SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay star in a new film in which the most telling scenes are about going to the attic, having tea or walking the dog. There's not even a lot of dialogue. The film is shattering. "45 Years" gives us Kate and Geoff Mercer about to celebrate their 45th anniversary when Geoff opens a letter in their kitchen that tells him the body of an old love has been discovered in the melting ice of a glacier in Switzerland. They were climbing when she slipped and died long before Kate and Geoff ever met. Kate asks him...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "45 YEARS")
CHARLOTTE RAMPLING: (As Kate Mercer) If she hadn't died, if you hadn't got to Italy, would you have married her for real?
TOM COURTENAY: (As Geoff Mercer) But we didn't go to Italy, did we? And she did die.
RAMPLING: (As Kate Mercer) Yeah, but if you had.
COURTENAY: (As Geoff Mercer) I thought you didn't like theoretical questions.
RAMPLING: (As Kate Mercer)Just answer me.
SIMON: The body of the old, lost girlfriend discovered in the fissure of a glacier opens a fissure between the long happy couple, too. Charlotte Rampling who starred in "The Night Porter" more than 40 years ago and "Broadchurch" now has already won the Silver Bear for best actress at the Berlin Film Festival for "45 Years." She joins us from Paris. Thanks so much for being with us.
RAMPLING: It's a pleasure.
SIMON: What drew you to this film, Ms. Rampling?
RAMPLING: I think the simplicity with which you introduce the telling of the story just now that this is a couple that just goes quietly about their lives. You know, she's retired. He is, too. They're - they seem very content together, companions. They've lived a long time together and then something so unexpected can change everything and that's what I think makes it an extraordinary tale because a button is pushed and then all the other buttons are pushed and you just suddenly do not know where you are. You're in total confusion.
SIMON: What do you think begins to worry Kate?
RAMPLING: It's her husband's attitude to begin with, that he becomes very remote, very strange. It seems that he's wanting to, you know, go back to that time when he was with the girl to re-create something of the past with this dead woman. That's the thing that starts to shift things and starts to really make her, you know, wonder what on Earth is going on and then there is the story of the attic
SIMON: I don't know how much we can tell, but the story of...
RAMPLING: No, we can't tell you all (laughter).
SIMON: OK, we can't. OK, the story of the attic.
RAMPLING: Yeah.
SIMON: And we - I would like to mention the film is written and directed by Andrew Haigh. You and Tom Courtenay seem to finish each other's sentences. Was it that kind of working relationship?
RAMPLING: Yeah, and it's - that's actually what does happen. I think Andrew - he's a young man of 42, but he's very wise. And he's obviously much older than his years and understands relationships very, very beautifully. And that's what does happen, you know, when you've lived so long together. So we're not going to be sort of making correct sentences and sort of being, you know, being really polite with each other in a way that may be a script could do it. But this is about just like you've rubbing against us - each other all those years so there's a familiarity which is wonderfully comfortable. And that's why it becomes more and more distressing that, you know, something awful could happen, that this could stop and that it might have to, yeah, change for a while.
SIMON: I wonder if you could tell me the story. I've read over the years you were discovered in the secretarial pool at the age of 17.
RAMPLING: (Laughter) You like that story, do you?
SIMON: I've never heard of it. I just - that's all I know about it, the phrase.
RAMPLING: Oh, right, yeah, well, that was true. It was true, yes. I mean, I had to - I had to earn my living, so my father sent me to a secretarial school. I then got a job. It was a temporary job in an advertising agency, and I was spotted on the executive floors. One of the guys came down and said would I be photographed for a Cadbury advertisement. Cadbury is, you know, the milk bars, the chocolate
SIMON: Have you seen that picture in recent years?
RAMPLING: Yes, I have. I've got it. I've got it stuck in an album.
SIMON: Well, I - 'cause there's a - at one point in the film Geoff says - he looks at one of his old photos and says doesn't even - it doesn't even feel that it was me who was there. I wonder how you feel about when you take a look at pictures of you at earlier stages when you were photographed.
RAMPLING: Well, funny enough, no, I don't have that feeling. I really feel that I was there. I don't remember lots of things, but that I can remember. And photographs actually are very helpful in films, too, 'cause they really remind you of where you were, what you were doing, how you were doing it, and so not only do you remember the - sort of the anecdote and the details, but you also remember what you were feeling. So I certainly remember what I was feeling when I got that. I was so proud because, I mean, I was only 17 and I just got my first job and this could - this could mean big stuff (laughter).
SIMON: Well, and it did as it turns out.
RAMPLING: And it did, and it did, yeah.
SIMON: You made a number of signature films in the late 60s and 70s - Luchino Visconti's "The Damned," "The Night Porter," a film which I've always wanted to see, "Max Mon Amour," a woman who falls for a chimpanzee, right?
RAMPLING: Yeah
SIMON: I have read interviews over the years in which you said those were not necessarily happy times for you.
RAMPLING: No, I was - I had a troubled inner life, that's for sure, for quite a long time. And in fact, it's been the second part of my life which has been much better. But the first part of my life I - yeah, I was often in difficulties, yeah.
SIMON: Can I ask why or what?
RAMPLING: I don't know really. It's just - I think that's the nature of the beast. It's what we've lived, what we haven't lived, how we come to terms with I guess just, you know, who we are. It's a, you know, it's a psychological sort of minefield, isn't it, life, and some of us have had greater difficulties fathoming it out and getting through and feeling OK.
SIMON: Actors, of course, are called upon to be so many different kinds of people
RAMPLING: Yes, but that actually was - I loved that. That really helped. That really - I enjoyed the fact that I could, you know, I could leave myself and go and be someone else and be protected by a whole unit of people who were looking after me and, you know, making sure that everything was all right for the character even though Charlotte might have been sort of on the back burner
SIMON: Yeah. How is acting different for you now than it was, say, in your 20s?
RAMPLING: My life's experience now is richer, it's more rewarding. I've lived through many different things and come out of - through many different things. So I've actually got, you know, a basket of things that I can go into. But it's still very much the same. I still as am instinctive and as - jumping off in the deep end all the time. I sort of love that.
SIMON: And at this point your life, what do you think acting can give to people?
RAMPLING: Well, I think in the reactions of people having seen now "45 Years" they've been very affected by this film. Now, when somebody is affected by something, it means you have touched. It means you have actually shared something profoundly and deeply with another human being, and that's really what I want to do because that's the thing that's most important. And it's the most difficult thing to do, is to get that across, is to get that sort of shared combustion in a moment when they are just sitting in a cinema watching what you are able to give them and getting it.
SIMON: Charlotte Rampling - she stars with Tom Courtenay in the film "45 Years." Thanks so much.
RAMPLING: Thank you very much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.