When the big reveal came earlier this month that unpredictable, chameleonic actress Tilda Swinton was playing an elderly German man in Luca Guadagninos trippy, lush horror remake of Suspiria—in addition to her known role as dance instructor Madame Blanc, and another unpublicized character well leave the audience to discover—it was met with the kind of awed curiosity that surrounds most things Swinton does in her unconventional career. Entertainment journalists assumed Swinton would be game to go deep into how she created this fragile man—an aged psychoanalyst, who, while still mourning the loss of his wife, begins investigating the mysterious goings-on at the Helena Markos Dance Company, where a young patient of his (Chloë Grace Moretz) has disappeared. The film also stars Dakota Johnson as a dancer from Ohio who auditions for the company, which turns out to be a front for a coven of witches looking to exert their power on the innocents who enter its doors.
But days before Suspirias debut on Friday, queries about Swintons process and her attachment to this role were rejected at the films junket, except in the form of some answers she sent via e-mail. When asked how she created this sympathetic character, and what he meant to her—as she donned pounds of makeup and prosthetics every day, turning her luminous skin into a craggy canvas of old age—Swinton reverted to the enigmatic way shed previously answered similar questions: “As is made very clear, in the credits and in every mention of the film, Dr. Klemperer is played in Suspiria by Lutz Ebersdorf, a psychoanalyst who had never appeared in a film before,” she wrote. “This was always a very important idea for Luca and I, from the beginning, both the introduction of a new face for this role, and an oblique and unspoken connection between the three protagonists of the film: Madame Blanc, Madame Markos, and Josef Klemperer. It was always our intention that Lutz Ebersdorf would play Klemperer, and that I would play Lutz—and it was always my intention that we would never speak about it publicly. Unfortunately, we have recently been put in a position where continuing our long-held plan would mean dealing in deliberate deception: our design was leaked by unspecified spoilsports, and rather than be led into dealing in fake news and open lies, I reluctantly admit the close relationship between myself and Ebersdorf.”
Guadagnino was slightly more forthcoming in his take on the role, even suggesting that Swintons reluctance to expound was tied to the death of her father, who passed away at the beginning of the month.
“I dont want to speak for Tilda, but both of us have close, emotional relationships with our aging fathers,” he told me. “Tildas father passed away recently, and my father is almost 88. There is something about these fragile men from last century that is very touching to both me and to her. We were really invested in this poor old man who puts the hat on and has to walk through the streets of Berlin . . . We were thinking of his behavior in 1977 more than anything else, and the touching fun of playing that.”
Swinton and Guadagnino have known each other for 25 years, and both admit to obsessing over Dario Argentos 1977 Suspiria; their version of the film feels like a culmination of all of their previous work, which includes 2015s A Bigger Splash and 2009s I Am Love. For Guadagnino, it was a chance to explore something that haunted him since he first saw the movies poster at age 10, and to revisit a sort of coming-of-age story he tackled in last years Oscar-nominated Call Me by Your Name, but in an over-the-top, uncanny manner that both explored female power, but also investigated the cost of violence on both victim and perpetrator. “Every movie I do, in some ways, is about the process of how we change as people in growing up, in our changing bodies,” he said. “I go back to the same terrains.”
Swinton, for one, credits their collaboration with some of her more daring roles. “[Luca is] one of my best friends, and working within our companionship gives me a quiet and relaxed place in which I can freely imagine new shapes to throw and new adventures to plot,” she wrote.
Yet after working for close to two years on the Klemperer prosthetics with makeup artist Mark Coulier—who previously transformed Swinton into an old lady in Wes Andersons The Grand Budapest Hotel—Guadagnino was still surprised by Swintons embodiment of the character.
“In the last chapter, you see the tentative hand of the old man trying to do something to eradicate the maligned presence of this woman who is in his bedroom,” Guadagnino said. “But also, the impossibility of him [doing anything], because there is no strength left in that shell of a body . . . I thought, Oh, what a wonderful thing. When I shot those scenes, I was often so caring for this old man, thinking, Oh, is he all right? You know how when you shoot with children and old people, you have to be sure that the very heavy process [of the scene] is not hitting hard on them? [Tilda] convinced me.”
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Nicole SperlingNicole Sperling is a Hollywood Correspondent for Vanity Fair.
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