Earlier this year, Film at Lincoln Center announced Cate Blanchett as the recipient of the organization’s 47th Chaplin Award, presented earlier this week (April 25) at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. Congrats to her, and in the lead-up to this event, Blanchett appeared on The Film Comment Podcast to discuss her entire career.
While she touched upon many great classic works of the past, including Todd Haynes‘ “I’m Not There” (where she played a version of Bob Dylan) and Jim Jarmusch‘s “Coffee & Cigarettes” (where she played two versions of herself), one of the most exciting parts of the conversation centered on her future projects Pedro Almodóvar‘s “A Manual For Cleaning Women,” and Todd Field‘s long-awaited new feature “Tár,” his first film since 2006’s “Little Children.“
One of the more interesting facts about the Almodóvar film, his English-language debut, is that it’s a project the Spanish filmmaker approached the Australian actress about a long time ago. And apparently, it’s a film that was touch and go for a while because the filmmaker didn’t feel at ease working in the English language, something he’s never done before as a writer/director.
“Years ago, he came to me with these stories, ‘A Manual For Cleaning Women,’ and, he’s got such good taste, and he’s obviously, does anyone use color like he does? Maybe in ‘The Red Shoes‘ perhaps, but he is very linguistically attuned,” she explained. “So I think he needed to feel comfortable to work in English, so it was sort of on and off again.”
While Blanchett didn’t specify the project, she teased that the two almost worked together before while praising the filmmaker’s most recent effort.
“There was another project that we were going to work on, but the dates didn’t work out,” she told Film Comment. “So I’m so excited that we’re finally doing this, so we’ll start next year, and there are so many fantastic characters in there. I mean, does anyone create such exciting roles [like Pedro?] Weird, sort of interesting counterpoint roles, women, talking to women about seemingly strange surreal things, but yet highly realistic. A classic example is his most recent film, ‘Parallel Mothers,’ where it’s so affecting, incredibly personal, but quite strangely political. And he deals with highbrow and low brow simultaneously; there’s no one like him, so I’m incredibly excited, so that’s next year.”
The Oscar-winning actress also talked up working on Todd Field’s new film “Tár,” which she shot last year in Berlin, fleshing out what to expect from the German-set drama.
“I just worked with Todd Field which was fantastic; he’s such a fantastic collaborator,” she said. “[We worked] in Berlin. I play a conductor of a celebrated German orchestra, and my name is Lydia Tar. It’s about, a sort of fall from grace, a come to Jesus moment and about the creative process, and about power, so it’s really interesting.”
Blanchett added she’s currently working with Alfonso Cuaron (on the Apple TV+ series “Disclaimer“), then she’s working with Australian filmmaker Warwick Thornton, known for the film “Samson & Delilah” on the project “The New Boy.” The busy actress is also producing the next film by “Apples” filmmaker Christos Nikou called “Fingernails” (she produced “Apples” as well).
“Tar” comes out in the fall via Focus Features, likely an Oscar contender. Then it sounds like the order for what’s coming next is “Disclaimer,” “The New Boy,” and then eventually Almodóvar’s aforementioned “Manual For Cleaning Women.” We can’t wait for these new films.
You can listen to the full interview with Film Comment below.