Beauty and the beastly politics ... Rachel Weisz. Photograph: AP
Stories of Rachel Weisz's pulchritude travel far before her. In the flesh, she is indeed beautiful, if less shockingly so than on screen; wide-eyed, well-groomed, still almost girlish despite being comfortably in her mid-30s. Sat neatly on an overstuffed sofa in an overplush suite in London's Dorchester Hotel, she looks composed, at ease as all the industry of promotion whirrs around her.
- The Constant Gardener
- Production year:
2005
- Country:
Rest of the world
- Cert (UK):
15
- Runtime:
128 mins
- Directors:
Fernando Meirelles, Fernando Mereilles
- Cast:
Bill Nighy, Danny Huston, Hubert Kounde, Rachel Weisz, Rachel Weisz, Ralph Fiennes
- More on this film
At times it seemed that Weisz's acceptance onto this plane of celebrity had involved some kind of secret clause: that she remain nothing more potent or diverting than eye candy. After a slim but head-turning debut in Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty ("a small part starkers by the pool", she once called it), she took a succession of movies that, while not limiting her to the one-dimensional, didn't offer much opportunity to demonstrate proper, grown-up acting.
There was Chain Reaction (1996), with Keanu Reeves, an action movie so forlornly weak that it appears to have self-deleted from cinematic history, and which Weisz freely admits she would rather forget. Then there were the near-misses. The Land Girls (1998), a sweet but sticky-centred second world war romance; Beautiful Creatures (2000), an enthusiastic yet slightly misjudged tale of girl power gone awry; an unconvincing gangster heist, Confidence (2003); and another Keanu albatross, the overexcited fantasy adventure Constantine (2005).
More interesting possibilities appeared with Michael Winterbottom's I Want You (1998) and Istvan Szabo's Sunshine (1999); but then, via Stephen Sommers's brashly thrilling juggernauts The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2000), it appeared Weisz had resolved that big-budget swashbuckling was more her style (she has made it clear that, should the Mummy make a second return, she wants to be involved). Then there was a dextrous if unassuming performance opposite Hugh Grant's feckless hero in 2002's About a Boy, and a certain kind of romcom once more seemed to suit.
Quoting her successes on stage (she won an award for Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams and later excelled in LaBute's The Shape of Things, both in London), her supporters maintain that Weisz has all the while been biding her time, plugging purposefully away and waiting for the right scripts to come along.
Her new film, which she's in London to promote, offers plenty of promise. The Constant Gardener is an adaptation of ex-cold warrior John le Carre's novel of the same name. The book is a Kenya-based tale of international pharmaceutical companies doing disquieting things while bribe-tainted governments look the other way.
In the film Weisz is cast as a headstrong young activist who falls in love with an uptight British diplomat (Ralph Fiennes). When he's relocated to Kenya to fly the colonial flag, she's desperate to follow and help with aid on the ground. A grimly murky story of corruption and collusion, compromise and deceit, follows. Divided between the stark poverty of Kibera, Nairobi's (and sub-Saharan Africa's) largest slum, and boozy expat drinks parties in the suburbs, much of the story is told - like the novel - via an extended, sometimes dizzying, sequence of flashbacks.
The main reason The Constant Gardener has been so keenly anticipated is because of the man in charge: this is the second full-scale feature from Fernando Meirelles, the Brazilian director who exploded on to the international scene with 2002's astonishing, shocking City of God, itself filmed largely in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
Weisz gleefully admits that, as soon as she saw the script, she was desperate to convince Meirelles that she was worth getting hold of. She claims that he had no idea who she was beforehand - "he wasn't really familiar with any British actresses" - but flew over to London from LA in order to audition, and felt no shame in pursuing him afterwards. "I wrote him a very passionate letter," she smiles. "I really wanted the role."
Weisz certainly sees passion at the film's core, which refracts its political tensions through an intense love affair between her character and Fiennes's. "It has a big heart, and a big soul," she says. "What I love about it is it's very entertaining: it's a political thriller, and a love story."
Is her character's passionate bloody-mindedness, I wonder, something Weisz can identify with? Is she that strong-willed?
Her eyes widen, and she pauses, weighing the question. "I can't compare what I do to what she does, I just can't. I'm not saving lives." But how about on a more personal level? "She really doesn't care what people think of her," Weisz replies. "Most people care what people think about them... we all do."
Did she relish playing such a strong woman? She grins, pointing out that she's down to play Strindberg's Miss Julie in New York next spring. "I don't know about strong - always makes me think of women lifting barbells."
She's equally hesitant about the film's engagement with contentious third world politics. "I wouldn't say it's a political statement," she replies, rocking forward on her heels and enunciating the word with care, "because it's not a documentary, it's a piece of fiction... I'm very wary of talking about statements. I'm a storyteller, I'm an actor, an entertainer."
"It's not my job to ...", she concludes, slowly, then hesitantly has another go: "Some actors choose to ... but I don't ..."
Weisz's reluctance to locate her place in the wider picture, even that of the film, is in one way refreshing, at least refreshingly rare in a post-G8 media environment where public figures tumble over themselves to support fashionable causes - but it is also, perhaps, a little perplexing. The Constant Gardener acquires much of its power and energy, as did City of God, from its offhand but lacerating realism; Weisz's own character was based by Le Carre on charity worker Yvette Pierpaoli, who is saluted in the closing credits as having "lived and died giving a damn".
As in City of God, too, Meirelles often shoots unscripted, his actors mingling with a local, non-professional cast; and, as in City of God, these scenes are among the film's most powerful. Weisz is much take with his approach:
"We walked around and improvised. There was no bureaucracy, no technicians; it was incredibly free, incredibly spontaneous. Fernando really values spontaneity and improvisation and freshness."
But again there's the question of impact. What about the accusation that big movies, arriving for location shoots in picturesque but impoverished parts of the globe, can be every bit as exploitative as Big Pharma? Weisz rushes to agree: "Often Hollywood crews go into third world countries and I don't believe they behave well." Has she been affected by what she's seen, then? Will it influence her future career? "Um, I suppose so," she trails off. "I'm sure it would, yeah ..."
During The Constant Gardener's filming, its crew did work closely in tandem with local communities, not only in Nairobi but in the southern Masai areas of the Rift Valley, where the second phase of the film was shot. A bridge was built in Kibera, allowing vehicles from one part of the slum to another; a school, a water tank and play area were constructed. As Weisz points out, the producers also drew upon a deep reservoir of local talent, hopefully paving the way for other film-makers, who have until now preferred to shoot in South Africa, to look north instead.
Again, though, Weisz is reticent about her part in the project. She remains firm that her job is simply as an actor, an entertainer. "What do I do for a living?" she asks. "I tell stories. I mean, I think there's a place for that. But I'm not saving people's lives."