She glides through the lobby of the Ritz Hotel in Paris with all the ease of an actress confident enough to step into a role played by both Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh.
A star in France since 13, the 30-year-old Sophie Marceau only began to be known outside the country after her successful role in Mel Gibson's Braveheart. But Marceau hopes all that will change now she is in the title role of Bernard Rose's forthcoming film adaptation of Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy's classic late-19th-century novel.
'I saw a Russian version of Anna Karenina and the Garbo version, but haven't seen the Leigh version,' she said, settling on an empire divan in a sea of rococo furniture. 'I was honoured to do this, but wasn't scared. The characters are so real that you can talk about it for years and years. And like every woman who has read this book, I thought I was Anna Karenina.' Set against the world of Imperial Russian aristocracy, the plot turns on characters who dare to break the rigidity of society, be it in the salons of Moscow and St Petersburg or on the great farms surrounding the country estates of the era.
It is largely a romantic tragedy of Anna's scandalous affair with the dashing Count Vronsky, a young military officer played by Sean Bean. Unhappy in her marriage to Karenin (James Fox), a Russian Ministry official, Anna becomes entangled with Vronsky to the point of destruction.
Tolstoy counterbalances this triangle with the story of an awkward young landowner named Levin (Alfred Molina) who is absolutely mad about Princess Kitty (Toronto-native Mia Kirshner). She initially spurns Levin to hold out for a proposal by Vronsky. But upon meeting Anna, Vronsky forgets Kitty.
In refusing a divorce, Karenin soon puts Anna and Vronsky in an untenable position, as the cuckolded husband believes that 'the passion will pass'. It does not. Karenin eventually consents, but by then Anna has been driven into a corner of her own making. Her end may be a surprise to her when it arrives, but not to the film's audience.
While earlier film adaptations have sometimes glossed over Anna's gruesome suicide by leaping under the wheels of an oncoming freight train, Rose's version is faithful to the novel.
