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December 1, 2000/Kislev 10, 5761, Vol. 53, No.10
Rossellini identifies with rebellious role
NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
Forget her 28 Vogue magazine covers. Isabella Rossellini is portraying a Chasidic Jewish woman in Jeroen Krabbe's post-Holocaust saga, "Left Luggage."
The most unexpected casting of the season began when Rossellini's friend Krabbe approached her with a startling revelation on the set of "Immortal Beloved" five years ago.
"I have decided to direct," pronounced the actor, who has appeared in "The Fugitive," "Kafka" and "Ever After."
The impetus was a book that changed his life.
"Jeroen's mother had a tattoo on her arm, but she never spoke of her experiences in a concentration camp," Rossellini says. "Jeroen grew up Protestant, like his father, in Holland. It was only after reading this book that he wanted to discover his Jewish culture."
"Left Luggage" tells of the daughter of survivors who learns to understand her family's "baggage" when she goes to work for a Chasidic family. Krabbe, who identified with the protagonist, wanted Rossellini to play Mrs. Kalman, the wife of a survivor.
"Everyone knows I'm Catholic, and I'm Italian, and I'm also a model," she explains. "Of course, I later learned that Chasidic women can be very glamorous. But initially, I just thought people would think I was miscast. No matter how well I did the role, I feared that the sight of me playing a Chasid would just make people laugh."
Krabbe, however, was persistent. One tactic was mailing Rossellini a copy of Pearl Abraham's semi-autobiographical novel, "The Romance Reader," about a Chasidic young woman who leaves the fold. The actress was intrigued.
"I identified with her rebelliousness, her desire to define her own life," says the actress, who also fled an over-protective childhood home to make her way among strangers.
Rossellini telephoned Abraham, and the two women met for lunch in Manhattan. Over dessert, the actress popped the question: "Do you laugh at the idea of me playing a Chasid?"
Abraham pointed out that Rossellini portrayed a masochist in David Lynch's "Blue Velvet," in which she appeared in an infamous nude scene. She said the actress most probably would not balk at playing a murderer.
"So why are you uncomfortable with the notion of playing a Chasid?" Abraham queried.
Rossellini accepted the role and discovered that she innately understands the concept of "Left Luggage" - how a family's past can haunt the present.
Her mother, actress Ingrid Bergman, was reviled and banned from Hollywood after deserting her husband and daughter to marry Isabella's father, Italian neo-realist director Roberto Rossellini. After her parents divorced when she was 3, Isabella and her fraternal twin sister, Ingrid, grew up in a Roman villa across the street from her father, his new wife and children.
Helping raise the siblings were various grandmothers and aunts who told disturbing stories about their experiences during World War II.
"I vividly remember the continuing fear of starvation, especially from the old people" Rossellini says. "They always hid food because they said they never knew when the war might return."
As a child, Rossellini never played in open fields, for fear of stepping upon a mine left over from the war.
The actress has never before portrayed a Jewish character, much less an Orthodox one, so worked with four coaches in preparing for "Left Luggage." There was a coach to teach her Yiddish, one for Hebrew, another to teach her to speak English with a German accent, and yet another to show her proper body language.
The body language specialist, a Chasidic Jew named Alex, was himself something of a rebel with his long hair and jeans, Rossellini recalls. He taught her to touch the mezuzah automatically upon entering a room; to close a Hebrew book from right to left; and never to offer her hand to an Orthodox man.
Rossellini asked him whether he had played with girls as a child ("no") and whether he was allowed to dine alone with a woman friend (also "no"). When she queried about the barrier she found in a bed on the set, she learned a bit about Jewish family purity laws.
Rossellini, who lunched with Chasidic women at a kosher deli on location in Belgium, was surprised to discover ultra-Orthodox women can be stylish.
"One woman used to wear all sorts of different wigs," she recalls. "One day she looked like Brigitte Bardot, the next like Louise Brooks." How did the actress find wearing a sheitl (wig)?
"Itchy," she laughs.
Rossellini says she avoided the "family business" of acting until she was 31 and had had established herself as a model.
"It was important for me to become well-known for something else first," she said. "But then I wondered what it was that my mother had loved so much."
Her modeling career came to an abrupt halt when she was unceremoniously dumped as the Lancome "girl" at the "old age" of 42.
Now, at 48, she says, she notices that fewer film roles come her way. In response, she's launched her own make-up line, Manifesto, and she's grateful for roles like Mrs. Kalman in "Left Luggage."
The film has left its mark on the Italian-Catholic actress.
"When I returned from the shoot, I'd see a Chasidic family in the street and I'd say, 'Hello,'" she recalls. "They'd just look at me, puzzled, and I'd remind myself, 'I'm not in character anymore."
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