Talking LIMBO with THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO's Lena Endre

(Lena Endre, above. Photo by Marica Rosengard.)


by Terry Keefe
Although best known on the U.S. shores for her role of Erika Berger in the films based on the Stieg Larsson "Millenium Trilogy" books (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest), Swedish actress Lena Endre has been an international star for years, having worked in her home country with the likes of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullman. Her newest film, Limbo, contains a richly dramatic character study by Endre that would have been worthy of inclusion in a Bergman film.

Limbo features actress Line Verndal as a Norwegian woman named Sonia, who has been living quite independently in her home country for years, raising her two children. Her husband Jo (Henrik Rafaelsen) works as an oil engineer in Trinidad, and life changes dramatically for Sonia when she and the children move to Trinidad. There, Sonia finds herself in a life of luxury, which is also hollow and soul-draining. The wives whose husbands work at the oil company spend their days poolside sipping cocktails, but are forced to relocate to a new country every few years, when their spouses are reassigned. Sonia slowly slips into mental instability, when faced with too much time on her hands and the prospect of a lifetime of nomadic luxury. And her downward mental spiral escalates as she gets to know another, slightly older Norwegian woman named Charlotte, played by Endre, who is married to an older engineer named Daniel, played by Bryan Brown.

(Lena Endre and Bryan Brown in Limbo, above.)

Endre's Charlotte is, at her core, a nice person but has become so jaded by a lifetime of poolside drinking that her better qualities are hidden in a haze of martinis. Charlotte also represents what Sonia could become in a few years, and this terrifies the younger woman. Charlotte herself starts to break down, in ways more subtle than those of Sonia, but with more tragic results.

The film was directed with a sure hand by Maria Sodahl, who manages to create a Trinidad which is both luxurious and oppressive to the pampered, at once.

Limbo is currently screening on demand as part of the first annual Scandinavian On Demand Film Festival, created by On Demand movie channel Eurocinema (eurocinema.com), and is currently available in 36 million North American homes. More information on the Scandinavian On Demand Film Festival, including the list of films screening and trailers can be found here.

(Endre and Michael Nyqvist, in the Millenium Trilogy, above.)

I reached Lena by phone while she was visiting in New York, and we spoke as she was walking about Manhattan.

The Hollywood Interview: Hi Lena, how are you? Can you hear me?

Lena Endre: I can hear you okay [laughs]

Okay, great. Thanks for talking with me. How's the day in New York?

Yeah. I'm enjoying it. A lot.

Good, good.

Walking a lot.

I thought Limbo was a really good film, and you're quite good in it.

Thank you!

Sure. Was it shot chronologically at all? Because I'd imagine that would help your performance with a character like this, who slowly has a mental break-down.

Unfortunately not. [laughs]

But, yeah. Maria (Sodahl) tried -- the director tried as much as possible to shoot it chronologically, but sometimes, of course, you can't. You have to do what you can within the locations that you are at at the moment. But we had a really great time, me and Bryan (Brown), we were almost living like a couple there, because we were kind of stuck in this hotel for a month together [laughs], so we were rehearsing a lot for a while between shootings, too, with the director every night. She used to live there as a child, in fact.

Okay, was it actually shot in Trinidad, then?

Yes, well, it's shot in Trinidad, in Port-au-Spain, yeah.

It looked beautiful. So, the shoot wasn't in chronological order. How did you keep track of Charlottes's mental state? Because it changes a lot.

That's why you have to put extra effort on, of course, when you don't shoot chronologically. But certainly you go through it every night, and see what you're going to do tomorrow. We worked a lot on that, of course.

When she's having her mental breakdown, was there anything that you put into your head that got you into that state?

Yeah, this is kind of the part of the character that's so interesting for me, and also it's a character that's far away from [myself], being this lonely woman, you know, no children, and traveling around the world with no roots. The fact that when she gets to know [a place], they're on the move again. She just can't take it anymore, but still, I think there also has to be some other black holes in the character that's-- I mean, you don't commit suicide because of a thing like that---that you have to move again. It's more to it, the relation with her husband itself. Her rootless life, in a way, it actually plays like a mystery, too: You don't get to know everything.

I like that about them -- they keep their secrets.

You have to think of yourself as an audience: "What's up there?" You can maybe sometimes watch couples you know for years, and we just feel like: "What's going on inside there, in fact?"It's the same thing with these characters, I think, in the movie.

How was Bryan Brown to work with? I liked his performance because he's playing a guy that's a little bit of a -- he's not a loser, but he's starting to lose in life. And you're used to seeing him playing much tougher, or at least more confident, characters. It was a nice change for him.

[laughs] Exactly, exactly. Really, I loved to work with him. We had a great time, really. We were really--we went cruising around Port-au-Spain, eating dinners at night, and we were really trying to be as much as possible with each other, to make this couple. It's not so talkative, as you see in the movie -- they're kind of a really old relation. And he was really nice working with, a wonderful guy, funny too. I had a great time.

Was the temperature outside as hot as it looked on camera, in Trinidad?

Hotter. Hotter. [laughs]

You know, we were trying to do everything to cool us down between takes. It was terribly hot.
But I imagine that would help your performance in this character also, though. Did it?

Yeah, yeah! I think so. But it took some while to get used to this temperatures, because for me it was really kind a shock when I came, and we had some days off in the week before I started to shoot, on location.

The director, Maria Sodahl, I really like her style. Understated but focused. Her shots seem very specific. Was her blocking very specific?

She was very specific, I think -- most of the time. Of course, we were also rehearsing, so she was really open to what we were coming up with on rehearsals. So, like, we were rehearsing around the pool every night [laughs], and for shooting, so we were preparing for the next day like that every day.

I want to go back a little bit in your career. You've been directed by Ingmar Bergman (in the television film In the Presence of a Clown). What was his directing style?

Yeah, he was also very -- he also had very specific blockings, of course. And he was also very, very open to how you develop your character yourself. Because I'd been working mainly with him in the theatre for fifteen years, so of course we got to know each other very well. But he was very, very open. He would never force anything on you: how to develop your character, or how to express certain things, you know. I just really loved to work with him in the theatre.

You were also directed by Liv Ullman, also, in the film Faithless, which was written by Ingmar Bergman. What was that experience of working with Liv Ullman like?

Very nice, because she's a very funny lady. Oh god, a lot of humor [laughs]. And she also, of course, she's an actress herself, she knows what you go through, and we rehearsed, and did the blockings, and then you can feel very, very free, you know, to develop. Yeah.
Let's talk about the Stieg Larsson-based films. Had you read all the books of "the Millenium Trilogy," prior to playing Erika Berger?

No. [laughs] I got the role, then I started to read them. They're amazing books, really good. It's a very odd main character [laughs].

Is there going to be any more shooting in the Swedish-based series, or are the three films all there will be, then? I know there were some more books that they were possibly publishing, or found.

There's a rumor that there's a fourth book.

I don't think you can-- it's not finished, and who's gonna finish it? I don't think there'll be any more. But as we made the three films, we also made -- we had a long version of everything, with more material, so it's all in the six-part TV series. And you didn't get that yet [here in the U.S.], but that's been running in Sweden already.

The David Fincher version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is shooting. What do you think their biggest challenges are going to be?

I think their biggest challenge is to top the portrayal (of Noomi Rapace as) Lisbeth Salander.

I think so, too.

It's going to be tough, it's going to be really tough on them. It's not, maybe -- you could consider it a "Kamikaze project." [laughs]

Thanks, Lena. Enjoy your time in New York.

Thanks a lot. Bye-bye!