CANNES, France—Emily Blunt didn’t come to the Cannes Film Festival to talk about shoes.
She may have breezily, without hesitation, called out the silliness of any red-carpet dress code that would turn away women in flat shoes “in 2015,” drawing headlines for her matter-of-fact defense of several heel-less guests who were refused admission to a premiere. Blunt won’t hesitate to speak her mind, but she would rather let her actions—and her characters—do the talking.
Less talk, more action
“We need to take more action and talk less about it,” Blunt said in an interview shortly after her latest film “Sicario” premiered at Cannes. “I sometimes feel you can exacerbate a problem by talking about it until you’re blue in the face and putting further and further stamps on the divide. Instead of having nights that celebrate women in Hollywood, we should organize programs where you pay for female writers to develop their skills.”
Blunt’s skills are on display in “Sicario,” a drug war thriller directed by Denis Villeneuve that’s among the films competing in the top-tier fest for the Palme d’Or. Lionsgate will release it in the United States on Sept. 18.
She plays Kate Macy, a steely FBI agent who gets enlisted in a covert CIA task force aiming to take down a Mexican cartel boss. As practically the only female in the film, her strong presence anchors “Sicario.”
“Sicario” has put Blunt among the women who have defined this year’s Cannes Film Festival, from Cate Blanchett in the 1950s lesbian drama “Carol” to Charlize Theron in the action flick “Mad Max: Fury Road,” for their solitary strength in male-dominated worlds.
Before Blunt came aboard “Sicario,” there was pressure to change her role to a man.
“It’s more an anomaly to see a character like this in cinema,” says Blunt. “But the reality from the FBI agents that I spoke to, there are lots of chicks in law enforcement. We just don’t make movies about them very often.”