recognised. I’m not speaking of celebrity. I’m immune to that. But it was people going: ‘Oh, there is the girl from Phantom Thread.’ I wanted to be Vicky.”
I think of her Phantom Thread co-star when she talks about her decision to wear constricting corsets throughout the shoot of Corsage (the title refers to the upper parts of a woman’s dress, not an arrangement of flowers). But this was no joke. She recently admitted she would never go through that discomfort again. This reminds one of the stories, often exaggerated, about the gruelling preparations Day-Lewis used to go through before shooting.
“I don’t know how he does it,” she says. “But I’m never afraid of discomfort. I am not afraid of dealing with animals or weather conditions or other physical conditions. That is not scary to me. I was just underestimating it. The only reason I’m talking about it so much is because I want people to know that even though it looks good, it is actually torture. It’s horrible. I just want to make sure that everyone gets how bad it is.”
She explains that, wearing a corset on a movie shoot, up early and home late, she was wearing the corset far longer than the empress would have done in a day. Also, Elizabeth would have been strapped in since the age of 12 and her body would have shaped itself to the garment.
“It makes you feel sad. It messes with your feelings,” she says. “You just can’t feel right. You can’t really access your emotions somehow. It’s to do with… What do you call it? Solar Plexus?”
The diaphragm?
“Yes. Everything is attached there. It cuts off the emotions. It messes with your general flow of energy. Your legs feel too heavy. Your body always feels bloated – just because something all the time is making you feel you are too much.”
It must come as some consolation that the film has gone down so well. Both she and Kreutzer were concerned it might not connect. But Corsage received raves at Cannes in May and Krieps went on to win the best actress prize in the Un Certain Regard section.
“I remember thinking no one will like this,” she says. “When they said it was going to Cannes I said to Marie: ‘Can you believe all these people are going to sit there seriously and watch our prank?’ Because that’s what it felt like we had done – this child’s prank. Scallywags doing this prank.”
She chuckles enthusiastically
“But secretly I always believed in the audience being more intelligent.”
It is nice to be proven right.
Corsage is in cinemas from today
