Charlotte Rampling Made in France: From a National to a Postnational Identity

Abstract

AbstractBy examining the recent career steps of Charlotte Rampling, this chapter questions the evolution of her real and imaginary identity fluidity, which is based on a variable articulation between constructions of the national, the international and the global. Although the actress’s spoken accent maintains the trace of her English origins, three facts blur the sharpness of this identity. Rampling has systematically dubbed herself in English as well as in French, creating an intercultural fluidity; she has revived and intensified her ability to express the interiority of her characters through the universal language of silence; and finally her characters are alternately English, integrated into a French collective while her own identity remains vague; or, in French co-productions that mark a new trend within her filmography, postnationally indexed and inflected.