For all their faults, the 2020s are shaping up to be a welcome celebration of actor Vicky Krieps. The Luxembourg actress is perhaps best-known with domestic audiences for her performance in Paul Thomas Anderson‘s “Phantom Thread,” but with 2021’s “Bergman Island” and a pair of 2022 Cannes Film Festival titles (“Corsage,” “More Than Ever“) under her belt, she seems poised to enter that rare stratosphere of performers who move between national cinema and Hollywood with ease.
‘More Than Ever’ Review: Vicky Krieps & Gaspard Ulliel Shine In A Heartbreaking Tale Of Love & Death
And since Krieps is the toast of the French Riviera this festival season, it seems only right that her dance card should be full. In an interview with Luxembourg publication Paperjam, Krieps shared that she has been cast in a western written and directed by Viggo Mortensen. The film, which is as yet untitled, will be shot in Mexico. This will be Krieps’s second project after her upcoming “Bachmann & Frisch,” a Luxembourg co-production based on the life of Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann.
Back in 2020, Mortensen made his directorial debut with “Falling” at the Sundance Film Festival, a tense examination of family dynamics when a homophobic man experiencing the early stages of dementia (Lance Henriksen) is forced to move in with his son’s husband and daughter. Reviews of that film were mixed, with our own Robert Daniels calling it “a host of rambling non-connective ideas and tonally grating dialogue,” but a western seems like a natural fit for Mortensen’s sensibilities as an artist.
In adding a western to her filmography, Krieps is following in a fine tradition of women-led westerns. Since the turn of the century, films like Ron Howard‘s “The Missing,” Tommy Lee Jones‘s “The Homesman,” and Gavin O’Connor’s “Jane Got a Gun” have given male directors a chance to unpack their complicated feelings on modernity while showcasing an actress at the height of her power. It will be interesting to see where Krieps and Mortensen’s new project slots in this canon of 21st Century frontier cinema.