Paprika Steen separates characters, personal life

Actress playing alcoholic in 'Applause' separates characters, personal life

"Applause" casts Paprika Steen as an alcoholic actress who maintains a chaotic personal life in between furious performances as Martha in a stage production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Danish director Martin Zandvliet's film blurs the line between private and public personae, but Steen herself has no patience for Method acting.

"I never bring the character home," she says. Instead, Steen applies lessons learned while making stripped-down Dogme films in the 1990s. She says, "Dogme taught me to think in the now and to dance with the camera. I started to see it as a partner instead of a big strange instrument that controlled me. The camera became my friend."

Though confident onstage, Steen's character Thea comes off as a nervous wreck when she tries to convince her ex-husband that she deserves to spend more time with their two young sons. By Steen's reckoning, "Thea is tormented because she cannot live up to the 'part' of being a mother. It's heartbreaking to feel so alienated toward someone that she herself brought into this world."

Thea rarely enjoys a moment of repose. Steen can relate. "I'm very restless myself," she says. "There's this constant battle between your domestic life versus your anarchistic soul that urges you to cross borders and search for the unknown."

Seven months before filming began on "Applause," Steen appeared in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Describing the character made famous in the movie version by Elizabeth Taylor, Steen says, "Martha in my view is a young teenager trapped in a woman's body. She's whiney and lovesick and vulnerable. Thea is cool. The only resemblance I see between these two characters is the heavy drinking and the severe loneliness."

'Detention' provides lesson in old-school slasher movie mayhem

After his star turn in "The Hunger Games," which was released last month, Josh Hutcherson appears in the slasher flick "Detention."

The premise of the movie: Teenagers trying to make it through their senior year at Grizzly Lake High School have to contend with Cinderhella.

Writer-director Joseph Kahn explains, "Cinderhella is a tongue-in-cheek throwback to slasher movie monsters like Freddy Krueger (of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" films) or Jason ("Friday the 13th") in an updated torture-porn format like 'Saw.' She wears bandages because she had horrible plastic surgery for a prom that went bad."

Teen's tearful scene provides 'moment of truth'

"Monsieur Lazhar" addresses big themes dramatized through a strong performance in the title role by French comedian known as Fellag. Like the substitute teacher he portrays, Fellag fled Algeria during the early '90s amid a bloody civil war. But "Monsieur Lazhar" director Philippe Falardeau figures the French Canadian movie got nominated for an Oscar this year on the strength of a two-minute scene in which a student, played by 13-year-old actor Émilien Néron, wonders whether he's to blame for the suicide of a beloved teacher.

Based on a play by Évelyne de la Chenelière, "Monsieur Lazhar" pivots on the young student's catharsis. "I wish I could say that I have a trick as a director and could get that kind of performance from any kid, but I can't," Falardeau says. "It's was up to Néron to dig inside of himself and take a piece of his own life and bring that to us."

On the morning of the critical scene, Falardeau had a pep talk with his young star. "Émilien had been very close to his uncle, and he'd lost him one year earlier," the filmmaker recalls. "I asked him if he would be thinking about his uncle during the scene. Émilien said, 'Probably.' Then I said, 'If you start crying, do you want me to stop?' He said, 'No, don't stop, let's go through this together.' That's what I wanted to hear." In a single take, the tearful Néron nailed it. Says Falardeau, "He gave us the moment of truth." {sbox}

Hugh Hart is a San Francisco Chronicle correspondent. sadolphson@sfchronicle.com

This article appeared on page P - 27 of the San Francisco Chronicle