Budapest Classic Film Marathon: Romy, free woman

Director: Lucie Cariès

Screenplay by Lucie Cariès, Clémentine Deroudille
Cast: Romy Schneider

Budapest, Vienna, Hollywood / Stars, Shine!

Romy Schneider was not just another beautiful actress. We see in the documentary Romy, a Free Woman that she didn’t even smoke as others smoked: even today’s viewers are unable to take their eyes off the way she holds her hands, the elegance flowing from every single movement. In her case, it really was true that she somehow dimmed everyone around her. This Lucie Cariès documentary film, which uses footage from rarely seen movies such as Cesar and Rosalie, shows the tragedy of this superb actress, yet despite all the heartbreak and setbacks, it also shows that Romy preserved, to the end of her life, all that made her Romy, the grand dame of European cinema. The moment in Zulawski’s film when, with tears in her eyes, she stops the person photographing her, saying ‘enough, no more pictures’, is wonderfully human. Romy was a free woman. Unshackled. Independent. As she said of herself on more than one occasion: she lived not in the past, but always in the moment, in the present.

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