Pamela Anderson, Callum Turner, Tracy Letts, Lukas Gage and Jamie Bell gave the Berlinale some much-needed star power at the press conference for Rosebush Pruning on Saturday.
The cast and their director, Karim Aïnouz, arrived as the temperature dropped even further in the German capital. The film — following an American family who butt heads while staying in a Spanish villa, described by the film fest as “a biting satire about the absurdity of the traditional patriarchal family” — will get its world premiere Saturday evening at the Berlinale Palast. Co-stars Elle Fanning and Riley Keough were notably absent.
At the top of the presser, a journalist decided to address “the elephant in the room” and ask Turner about the fervent rumors that he is the next James Bond: “It’s very early for that question,” Turner agreed, smiling slightly. “I’m not going to comment on it.” Letts jokingly interjected: “I’m sorry… I’m the next James Bond!” prompting laughter around the room.
The Berlin Film Festival and its celebrity attendees have been under scrutiny so far this week after jury president Wim Wenders, Golden Bear recipient Michelle Yeoh, and Sunny Dancer star Neil Patrick Harris all declined to talk about cinema’s relationship with politics and the rise of fascism. European journalists have voiced their disapproval that Berlin, historically a politically active festival, has seemingly shut out urgent conversations as they arise at the pressers.
Acclaimed Indian author Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things) pulled out of the fest entirely on Friday in response to comments by Wenders that “art should not be political.” Yeoh told journalists at her press conference that “I don’t think I am in the position to really talk about the political situation in the U.S., and also I cannot […] say I understand it, so it is best not to talk about something I don’t know about,” while Harris said he prefers to “do things that are apolitical” when hit with a barrage of questions on U.S. politics.
This time around, Letts, who plays the wealthy patriarch character in Rosebush Pruning, was first to answer questions on politics: “This movie speaks for itself. This movie has its own beautiful statement to make, courtesy of [a] beautiful screenplay and beautiful ensemble cast and beautiful director.”
“I can’t speak for other artists,” he continued, “I don’t necessarily feel comfortable taking away from the work that they’ve done… It’s an awkward thing to discuss because of our political situation, but one of the things that this movie gets at, I think, on the face of it, is that this extreme disparity in wealth breeds bad behavior, and, in fact, probably creates fascism. This is one of the […] ways around it in terms of working as an artist. We’re all artists coming together to work on a thing together and politics taking place in one’s country don’t necessarily impact each of us as we gather together.”
Brazilian filmmaker Aïnouz was also asked about the public financing for the film and help from the German Federal Film Board (FFA) and U.K. Global Screen Fund.
“We live in a time where censorship and political judgments of what we’re doing are really, really dangerous, particularly in certain countries,” he answered. “I think public funding is really important. We’re not only doing something for audiences, but sometimes, to get there, we do need to be accompanied by the initiatives, like from Germany… I come from a country where cinema would not exist if it weren’t for public funding.”
The Last Showgirl star Anderson later touched on playing the mother in Aïnouz’s film: “It’s always complex, being a mother and the shame that carries anyway and just the generation of mothers in my own life… That was quite an interesting journey.” She added: “Obviously, she is gay, and there’s a lot of interesting rebellion going on in her.”
