BOARDING GATE (2007)
Role: Sandra
Director: Olivier Assayas
On DVD in the USA Info -
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UNE VIEILLE MAITRESSE (2007) Role: Vellini
Director: Catherine Breillat
On DVD in France, in the UK and in the USA Info -
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MOTHER OF TEARS (2007)
Role: Sarah Mandy
Director: Dario Argento
On DVD in Italy, in France, in the UK, in the USA and in Brazil Info -
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"I'm very free in my work. I'm in my films what I can't be in life. Sometimes, I imagine that people might be disappointed when they meet me if I'm not in life what I'm in my films."
This site is an official Asia Argento website. However, I'm not Asia Argento herself. Do not send fanmail because Asia won't receive it.
I am not receiving any financial gain from the website. No copyright infringement intended.
Special thanks goes out to my three special collaborators and contributors: Audrey (from France), Beatrice (from Italy) and Stef.
Le Zozzerie
Chrysalide Crystallized
I was 7 and,for a month now,i've been with my family (that is to say my mother, father, 2 sisters and paternal grandparents) in Haiti, voodoo island of the Greater Antilles.
Haiti was then (who knows what's become of it today after so many years of war and american imperialism) a true paradise:nature,teeming unchecked and undisturbed in all it's possible forms with the different cultures remaining intact.We'd gone there for a brief vacation but decided not to leave.
We 3 sisters frollicked nude and free, monitored from a distance by our parents, a bit tipsy from rum. The rum.
I remember that my mother at times allowed me,as she put it,"to dip my lips" in that red,sugary liquor.We were happy:little haitians chased after us to touch our hair,rendered gold under the sun.We were a family then,before it splintered into a thousand pieces.All was cheerful and serene,as in any self-respecting childhood.In fact,the real reason for going to Haiti was that my parents wanted to write a film about zombies,said to be numerous on the island.
The zombies of Haiti bore no resemblance to those in the movies:from antiquity it's been told of dead men who climb out of their graves,summoned back by the incantations of magical priests.These were men deprived of personality,profoundly obliging.They were used to pick bananas,and it seemed even Papa Doc kept them as his slaves.
I myself had never been given the chance to see them,my father maintained that he had encountered a couple of them,but i think he said that only to impress us.I have very vivid memories of this period.
My mother and my father were madly in love.
I think that to be the case as well with my grandparents, Salvatore and Edna. Grandpa was fantastic,i was his darling.Each night he told me a new fairytale-methinks he made them up as he went along-and when my hair became entangled he brushed it till he undid the last knot.He did it with firmness,him being the brusque sicilian that he was,and i snorted and stomped and tried to escape his hands.I don't know why but everytime i think of him i feel like crying.Grandma Elda was from Bahia,in Brazil.I picture her at the market,with her broad straw hat and oversize glasses,70 years old negotiating the price of avocados.She liked to prepare them with sugar and lemon.At the time i detested them.In Haiti they have the Voodoo.
This word just sat so right with me and my sisters.We chanted it at the top of our lungs,like a hymn or exclamation.Mum had explained to us that it had to do with religion or the black arts or some such schmegimism.
On Christmas we carried ourselves to church.This was a miniscule lil' Battista church,lit only by candles,possibly coloured.On the wall,a Madonna, a sort of black siren festooned of sequins,baubles,trinkets and every imaginable curio and knickknack.The patron of the catch.We were the only whites,and i remember hostile glances at the start,a deafening silence,air dense with dust,and hanging incense.A priest approached and asked that we sing for them.Not exactly being grand practitioners,we knew not one church-song between us.Anna suggested we sing Santa Lucia.A capital idea. We began:
"on the sea shimmers the silver star"
at least three times,with our ridiculous shrill little voices.Each time we finished we were implored to start again.That evening on the road home we were stopped by militia,who searched us,training enormous machine guns on us.
One night our parents took us dancing in a strange place.It was an open-air gazebo,full of people dancing drunkenly.I recall that my mother and i pirouetted around a big mama with a big fat ass.I had to pee: i asked my sister Fiore to accompany me.Failing to locate the loo i decided to make in the garden. There,behind some boughs,i caught glimpse of some bodies,entangled,sprawled on wooden tables that,perhaps,were coupling.
In fact this place was a fucking bordello.
Over the course of the years i often find myself thinking back to that onegrate clusterfuck of women and men.A few more days and we departed.We resumed the life of always.2 years passed.Even passed the craze of E.T. the petite extraterrestrial.
My parents seperated and,eh trell,this lovely dream of family unity went all fucked to hell.When i look back in time this vacation remains for me the happiest time of my life,my tiny era reigning joyous under the sun.I feared nothing then,i had no inkling of what lie in store for me.
So there you have it, my childhood: a pile of photographs of bronzed people smiling happily on a white beach full of palms.
Music: Disco Sux/U Just Can't Stop The Rock/Sad Core (2008)
