Asia Argento Discusses Playing Racist, Locarno Award, Gia Carangi Doc

Italian actress, filmmaker and musician Asia Argento is about to take the big outdoor stage in Locarno in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. The 79^th edition of the Locarno Film Festival will celebrate the creative with its Life Achievement Award on Thursday evening in the city’s Piazza Grande in front of around 8,000 people.

While in Locarno, Argento is also presenting Jorge Thielen Armand’s Death Has No Master (La Muerte No Tiene Dueño), which premiered in this year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. “Since making her onscreen debut as a child in Lamberto Bava’s cult sequel Demons 2 (1986) and starring in Palombella rossa (1989) by Nanni Moretti, Asia Argento, one of the most distinctive European performers of her generation, has built a singular body of work that encompasses passionately beloved genre films, auteur cinema, and intimate self-portraiture,” Locarno said when it unveiled the honor.

And Giona A. Nazzaro, Locarno’s artistic director, lauded her as “an artist who has always managed to reimagine what it means to make films, constantly challenging herself and taking personal risks.” 

Argento spoke to THR about the honor, her role in Death Has No Master and the documentary about late U.S. supermodel Gia Carangi that she has boarded as an executive producer.

Congratulations on the special Locarno honor. How does it feel to get this recognition?

It feels incredible. I truly didn’t expect it. Actually, lately I was thinking, my God, I’ve never been invited to Locarno, and I never had a movie at Locarno. I was self-deprecating as usual, thinking they must hate me and everyone is against me. And then this came totally out of the blue, and I was moved to tears.

In the last few years, I had a big shift of energy, and I guess life has a way of teaching you to be humble sometimes when you don’t want to learn. So I see this as a sign of the universe that I’m going in the right direction. With my work, I was in the past [sometimes] criticized for it being a little bit extreme and pushing the boundaries of what was accepted from a woman, as an actress, as a filmmaker. What I was trying to achieve created this gut unease, and now this is a way of the universe telling me that I did the right thing at the right time.

When you pass through a door, you always receive a lot of blows to your head, so that other people can walk through it a little bit more easily. Now I see that everything is making sense. Okay, I wasn’t wrong to always be who I was, to be honest about who I was, even though I’m somebody who’s far from being perfect. It was a big shine of love.

You are presenting Jorge Thielen Armand’s postcolonial thriller Death Has No Master (La Muerte No Tiene Dueño), in which you star, at Locarno. Why did you want to work on that film with its themes of colonialism and trauma? What about it spoke to you?

I always find characters that are nonlinear, that are a bit tormented and that have a vast history and things to face from the past fascinating. I like complex characters with a lot of suffering. I find it a lot easier and more interesting to do that than, say, a comedy, which I’ve done in my life, and I’m not very talented at that. It’s really not my genre.

So when I find something really dark, really obscure and weird with depth, then I dive into that. I just read the script, and I also loved the idea of the adventure of going to Venezuela and this challenge of also acting in yet another language, Spanish, since I’ve done French and English. It was also a huge challenge physically and mentally. At this point in my life, I prefer the challenges that keep me curious and keep me alert.

How was the production of the film?

It was very tough to shoot. I didn’t immediately understand from the script that it would turn into a psychological thriller, almost paranormal in a way. I thought it was a colonial drama about family history and all that, but it’s a lot more than that. And when I saw the movie, I was so immersed in the experience. Jorge is such a great director. I love his movies, and I think that with this one, he found yet another register to his art. So just working there with him fueled my fire and my love.

Speaking about colonialism: How do you get into a role like this? Did you ever travel and experience the weight of colonialism? Or how do you find the access point as an actress to something that is so painful for so many people?

It was pretty hard, because we developed the script and the character a lot while we rehearsed for a month before the shoot in the locations with all the non-actors there. As we were preparing, I realized, “My God, my character is a racist; she’s really not somebody that I would like to meet.”

To play that, you have to really understand and love to prepare for that. I was in Venezuela. There were a lot of stories about the richer people that went away amid all the political problems, and the people working for them, the descendants of the slaves. I hate to even use the word [“slave”], but they took over houses where they worked if somebody was gone for over 10 years.

I think people have the right to occupy the house and live there. So this is what the movie is about, and so I spoke at length with both sides – people who went away, whose house was squatted, so to speak, and they had this colonial anger; and the people who squatted, who lived there. It’s very political, and I felt for both sides. So it was important for me to understand both sides. There are always two sides.

You recently signed on as executive producer on Rosita Larocca’s directorial debut feature documentary Gia – The Shadow of Beauty, about Gia Carangi (1960–1986). The U.S.-Italy co-production approaches her “not as a pop-cultural icon but as a young woman navigating desire, abandonment and visibility in 1980s New York.” Can you tell me a little bit about what brought you to this project and why you wanted to do that?

I was always fascinated by Gia Carangi and her arc in this show business world. She was somebody who was a very smart girl who was not fully inside the system. She was very broken and then had her battles with addiction. And there is also the fact that she was lesbian at a time when that was a huge taboo. So, there are many fascinating [themes and issues] to explore.