Why Kristen Stewart is the star for our times: we profile and interview the star of Personal Shopper, Certain Women (and Twilight). Plus Paul Verhoeven and the debate over Elle, Anna Biller on The Love Witch, Cristian Mungiu on Graduation, Jacques Becker and a wide look at Indian cinema
She’s our James Dean: our April issue explores how Kristen Stewart has graduated from Panic Room and the Twilight saga to become what writer Graham Fuller calls “not only an actor for the moment, but the actor” – and why her beautifully neurotic, introverted underplaying, for directors from Ang Lee, Woody Allen and Walter Salles to Kelly Reichardt (in this week’s Certain Women) and Olivier Assayas (mid-March’s Personal Shopper) makes her cinema’s prime conduit to this decade’s mood of cosmic dread.
In a rich month for new movies, we also talk to Stewart about working with Assayas, to Paul Verhoeven about working with Isabelle Huppert on his perverse and subversive thriller Elle (and argue the toss over its gender politics), to Cristian Mungiu about his latest movie Graduation – an incisive portrait of Romania’s current corruption – and to Anna Biller about her magically erotic fable The Love Witch.
And looking back, we endeavour to up the appreciation of French auteur Jacques Becker – as well as whet your appetite for a year of Indian cinema, looking well beyond the poles of Satyajit Ray and Bollywood.
