Alt Divas: Argento / Dalle / Golubeva

Audrey Tautou is perhaps the definitive winsome gamine of turn-of-the-millennium European cinema—but the actresses highlighted in this series occupy a world very different than that of the candy-colored Paris of Amélie. Asia Argento, Beatrice Dalle, and Yekaterina Golubeva were born, respectively, in Italy, France, and the USSR, but are united by a certain air of lurid glamour, an aesthetic of black leather, overflowing ashtrays, tangled coiffure, glossy lips in a blood red pout, and candid carnality that owes not a little to contemporary rock ’n’ roll. Our Alt Divas were favored by filmmakers with a taste for the seedy side of life, directors like Abel Ferrara, Claire Denis, and Leos Carax, who guided these muses through tales of l’amour fou abandon, orgiastic excess and, in the case of Denis’s Trouble Every Day, sexual hunger-turned-to-cannibalistic craving. Stock up on Gitanes, lace up your chunky combat boots, run several red lights on your moped, and come bask in the je m’en fous aura of our trifecta of louche ladies.