“It was crazy!” Colbert leans over the table, eyes popping. “They flew me to New York to have lunch with Sigourney, who is this extraordinary force of nature. Incredibly tall, brilliant, etc.’ Weaver loved the script, but the timing didn’t work. “We kind of had the choice to wait for Sigourney to complete a huge number of Avatars – or find someone who would have more availability.” He tells the story with the timing of a standup comedian. We meet in a restaurant in east London. Colbert arrives minutes early amid a flurry of questions – “Am I late?” “Where did you come from;” “Do you want something to eat?” Her long blonde hair is hidden under a black baseball cap embroidered with graffiti skulls. Dressed in a black T-shirt and black denim flares, her fingers heavy with gothic rings, her look is half teenage skateboarder, half insanely stylish fashion editor. He downs Diet Cokes and talks 19 to the dozen. Colbert arrived in London by train from East Sussex, where she lives with her husband, the artist Philip Colbert, and their two children. Since moving to Lewes four years ago, he has been fascinated with the mythology and folklore of this part of the world. He even added a credit to the end of She Will, thanking “the spirits of Sussex”. Is he a little hippie? “I was always too angry to be a hippie. I hope to be a nice cool hippy.’ She adds more seriously: “I think in some ways the film was probably quite cathartic. There are things that are very personal about it. You end up looking for answers and solving problems in a weird way and then move on to the next one. Like a huge therapy session.” He threw himself back into the chair with a charm. She Will is an angry film. It’s an incredible and brilliant #MeToo revenge fable, though Colbert is reluctant to dwell too much on it. A week after our meeting, he emails me in response to some follow-up questions: “Time’s Up and #MeToo are important and serious issues, and this is just a short film. We focused on a woman’s story.” What she says is that the film came from a “personal perspective” – and she wasn’t alone. “It’s crazy how one in three women has been a victim of some kind of abuse. I think a lot of people in front of and behind the camera in the film had a sensitivity to the issues.” She Will is the story of Veronica Ghent, who is an old-school movie star – cheekbones, fur coat, the reddest lipstick, withering scorn. It’s the role Weaver had her eye on, which eventually went to the wonderful South African actress Alice Krige, who deserves all the accolades for her powerful and delightfully funny performance. Days after a double mastectomy, Ghent arrives at what she believes is a secluded retreat in the Scottish Highlands accompanied by a young nurse, Desi (Kota Eberhardt), only to find the place full of horrific guests straight out of a story of hers. Agatha Christie. Charlotte Colbert works at She Will. The plot of the film from here sounds heartbreaking. The shelter is located on the site of the 17th century witch burnings. When Ghent wanders outside barefoot at night, she summons centuries of female rage that seems to be stored in the earth like energy in a battery. She directs this anger at the man who groomed her when she was 13. He is the legendary director Eric Hathbourne, played with despicable charm by Malcolm McDowell. I tell Colbert that I like the idea of women being able to tap into collective female rage whenever they need to take down a bad guy. “I know! The idea that you have a huge brotherhood on earth that you can rely on. just take off your shoes and put your feet in the mud and…” She throws her hands out. “‘Sisters, run into me!’” In the excitement her, Colbert’s ring flies off her finger and hits the floor.We retrieve it from under her purse. She Will is as mysterious and eerie as a fairy tale. But the portrait of misogyny and predatory behavior is uncomfortably realistic. There’s a scene in which Hathbourne, interviewed on a chatshow, is grilled about his relationship with the star’s then 13-year-old child Gand. He looks for the justification of the worn predator: “It was a completely different time then.” (This defense was supported by friends of Roman Polanksi and was the first line in Harvey Weinstein’s statement issued immediately after the New York Times revelations: “Adults in the 60s and 70s…”) What drives Colbert crazy is how often women like Gand are questioned when they come out years later: “When you get comments like, ‘Why now?’ She shakes her head. “People wonder why this person shows up 20 years later.” She sits up, gets into her stride. “Because it takes a lifetime to get over it! It’s not rocket science. It’s really, really hard to deal with something that’s broken you.” She Will is a film with a complicated, rubbery role for a woman in her 60s. I watched it last month, a few weeks after the Acting Your Age campaign published an open letter calling for better exposure of female actors over 45. Colbert spent part of her childhood in France (her accent is now mostly London, with the occasional breathy accented vowel). “I don’t know why, but I think women come a little later in France. Look at Kristin Scott Thomas. all these amazing, beautiful women. They’re not suddenly relegated to playing grandma.” That said, he finds the level of misogyny in France “bewildering”. I want to ask Colbert more about her childhood. She is one of eight children of James Goldsmith, the Tory-backing billionaire businessman and founder of the Referendum party, who died in 1997. Her mother is French journalist Laure Boulay de la Meurthe, with whom Goldsmith had an open affair. long-term relationship while married to Annabel Goldsmith – making Colbert the half-brother of Zac Goldsmith and Jemima Khan. There is no mention of her early life on Colbert’s Wikipedia page. Instead, she lists her short films and her work as a screenwriter and multimedia artist – one of her video installations reinterprets Lucian Freud’s famous portrait of Sue Tilley. When I raise her family, the fun and the conversation goes away. Malcom McDowell in She Will. “Oh, no,” he says. Colbert is twitchy and chewing on her lip. Silence. I wonder if she uses her married name – Colbert – as a way of being her own person. “Mmm. For sure.” How did her childhood shape her? “All of one’s experiences probably shape you in your relationship with the work.” But is it difficult to find your place in such a high-profile family? “Um. I do not know.” Would she rather not talk about it? “Yes. I’d rather not.” She leans forward, looking pained, fixing me with blue eyes. We chat for a few more minutes, a little half-heartedly: about the difficulties of directing as a mother with young children. in her next moves. But the mood is broken. As Colbert leaves, I feel a little bad that it ended this way. A few days later, he emails to talk about, among others, computer scientist and philosopher Jaron Lanier. “It’s a strange time to be human,” Colbert writes. “On the brink of the sixth mass extinction, we all struggle for meaning as we dance the last waltz on the Titanic. But!! There must be a but. We must all dance and dream and hope and try because there is no other choice!’ I’m not sure if it’s Lanier’s idea or hers. Either way, the “but” feels like a very Charlotte Colbert way of concluding: ideas that go around like rings in a restaurant. She Will is in UK cinemas on July 22
