All three actors look heartbreakingly young and beautiful as they puff away at coloured Ziganov cigarettes, quote from Cahiers du Cinéma, or do sexy things to each another. Green, whose mother is the actress Marlène Jobert, made her screen debut in Bernardo Bertolucci’s 2003 film The Dreamers (2003) she and Louis Garrel (another scion of a French film dynasty) were cast as Parisian siblings who form a threesome with visiting American Michael Pitt during the student riots of 1968. Onscreen nudity is no big deal for her (as it tends not to be for French actresses) yet somehow, the more she reveals, the more enigmatic she becomes. Her beauty is of the troubling sort that drives prim conformists mad – they’re forever wanting her to fix her teeth, go easy on the eye make-up, tone down the witchiness and look like everyone else. She’s a femme fatale with as many female admirers as male ones, a Bondgirl who all but ate Bond for breakfast. Green is an enigma, hiding in plain sight. Whether she’s an American housewife on the verge of a nervous breakdown in White Bird in a Blizzard (2014), or fixing those deep turquoise eyes on her oppressors in the revenge western The Salvation (2014), or wrestling demons in the TV series Penny Dreadful (2014-2016), it’s impossible to tear your gaze away. There are few experiences in modern cinema quite as intoxicating as watching Eva Green behaving badly.
