Colorful role
Elizabeth Debicki finds art of mystery in ‘Burnt Orange’
With its strange title and impressive cast, “The Burnt Orange Heresy” is an intriguing contemporary film noir set in the megabucks art world.
With Mick Jagger, no less, as an avid art collector, Donald Sutherland as one of the world’s great painters, Denmark’s Claes Bang (Dracula in the recent Netflix series) as a disgraced critic, “Burnt Orange” heats up with Elizabeth Debicki’s woman of mystery.
“Heresy” begins as Debicki’s Berenice Hollis meets and immediately jumps into Bang’s bed. Is it just a fling? Or is she spying for Jagger’s billionaire, who wants the last and sole painting of Sutherland’s reclusive artist?
“What’s interesting about playing Berenice,” Debicki, 29, said during a one-on-one interview, “as an actress I’m just going to play for truth.”
But “truth” is wobbly in a movie that, she noted, “tells us from the very beginning that we don’t know which narrative and which narrator to trust.
“Everybody has a different checklist of ‘She could be this or that.’ I always just play her as a former schoolteacher from Duluth and I never play any of the other possibilities” — a spy or whore.
“What’s interesting in the relationship between her and Claes’ character is because of where she is in her life, she presents a blank canvas and he can project onto her whatever he wants her to be.
“Some people might do that in order to be mysterious. Maybe they think, ‘I want connection with you, so I will morph into whatever you want me to be.’ Which is a dangerous place to be in the end. You become very vulnerable and lose track of yourself.”
Debecki’s soaring international career was boosted first by her murdered lover in the Emmy-winning 2016 “The Night Manager” series with Hugh Laurie and Olivia Colman and then Hollywood’s “The Widows” with Viola Davis and Cynthia Erivo.
This summer she’s opposite Robert Pattinson in Christopher Nolan’s shrouded in secrecy action thriller “Tenet.”
“I grew up in Australia from the age of 6 and currently live in the U.K. I was sort of a gypsy for most of my 20s because I would go between L.A., U.K., Australia. That was my little triangle but now I’m much more based in the U.K.”
As for the “Dunkirk” auteur’s “Tenet,”
“I can say nothing about it — I’m really sorry.”
What was her reaction when Nolan offered her “Tenet”?
“The common phrase that comes to mind,” Debicki replied, “It’s a no-brainer.”