When Ester Expósito walked the crimson carpet in Cannes two years in the past, she swore she’d be again.
“I used to be right here for a model, to indicate off some jewellery,” says the actress, who grew to become a style trendsetter and on-line influencer — with 28 million followers on Instagram — after her flip because the chilly, manipulative Carla Rosón Caleruega in Netflix’s Spanish teen drama hit Elite. “However after I was up there on these steps, I believed: ‘I’m going to come back again quickly, not with a model with a film.”
Nearly as good as her phrase, Expósito has returned to the Croisette this yr as one of many stars of Lost in the Night, the brand new crime drama from Mexican director Amat Escalante, which premiered in Cannes’ Un Sure Regard and is being offered worldwide by The Match Manufacturing facility.
Escalante appears a good distance from the soapy prep college world of Elite. The Mexican helmer, a Cannes common, put his stamp on excessive arthouse cinema and gained Cannes’ finest director prize with 2013’s Heli, a brutal have a look at drug violence that included a virtually unwatchable scene by which a boy has his genitals doused with gasoline after which set on fireplace.
Ester Expósito in Cannes (photographed by Julian Ungano for The Hollywood Reporter).
Photographed by Julian Ungano
“I didn’t know Amat’s films earlier than however after I learn the script [to Lost in the Night], I went and watched them,” says Expósito, “and yeah, they’re tough. However I actually like them. He has a really private, very delicate imaginative and prescient. I knew I needed to make this film with him.”
Regardless of her public, Elite picture Expósito is definitely an enormous horror fan. Since leaving the Netflix present in 2018, she starred in Venus, a horror thriller from [Rec] helmer Jaume Balagueró, and her subsequent characteristic will likely be Pedro Martín Calero’s supernatural chiller El llanto.
“I’ve cherished thrillers, cherished horror films since I used to be 8 years outdated. That’s after I noticed 1408 with John Cusack. My dad and mom had been a bit stunned. They tried to make me cease, or wait until I used to be older, however they couldn’t.”
After Elite, Expósito says she was a typecast because the Carla-esque imply lady and bought provided “loads of the identical type of roles, a bit cliched,” which is without doubt one of the causes she jumped at working with Escalante.
“That is essentially the most private film, essentially the most unbiased film that I’ve ever completed,” she says, “it was onerous as a result of we shot in a short time and I ended up very drained, additionally emotionally but it surely was additionally stunning as a result of I realized so much and I believe I advanced, I progressed as an actress. I really like cinema and I wish to do extra.”
Strolling the Cannes crimson carpet this yr — as an actress, not a model ambassador — was “very magical and really emotional” she says, “particularly to be right here with Amat, at this pageant that has given him a lot.”
However, ever formidable, Expósito is already planning to take her Cannes expertise to the following degree.
“Two years from now, who is aware of? Possibly I might include a film within the competitors. I do know [Pedro] Almodovar, possibly I ought to discuss to him.”
