Charlotte Rampling - Who I Am

Today, Charlotte, you seem worried and you say with a laugh, I dont know what this book is anymore What did we say, that it would be my childhood or a sort of portrait, Ive lost track. One thing it definitely cant be is a biography. Ive tried telling my life story, it doesnt work.

And it would be good if I actually liked the book we make together. Is that possible? To genuinely accept it, like it? I recoil from definitions, narrations, you know that, Christophe. I dont open up.

Who I Am: not a biography, or a song, or a betrayal, barely a novel lets say a ballad, one of those ones you hum, like The Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past. You are one of those ladies whatever era you come from: I see you in photographs, haughty, often naked in your twenties, in a short skirt, black stockings, playful, in your own world. With that effortlessly elusive smile.

You make your gaze clear-eyed. Dive into me: youll never see what I see.

Everything is true in our book. Or rather: everything has happened. Dialogue, images, memories. Occasionally Ive changed the clothes people were wearing. Ive added some colour to the silence, and some words just a few.

It all starts at an editorial meeting. A typical Wednesday: we are dreaming aloud in the office where Radiguet signed the contract for The Devil in the Flesh. Parquet floor, classical mouldings, wallpaper sky. Dreaming is the word for it. There is something unreal about great books.

On this particular Wednesday one of us brings up your name; he met you at a dinner. You are difficult. Dangerous. Bristling with lawyers. The word cruises between us like a shark. But who isnt difficult? An editor announces that your official biography has been taken on by a talented, formidable female American journalist and already sold to a French publisher. For a fortune. We drop the subject.

I ask a friend for your address. He shrugs genially and I dash off a letter to you that same evening. The challenge, the game. Your defiant solitude. To be you. To understand. To find the right words.

You were sweet, really, the first time we met, Charlotte; years ago now. Of course this expression makes you bristle. Sweetness, no Christophe, dont overdo it Its only the third page! Why not throw in my kindness, my even temper while were at it?

I can feel your reticence. Your wary shyness. How familiar all this is to you. How tired you are of being stared at, desired. Imagined. And second-guessed. What better way could there be of not listening to you? It is as if there is someone imprisoned in your legendary name.

Men come and see me in the night. Men watch me and steal my secrets. I leave a fleeting image, fragments of feeling, sensations I watch the men, I see them in the half-light, I listen to their breathing. The screen separates us. And who knows who knows what is transformed by these images.

I am waiting for you, I feel a little afraid of your intelligence, of your challenging gaze, of your fear. Here you are. Long beige coat. We order quickly and quietly.

You break into a smile. Your celebrity memoirs will never be published. The moment you saw the first chapters, you put a stop to it. All those details, those anecdotes, those empty words. You give me the names of publishers and agents in Paris and New York, as if I needed proof. No book will be done without Charlotte Rampling and no book will be done with her. Wanting everything, forbidding everything.

So does that mean I have to obey? Keep my distance? Be a wallflower?

I look at your delicate, fine-skinned hands, which seem to be searching for something. Time has passed through those fingers, desire, playfulness, wisdom, I dont know, childrens laughter.

When its my turn, I say my piece: I havent come here with advances or contracts. I just want to give it a go. Head towards childhood. And if you call this off too, if you swallow the key to the safe, so be it. The pages will remain. Thats the way it is with books you dream of.

Now you finish my glass of burgundy. You dont mind? Its a good way to begin, dont you think? Yes, Charlotte, its a good beginning. Then you laugh.

Youve given me writings from different periods of your life, contemplative paragraphs, meditative thoughts. Ive tried to be you, Charlotte. To know you a little. Never to hurt you. I thought that, come what may, your name would be on this book. That you would be the sole source of whatever is in it. That it would be a portrait and a self-portrait. A pact, that was what I said.

My name is Tessa Rampling. Charlotte is my middle name, but it took over. Tessa became Charlotte.

Ever since I was born, I have been haunted by this feeling of what comes into your life and is then gone, what wounds you, what you cant control. Children imagine things, they make up stories.

The laughter and the tears become indistinguishable. We lock them away. For the Ramplings, the heart is a safe. Kept by generations, the family secret becomes a legend. We only know how to keep silent.

People stare at you. They come closer. They back away.

No hint of trembling as you stand naked in the galleries of the Louvre where La Tour and Fra Filippo Lippi dream. The Mona Lisa is looking at you through her bulletproof glass case. Theres no half-light here. Everything is hidden by the dazzling light of the photographer. Now you break into a smile: where are the museum attendants, the works of art, the silk dresses, the togas and jewels, the symbols, the crucifixes and headdresses? Where is the history of art, in all its infinite seriousness?

The Madonna, cest moi.

Come and get me if you can.

I show up at your address, ring the bell and wait. A few doors down theres a shop that makes knives. A Chinese chemist. An antiquarian book dealer. I daydream as I wait.

Then you appear, black trousers, worn trench coat: So Christophe, are you lost? Are you looking for me out here, on the street?

Spring has come. Weve arranged to meet in the Luxembourg Gardens. We walk through the park in silence. I look at your sandals, which are dusty, like a childs. There is a little stain on your trousers. We end up sitting at a metal table. Bad coffee. A girl signals wildly Is it her? Is it her? she asks you for an autograph. You give her a sweet smile. She cant believe it.

Its fine, really you whisper. I walk you back to your front door two hours and three sentences later. Shattered portrait.

I look in the mirror and see a woman I do not recognise. A mosaic face made up of random pieces chosen by chance. A collection of expressions chosen and rearranged to form a face.

It must be hard being Charlotte Rampling. Talking is hard. Writing is hard. The words dont come.

So you have to meet a writer, a mild-mannered vampire, a tenacious creature with four hands and two heads. Dont invent. Dont steal. Talk a little. Listen. Then take that part of you that doesnt open up.