Vincent Cassel: The atypical villain
“Where have I seen those pair of steely blue eyes before?” I thought to myself as I watched a Russian mafia film on TV a while back. I jogged my memory, only to realize that I’d seen him in the latest Matt Damon film (Jason Bourne)! Remember the deadly Asset who’s hell bent on killing Bourne? There are some faces which get tattooed on the walls of your brain, merely a fleeting glance serving as the permanent ink. Vincent Cassel is one such face, with uniquely contoured features and eyes so full of menacing restlessness, that ignoring him isn’t an option.
Cassel’s breakthrough performance was the critically acclaimed French black-and-white thriller/drama, La Haine (1995), in which he played a Jewish immigrant (Vinz) who is disillusioned by the state, owing to the impoverished lives of immigrants in France, police brutality, and decides to take revenge by killing a police officer. In one scene, he talks to himself in the mirror, inspired by Robert De Niro’s film, Taxi Driver. However, with his manic eyes, and an honesty so disarming, yet captivating, he makes the scene his own.
Born in Paris (1966), he is the son of the late French dancer/actor, Jean-Pierre Cassel, who was famous for playing light, comic roles. As a child, Cassel witnessed life through the backstage, on set, and in theater, due to his father. He was sent to boarding schools thrice, each time running away to finally join a circus school where he performed acrobatics. A trained ballet dancer himself, the role of Thomas Leroy, as the control-freak director of the New York ballet company who pushes Natalie Portman’s character (Nina) with sexual manipulation in the Oscar nominated Black Swan, seems tailor-made for him in hindsight. A practitioner of the Brazilian dance-martial art, Capoeira, from his younger years, playing the nimble thief (Night Fox) in Ocean’s 12 came easy, with the laser sequence being a flamboyant exhibit of his talent. Cassel admits to learning everything physical, from dance, acrobatics to martial arts, to become a complete person, and using physicality to transform into different characters with ease. For a face so distinct, he gets under the skin of the character he plays rather effortlessly, shocking and mesmerizing audiences, by pulling a new card out of his never ending deck of talents.
Revered as one of the biggest French actors since Gerard Depardieu, Cassel has been an integral part of the transition in French cinema, working with new-age directors like Mathieu Kassovitz (La Haine), Gaspar Noe (Irreversible), Kim Chapiron (Sheitan), Gilles Mimouni (L ‘Appartment) to name a few. He met his ex-wife Monica Bellucci on the sets of L ‘Appartment (1996), and went on to work with her in close to 9 films, 2 cartoons and 3 short films. They have two daughters, Deva (12 years) and Leonie (6 years), who like him, are fluent in French, Italian, Portuguese and English, making them a multi-lingual/multinational family, with houses in Rome, Paris, London and Rio.
Cassel also learnt conversational Russian for his film Eastern Promises, (2007), directed by David Cronenberg, where he plays an alcoholic, homosexual son of a Russian mafia leader, who is struggling to prove his worth to his father. It is a multi-layered performance, which takes the audience by surprise, with Cassel shifting his character (Kirill) between violent, neurotic murderer, to vulnerable, crumbling mass of emotions, baring deep insecurities and complexities with unabashed conviction and flair. You almost feel for him by the end, and are left bereft of judgement for the so-called villains/baddies.
He has played a range of characters during his 20 years as an actor, but is inadvertently drawn towards dark, unhinged characters, who are prone to violence or committing sexual perversions, (Le Haine, Eastern Promises, Irreversible, Sheitan), thieves (Ocean’s Twelve, Dobermann), cowboys (Blueberry), to name a few. He says “I feel like the so-called bad guys are never totally bad. I guess it’s the closest thing I can do to reality: people act nice but nobody really is nice. We all have to balance that with something dark. How we balance it is what makes something interesting… My character in La Haine, he’s not bad, he’s unhappy and usually people are like that. Most of us are angry.” In his 2008 film, Mesrine: Public Enemy #1, he played the real life gangster Jacques Mesrine, which won him a Cesar (the French Oscar) for Best Actor.
He thinks of acting as the easiest thing he can do, a very honest revelation by an actor of his stature, certainly not a modest one though. His belief is rooted in a deep self-awareness he has with his inner self, allowing him to be in the moment between ‘Action’ and ‘Cut’, a rarity in the business. He quotes “Acting has to be easy anyway, that’s one thing. It has to be fun, and I think the more that you have fun, even if it’s tough stuff, like playing something deep or sad, you need to enjoy the moment. To me, my way to do it is to have fun doing it, so you have to come to the point when it is easy. You need to enjoy being sad, and you need to enjoy being scary. The more that you enjoy it, the more you have fun, and the more you reveal yourself. You get caught by the game, like a kid.” Who would have thought him to be this sorted man, who by his own choice, plays dark, edgy, neurotic characters, using his tapering, sexy face to menacing effect, throwing the audience in a dilemma, to love him, or fear him!
His entire line-up of film choices reveal certain personality traits of him, letting us in on the kind of man he is. Sometimes he himself is surprised by a trait he finds similar to a character he is playing, leading him closer to the truth. A man of ideals, and one who gives precedence to directors, more than anything else, he has forged strong relationships with directors like David Cronenberg, Steven Soderbergh, Darren Aronofsky, Gaspar Noe, etc. which go beyond just movies. For a man so invested in the movies, he has a real life which is detached and as interesting as his reel life. Living in Rio post his divorce, for the sheer love for its people and their daily life, he is busy exploring the city, hoping to direct a film there someday, apart from his dream of making a French film that is internationally known. From being the biggest French star, he has come a long way, paving his way into Hollywood, staying unrelenting to his principles, and his kind of cinema.
We hope he keeps doing the cinema he believes in, letting us free fall in love with him, and his devilish charm, which is sure to sweep anyone from under their feet.
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