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Eva Green discusses filming 'The Dreamers' sex scenes
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Most people recognise Eva Green for her flourish as James Bond’s one true love, Vesper Lynd, in 2006’s Casino Royale. Whilst the role remains iconic due to its pivotal importance to the Daniel Craig arc of movies, Green has been in her fair share of other memorable titles. Kingdom of Heaven, Cracks, Camelot, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, and Penny Dreadful are just a selection of the other film and television projects she has starred in, with the French actor having a range of genres under her belt.
For many, however, Green’s finest moment happens to be her breakout one. This was as Isabelle in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 2003 romantic drama, The Dreamers. A somewhat controversial film due to its themes of incest and graphic sex scenes, the project was based on Gilbert Adair’s 1988 novel The Holy Innocents. Adair also wrote the screenplay, meaning that the film doesn’t stray too far from his original work.
The Dreamers follows an American university student, Matthew, who meets a strange brother and sister, Théo and Isabelle, in a febrile Paris in 1968, with the student riots just around the corner. After bonding over their love of cinema, they soon become locked in an erotic triangle.
A challenging and passionate title, as well as being Green’s breakout performance, The Dreamers is noted for the number of graphic nude scenes that Green was required to shoot as a fresh-faced newcomer. The one scene that is suspended in the collective memory is the moment Matthew takes Isabelle’s virginity in the kitchen. A difficult watch, Green has been commended for handling it like a pro, particularly in the presence of the legendary director Bertolucci, who had gained notoriety for the rape scene in 1972’s Last Tango in Paris. That particular moment traumatised 19-year-old actor Maria Schneider so greatly and caused such hostile publicity that it negatively impacted the rest of her career.
Understandably, then, it was a challenging experience for Green to film the sex scenes in The Dreamers. Remembering her work, recalled to The Sun in 2012: “The sex scenes were quite full on and frank in The Dreamers. I had a scene in which my own character has to lose her virginity. I had to remember how I felt when I first had sex. I am so reserved in real life, but I surprised myself completely”.
It took alcohol and a stark breaking of the ice between her and Louis Garrel, the actor playing Théo, to make things a little easier. Green continued: “I was asked if I wanted some alcohol before some of the scenes, and admit that I did have some whisky. There was a breaking of the ice before the sex scene”.
She said: “The actor Louis Garrel came into my trailer and said: ‘I will show you my d**k if you show me your breasts’. So I did, and he did. He said to me: ‘They look great’. So when it came to the sex scenes, it made it a little easier”.
Of that infamous kitchen scene, when speaking to Vulture in 2020, Green was asked what it was like to film such an intense moment as a “new actor”. Labelling the experience as “scary and surreal”, the actor expressed: “I know. I don’t know if I’d be capable to do this again [laughs]. It’s very strange. I think when you’re so scared of something — of such a key scene — and also it’s very exposed, you forget everything around you.”
She concluded: “It’s like you’re on a special drug or something. I’ve sort of deleted this in my memory, you see? It was so scary and surreal. I’m somebody who doesn’t even dare to — I’m not very confident in my body. I don’t like hanging out in a swimsuit around people without a towel around me, even at that age. So it’s like, Here you go! I’ll show my body! I don’t understand myself. I don’t get it.”
