She brightly declared herself in The Horseman Called Death, in the TV series Yesenin and Liquidation, and now she plays in the psychological drama Stranger by Italian Giuseppe Tornatore, one of the world’s leading film directors. For her role, Rappoport has already been awarded the Italian Oscar — the David Donatello prize.
Psychologies: Do you feel like a star?
Ksenia Rappoport: I’m not a star! And there were no changes in my understanding of myself from what I played, what was done. The stars…they are in the sky. I’m on the ground.
What does it mean to you to be “down to earth”?
When I auditioned for the role in The Stranger, I didn’t know a word of Italian. And with iron-concrete arrogance, she scribbled the learned text. Tornatore made comments to me between takes, I did not understand anything, but somehow I followed the comments. The situation was ridiculously implausible: Rome, early autumn, the Cinecitta studio, where the history of cinema was created, and here I am trying out for the main role … What nonsense! But it will end, which means that we must live it with pleasure! I felt peace and freedom because no one knows who I really am.
Your heroines are often strangers and alien to the environment in which they find themselves: a polka in Odessa in Liquidation, a Ukrainian in Italy in Stranger, a Frenchwoman in Rainy Season. Why? Is it about looks? Or deeper?
It is possible that in me. As a child, I always could not fit into the pioneer camp environment. In the evenings, with dreary envy, I listened to common songs with a guitar, I understood: not mine. And I spent more and more time in the burning club. With a feeling, I will not hide, some loneliness. And to some extent, this feeling remained in me. True, with age you understand that if you don’t fit into any structures, then you don’t need to be afraid of this. And trying to drive yourself into some kind of framework is stupid, because anyway, some part of the body will start sticking out into the street and you will be cold and uncomfortable.
And «The Stranger» is not about how a foreigner tries to fit into the Italian environment?
No, there is a much deeper story. About an internally destroyed, it would seem, being, a woman who is trying to obliquely, crippled to realize herself as a mother. When it seems that everything is already lost for her. Almost a detective story.
«Stranger»
Producer: Giuseppe Tornatore. Starring: Xenia Rappoport, Michele Placido, Claudia Jerini. At the box office since April 17th.
Pay attention to the work of Ksenia Rappoport in the adventure drama «The Season of the Rains» by Sergei Debizhev, which is released on March 27.