Gillian Anderson’s visit to the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 was not particularly auspicious. The Chicago-born actress was still closely associated with the TV series X-Files. In fact, that year she also starred in the second spin-off film from the series, The X-Files: I Want to Believe. She looked ravishing as she walked the red carpet for the opening night film of the 61st Film Festival, directed by Fernando Meirelles. Blindnessin a white Alberta Ferretti dress. (When asked why red carpet dress works, she replied, “I think what suits you. If something suits you, wear it.”)
But the film that really brought her to the Croisette was directed by Robert Wade How to lose friends and alienate peoplestarring Simon Pegg and loosely based on British journalist Toby Young’s memoir about his disastrous mission in Vanity gallery. A special trailer was run to whet the appetite for the film, but as Rotten Tomatoes reported, “the event devolved into the kind of chaos that is a feature of the book when the projectors malfunctioned midway through the first sequence.” When the film was released later that year – no. It opened No. 1 in the UK, but flopped in the US – THR Critic Sherri Linden, referring to Gillian Anderson’s “manipulative major blurb”, noted that the film “assembles a fine cast but gives them little to do other than hit a single note.”
Since then, of course, Anderson has become the queen of both prestigious TV shows (winning an Emmy for… The crown) and British Theater (where she will star in a revival Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? This fall) as well as L’Oréal’s global ambassador. She said during a tour in Cannes last year Standard“I just came from Vancouver, where I was shooting a Jane Schönbrunn movie with Hannah Einbender. A little indie horror.” And now this movie, Teen sex and death in Miasma campmade its world premiere in this year’s Un Certain Regard sidebar.
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