Fans of Italian actress
Asia Argento will be disappointed to learn that she may be calling it quits as an onscreen tramp.
The issue came to a head for her at last spring's Cannes Film Festival, where she was promoting three films that featured her physically or emotionally naked - or both. The flash bulbs, and the questions that went with them, got to be too much.
"There's a limit," Argento says in a smoky voice on the phone from her home in Rome. "And luckily I'm getting more dignified and old as time goes on. My rebellious years have come to a halt. And I'm sick of having to justify myself for work that I do. It mixes the person that you are and the persona of what you are on the screen.
"The last thing I want is to be pigeonholed into doing the same role for the rest of my life, like Bela Lugosi did," adds Argento. "I don't want to end up sleeping in the coffin like him."
The Lugosi/Dracula reference is apt, because Argento conveys the world-weary impression that she's been around for the past 300 years, mostly at night. A case in point is one of her Cannes films, Olivier Assayas' "Boarding Gate," which opens Friday (the other two are Catherine Breillat's "The Last Mistress" and Abel Ferrara's "Go Go Tales").
In "Boarding Gate," she plays an ex-prostitute who has an S&M relationship with an American businessman (Michael Madsen). An excruciating scene between them is played out in what seems like real time before a gun goes off and she flees to Hong Kong, where she loses her money, her passport and nearly her life.