How Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps Took the ‘Awkward’ Position as Separated Sisters (Except)

Cate Blanchett And Vicky Krieps They felt like they had to have a three-week sleepover Father Mother Sister Brother – but depicting two estranged sisters enduring the world’s most uncomfortable afternoon is what they reveled in the most.

In this season’s awkward holiday anthology, director Jim Jarmusch explores the inner workings of disconnected families through three distinct stories, each centered on adult children dealing with long-standing emotional distance.

For Blanchett, 56, and Krieps, 42, the film’s “Mother” chapter became an intimate study of how siblings, regardless of age, fall back into their old roles under the watchful eye of a parent. Set in Dublin, the vignette follows sisters Tim (Blanchett) and Lilith (Krieps) as they reunite with their mother (Charlotte Rampling) for tea – a ritualized meeting that only takes place once a year at the suggestion of his therapist. Despite its apparent politeness, the annual visit becomes a pressure cooker where resentment is communicated through baited silences and passive-aggressive remarks.

“There’s a real power of gentleness in the film, and it sparks a kind of collective understanding of what families can mean,” Blanchett shares exclusively in the latest issue of Us every week. “We all bring our own personal understanding of family, not only the families we are biologically connected to, but also those we are tangentially connected to or those we have created.”

Blanchett, who lost her father at just 10 years old, admits that she herself grew up in a sort of “silent” household. And even though, unlike Tim, she was able to form a “deep and close” relationship with her own sister, she understands how “glorious and complicated” that dynamic can be.

“I think what’s interesting about siblings is that they evolve into very different creatures in the outside world, but when they come together, they somehow return to the dynamic that they established before they were seven years old,” she explains. We.

In the case of Tim and Vicky, the two often feel like they want to be closer but can’t get past the walls that exist between them. Blanchett points out that women are “entering middle age” and therefore have a sense of “acceptance” of things simply being the way they always will be.

“[Lilith] “He’s the character that sucks up all the oxygen, and Tim doesn’t spend a lot of time above water,” Blanchett says of their dynamic. “That’s not to say she’s not confident or shy or wallflower, maybe in the outside world, but maybe that’s what she becomes in space with her mother and sister.”

Blanchett grew up in a “house full of women” – she offers her condolences to her “poor brother” – and learned early on that each family is “unique” in the way they form “their own behaviors, gestures and ways of interacting with each other.” The genius of Jarmusch’s storytelling, however, is in emphasizing how many similarities there are based on your position in your family.

“Jim [wrote] something so strange, so peculiar and deeply disturbing, that you just had to play it out and resolve it. And that contributed to the performative nature that we often have in families, that we play these roles, almost for each other rather than for ourselves,” she explains. “So while the tea was being served, there was a sort of strange, stiff, almost playful, performative quality to their relationship that we had to sort of try to unpack.”

For Krieps, the trio’s disconnect goes back to generational trauma. “When you never learn to share your feelings or to share your life, you don’t know [how]”, she explains. “I know a lot of people who, no matter what, would never see their children. A therapist could tell me 500 times not to see my children and I would never do that.

She adds that Lilith and Tim’s mother “probably worked and was very happy to be this empowered woman”, which is probably the result of being “hurt in her childhood, where either her mother didn’t love her or her mother didn’t love her in the right way”.

“We all carry trauma over generations and I think Lilith doesn’t dare tell the real truth, which would amount to [say]’Why weren’t you there for us? Why are we only here once a year, I’d like to see you for Christmas?’” she explains.

For Krieps’ life, it’s imperative to be the person “who stops the train every 50 yards” to emotionally check on those closest to her, so playing Lilith was a change of pace. “Let’s talk, what’s really going on? Tell me how you really feel,” she said. “I constantly remind people to tell me what they really think, what they really want.”

She adds that being very outgoing also has its “downsides”, noting that she is often called a “troublemaker” in her family. “I struggle a lot because I’m trying to wake them up. I’m like, ‘No, I don’t believe it. What do you really think?'”

Ironically, the emotional turmoil seen on screen between the characters of Blanchett, Krieps, and Rampling was countered by an unexpected closeness off camera. Blanchett remembers late-night dinners, long conversations and time spent chatting with colleagues “like we were in this long sleepover” while being “thrown to the floor” at their filming location in Ireland.

“We filmed in the same location and we spent all of our time between takes on the bed in Charlotte’s room,” the Oscar winner said. We. It was like we walked into this formal, stiff performance space, and then we had this long dialogue that lasted the entire time we were filming between the three of us. The four of us, including Jim, obviously.

Krieps, for his part, enjoyed the juxtaposition of bonding with his teammates during their downtime and being able to play off the uncomfortable tone of their scenes.

“It felt a bit like being in the theater. We were this family, and we knew what to do, and because we’re actors, once we were on stage, we slipped into that character or that tension,” she recalls. “And even though we were in a tension that we feel physically ourselves, we still had fun. We had fun being difficult!”

For Blanchett, it was the perfect way to kick off her year. “It was a very different three weeks for me in Ireland, and my family didn’t join me, so it felt like I was with two sisters,” she says. “It was a really lovely way to start the year. Just incredibly intimate and special.”

Father Mother Sister Brother hits theaters nationwide on December 24.