| By Fred Topel
In Theaters August 26
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It took so long for The Brothers Grimm to come out that Monica Bellucci had a baby while she was waiting. The film, delayed from a Fall 2004 release due to additional visual effects work, casts Bellucci as an evil queen in a high tower causing all sorts of supernatural mayhem. But in real life, motherhood is all the magic Bellucci can handle.
“I think it’s the most beautiful thing,” Bellucci said. “I mean, it’s not the same for all women. I have many friends that don’t have children and are very happy like that, so it’s very personal. Just for me, to get pregnant, give birth, have a child, it’s so beautiful. I feel so complete, so full.”
It hasn’t kept her from working though. Three months after her daughter’s birth, Bellucci started making movies again. “It’s hard now [in America] because she’s not with me but I travel a lot around Europe and she’s always with me. When I was on set, she was with me.”
The former model and still movie siren hasn’t lost a bit of her charm, though she’s hard on herself. “I’m not in shape yet. I still have some problems, but you know. I was breast feeding until last month.”
At 11 months, the child is still too young to read herself, but Bellucci is considering the pros and cons of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. “I think she’s too young for that but I grew up with all the Grimm fairy tales. What I like about the movie was there were so many references to all of the Grimm fairy tales. It’s like all these fairy tales came together to make a new tale, which is a combination of fantasy and fear. Because of that, we can recognize the Terry Gilliam trademark, like in Brazil or Baron Munchausen.”
As the evil queen, Bellucci plays both the young and vain beauty and the shriveled up old cursed corpse of her character. It involved heavy prosthetics work but gave her a chance to show multiple sides.
“It was very hard because [it was] a lot of makeup. Because there’s a lot of post production in this movie, when I saw the film in the end, even though I knew the script, I was very surprised. I said, ‘My God, he went really far.’ And also it was challenging as a role because of the dual character, the young queen and the old queen. I had to play the double voices. Terry in the beginning thought maybe he would use an old voice but I said, ‘Listen, I think it’s important that the soul is going to be the same.’ So we tried and it worked very well and I think it’s beautiful now that it’s still my voice when she’s old. And I liked playing evil.”
The film purports to tell how the Brothers got inspired for their fairy tales. They were scam artists, busting fake witches and demons of their own creation, until they came upon a real haunted forest which bore elements of their future stories. The PG-13 film may be too intense for kids, as were the original editions of the fairy tales, but Bellucci thinks kids need a little intensity.
“Children love to get scared. All over the world. ‘Mm, what big ears and big feet.’ But you want to get in touch with them and discover. So it’s almost something sexy. And we all need to get scared and we all need fantasy, so fairy tales are for children but they’re also for us. We need to dream if we want to survive some way.”
With her own child, Bellucci plans to guide her through the ups and downs of scary fiction. “As a parent, of course I’m going to protect her the most I can. Fairy tales are so important because behind a fairy tale there is always a meaning. This film is a metaphor. It touches anyone who believes in their image. Anyone who believes that their image is who they are and when the image or the myth is destroyed, the person gets destroyed along with that. So I think it’s the perfect movie for all of us, especially for actors because we are the first victims of vanity. I think it’s an important movie because it’s not just beautiful at the moment or entertaining, but I think it’s just an intelligent movie.”
Even Bellucci, a thoughtful actress who makes bold choices, admitted to falling into the beauty trap. “There’s nothing else. I’m just beautiful. I work just because I’m beautiful and that’s that. I’m kidding. No, I mean, what can I say? I try to do things to prove myself but I have to prove myself to myself first. That’s why I choose sometimes strong films. It could be The Passion because I had something to play. Even when I did Matrix, the film is full of special effects but even though I was there for 15 minutes, there was something to do. I do blockbusters but also very intimate movies like Melena or Irreversible. I think that for a model turned actress, I think I was very lucky. I’m not intelligent, I’m just beautiful and I have such luck.”
For those young girls still getting caught up in vanity, Bellucci has advice from her own experience. “Look just hot, look beautiful, it’s just momental. It’s a biological moment. Then you have to be intelligent and strong and you have to know that things are going to change and you’re going to get old and you’re going to die but you have to live with that. It’s not very easy for all of us.”
The Brothers Grimm opens August 26. |
