The director Claire Duguet, through file images, explores in the documentary ‘Kate Winslet: In search of the authentic’ how an actress with curves and working class became “unique” in her generation
Titanic He had razed, and its protagonist, Kate Winslet, 22, was already a superstar. In the time of thin models such as Kate Moss, their curves were present in all red carpets and carpets. In a live interview on British television, a woman at the audience wanted to ask a question: “There are many photos in the press making comparisons before and then about how your weight fluctuates. Is that real, Kate? The actress, surprised, and among uncomfortable laughs, responds as she can. “What are you talking about? Are we not tired of the topic of weight? I am a human being, we go up and go down. What appears in the newspapers makes me sick. Many young people are influenced by those things, and we must stop it. ”
That television moment is part of the file to which the 50 -minute French documentary accesses Kate Winslet: In search of the authentic (Produced by art and that can be seen in Movistar Plus+) to build the profile of the career of one of the most influential interpreter of his generation. “I don’t know if it’s the best, but it’s unique. There is no one the same, ”says its director, Claire Duguet, to El País in Unifrance, French Cinema and Television Market in Paris where the newspaper comes invited by the organization. “The answer she gives is very good, but I hope that nobody asked that question today.”
Then the comic Joan Rivers, for example, also joked: “If Kate Winslet had lost a few kilos, the Titanic would never have sunk.” Because the reading actress, who touches the 50 and in March premieres the biopic From the photojournalist Lee Miller, he received constant insinuations about his weight. “One of the first things that attracted me to her is that I was not trying to be the most beautiful. It was beautiful, but I didn’t forced him. And luckily all the elections that came later maintained a criterion, ”explains the director, cinematographically raised with Agnès Varda (he was his assistant for 20 years) and who says he has been fascinated with the actress since he was 17, from Heavenly creatures.
Trailer of the series ‘Mare of Easttown’
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The director has not spoken, even so, with Winslet, and is aware that perhaps he would have liked to make a retrospective after 50 and that he not only arrived in the series Mare of Easttown (In whose sexual scene the digital retouching opposed). But Duguet was clear about the message he wanted to portray: “He sought to show how consistent his career is,” draw the figure of a natural woman who has fought against those who criticized her appearance, which has not been carried away by the songs of overproductions Not even the romantic comedy (“I want to portray aligned lives,” he says in the documentary), vigorously against the Botox (“I have the wrinkles of my face, and the privilege of not hiding my true self,” he says in another intervention) and even took the magazine in 2003 GQ To courts for using Photoshop on a cover.
Working class, a British rarity
Also an interpreter that, unlike much of British actors, reached fame from the working world. A study by The Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Center for Channel 4 concluded in 2024 that only one in 12 creative in the United Kingdom’s cinema and television are working class, minimum in more than a decade. “It’s relevant, because they give another look. In the fifties they looked for James Dean or Marlon Brando in the street, because they had something that Cary Grant did not contribute, ”says Duguet, who recalls that Winslet said in an interview that his family“ needed social help to have food. Maybe that is why the stars system always despised. ”
That conception of life moves to his cinema. The long silences that the actress uses in films such as Revolutionary Road y Wonder Wheel They are studied in the documentary as an interpretive method: “I think it is connected. In reality it struggles to say that he does what he wants with his life, his body and his image. But he is a very physical actress, so he uses all his muscles. He does not want to settle for having a perfect body, because it is part of his talent and his instrument of expression. And if they forced her to be thin, she would not be happy with her work tool. I could not give everything, ”explains this 47 -year -old French director, who in other documentaries analyzed the figures of Betty Boop o Truffaut y Goddard.
The passing of the years, and movements such as Me Too, however, they have also given new perspectives to the mature Winslet. “I’m frustrated with myself,” he regretted in an interview promoting Ammonite In 2020: “I have used my voice, I have never felt forced, and I accepted everything I have done. But, looking at the past, they did record me from a light that made my body see in a different way and that objectified to me. ” Duguet believes that criticism refers to Secret games of Todd Field. Today the director sees that film with another look. In Ammoniteon the other hand, choreographed the sexual scenes with Saose ronan to find new perspectives and flee from the male look, what is called today female gaze. “It was a breath of fresh air, everything was new,” Winslet acknowledged.
“We see that there are a number of Hollywood actresses looking for European directors, in Babygirl or in The substanceto find that look different from sex. But Winslet was always aware of his body, ”explains Duguet. It was when they opened his first web con Sense and sensitivityat 19. When with 11 he played Alicia in Wonderland in the theater of his school. And when with 14 a teacher told him that he would be fine if he settle for the gorda papers. “Look at me now,” he replied when he collected his third Bafta prize for the movie Steve Jobs.
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About the firm
Years have spent fires in the Social Network Team of El País and now he is dedicated to talking about cinema, series, comics and what is put through him from the Culture Section. He doesn’t know how to ride a bicycle.
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