Page 34 - Fujifilm Exposure_5 The Wings Of The Dove_ok

facing the camera
Appetite For Life
Appetite For Life
Ute Lemper, wife, mother and singer-superstar, on her latest film role
It cannot be mere coicidence that the mys- terious beauty played by Ute Lemper in her latest film is called Greta. If you had to pick the perfect lookalike candidate to play the great Garbo then you’d surely have to go no further than the sensational German- born actress-singer.
Lemper, currently wowing London West End theatre audiences with numbers like ‘All That Jazz’, ‘Cell Block Tango’ and ‘I Can’t
Do It Alone’ in Chicago, plays Greta in
Appetite, a first feature film by British writer-director George Milton. The
role could hardly be further removed
from her slinky Velma Kelly, the jail
queen in Kander-Ebb’s hit musical.
Milton, a triple prize winner at the Fujifilm Scholarship Awards, derived the idea for his screenplay from a Tom Waits song ‘Raindogs’ in which he sings about a hotel where, explains the film-maker, “you dream the dreams of the ones who slept there before you.
“Appetite,” is a great blend, says Milton, of psychological drama and tragi-comedy, “and is set entirely inside a hotel. The audience never sees the outside world. The film is about a group of strangers who are brought together one particular evening and is set over the next three days and nights. The story unravels through the chance series of events that
occur between the guests and the staff.”
This motley collection includes Jay (Trevor Eve), the hotel boss, Nelson (Christien Anholt), a vicious little womaniser, Jonathan (Edward Hardwicke), a defrocked priest and, finally, Greta who arrived at the Station Hotel to write a suicide note she couldn’t finish before.
What attracted Lemper to the role? “I thought it was quite an extraordinary story being told, very spooky. I find it hard to classify because it
However she first came to prominence 15 years ago in the Viennese production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cat s playing Grizabella and Bombalurina. But her breakthrough was three years after that, as Sally Bowles in Kander-Ebb’s Cabaret, mounted in Lyon, Dusseldorf, Rome and Paris. It eventually won her a well deserved Moliere award for her performance in the French production at the Theatre Mogador.
The following year she acted and sang in a show based on the life and repertoire of Kurt Weill. The produc- tion played to packed houses in New York and subsequently took her on a tour of the world, including Milan, Paris and London, where she per- formed it at the Royal Festival Hall.
Since then, she has combined recording - more than a dozen albums to date (in 1993-94, she was named Billboard’s crossover Artist Of The Year) - with symphony concerts, the- atre, recitals and the occasional film part such as in Prospero’s Books, Pret A Porter and Bogus, in which she co- starred alongside Whoopi Goldberg and Gerard Depardieu.
It’s a busy, varied and seriously globe-trotting life for which she is quick to give love and thanks to her three inspirations - hus-
band David and young children, Max and Stella. Did Ute Lemper in any way, one wondered, identify with her intriguing new role in Appetite? “Fortunately,” she replied, “you don’t have to be
the character. That would be self-destructive.
“I think that before I was a mother and had a family I went through phases of isolation, but as an actor you’re able to observe other people’s traits and use them. I liked and respected her extraordi- nary ability to cope with almost everything that
life had thrown at her.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Appetite was photographed by Peter Thwaites on location in the Isle Of Man and originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative.
has the marvellous ability to move from being a dark thriller to a far more light-hearted affair. All the main characters are terribly messed up people who are haunted by their lives.
“My character is in her late 30s and had a modelling career when she was much younger. She’s totally neurotic, even paranoid, about her looks and can’t cope with the fact she’s aging. I thought it a very dramatic role although I do not take her sadness from my own life; I’m very happy. She’s a little in love with Jay, the guy who runs the hotel. There’s a game going on, but they’re handi- capped in the way they communicate with each other and will never be able to open up.”
Lemper on stage, Lemper on screen... but her film and theatre roles are perhaps subsidiary to her best-known “role”, as a cabaret and recording artist of world-wide renown, especially as today’s foremost interpreter of the works of Kurt Weill.
Photos: Centre starring in Appetite and inset B&W; Ute Lemper the vamp. (Still courtesy of Polygram)
EXPOSURE • 34