Cate Blanchett wows Mostra with power-drunk conductor role in ‘Tàr’

Power and its abuse, glory and fall: Cate Blanchett impressed the Mostra on Thursday with a chilling role as a star conductor led to her downfall in Tar, film by American director and screenwriter Todd Field. Candidate for the Golden Lion, this feature film is expected on French screens in February 2023.

In this psychological drama, the Australian actress plays Lydia Tàr, a renowned musician living in Berlin. She is one of the few women to lead, with an iron fist, one of the most prestigious orchestras in the world. Adored by music lovers around the world, the musician performs concerts and conferences between two planes.

But Lydia Tar”is at the pinnacle, on the world Olympus“, and therefore cannot “what to go down“, explained Cate Blanchett in front of the press in Venice. Because “she is completely haunted, by someone, by something from her past and by herself“, continued the actress, who won fifteen years ago on the Lido the Interpretation Prize for I’m Not There.

Director Todd Field (In The Bedroom, Little Children) said he wrote this film for Cate Blanchett and her alone. “If she had turned down the role, the film would never have seen the light of day.“, according to him.

This drama evokes contemporary questions about identity, “cancel culture” or the denunciation of harassment. It follows the brutal fall of this woman who until then navigated brilliantly behind the scenes of power, even if it means crushing, without even seeming to notice it, her collaborators. If Tar takes place in an almost exclusively female environment, “this is not a film about women, but about humans“, wanted to clarify Cate Blanchett.

Besides the violinist with whom Lydia Tàr shares her life, interpreted by Nina Hoss, she is the assistant and damned soul of the “maestro“, who will play a key role in his fall. The role is held by Noémie Merlant, spotted outside the borders of French cinema since her role in Portrait of the girl on fire by Celine Sciamma.

“My character is a woman who wants to become a conductor, but is confined to cafes and schedules“, she explained. A frustrating position for the one who “loves music so much, but never touches his instruments”which however also offers him the “control over Lydia’s life“.