CANNES — Cannes tends to favor drama not only on the screen, but the fashion kind, too — of trains, sequins and architectural gowns.
For her latest appearance on the red carpet, Riley Keough was drawn to something softer.
For her the choice was simple. “It was just one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life,” she says of the wisp-thin and delicate skirt combo.
It was an atypical red carpet selection. Instead of a voluminous gown, this was almost impossibly light. But the choice fit neatly into the mood currently surrounding Chanel — a house Keough has long orbited — since Matthieu Blazy has taken it in a new direction.
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Keough, who became a house ambassador in 2023, is embracing the new energy.
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“It’s like a whole new era, and just so like modern in a sense, but so sort of classically Chanel as well. It’s kind of genius,” she says of Blazy’s work.
“It’s fun and joyful, unexpected and really vibrant,” she adds. “And youthful — though I kind of hate the word ‘youthful,’ because I actually really love aging and like to embrace that.”
Diving deeper into the topic, the 36-year-old discusses the pressure on not just actresses, but women in general to stay perpetually young.
“It’s such a strange process. As a woman, you’re kind of brainwashed to not do it — but there’s no way to not [age],” she says. “Men don’t have that experience.”
“It is a privilege to age — people say that — to get older and to have life experience and to be here and to be alive. And I think that is true. So I try to embrace the process,” she says. “I try and retrain my brain from all the like crazy s–t. That’s like, ‘put this serum on so you look 15.’ I think women become more elegant as they age.”
Aging has given her more confidence, both on and off screen.
“I’m definitely a totally different person and I am much more confident,” she says, reflecting on even a few years ago. “It’s a weird thing, because when you’re young, it’s actually really hard to be a young girl. As you get older, you do become more confident, even physically. You become more in your body and not so much in your head.”
That newfound confidence seems to govern much of Keough’s career lately. Over the last several years she has assembled an adventurous filmography, from “Daisy Jones and the Six” to the very physical and highly improvised “Sasquatch Sunset” in which she played, well, a sasquatch.
In Cannes, she is starring in “Butterfly Jam,” alongside Barry Keoghan, a contender in the Director’s Fortnight section.
In the film, Keough plays Zalya, the pregnant sister of Keoghan’s troubled character, bringing a quiet emotional weight to a tense family story set around a struggling Circassian diner in New Jersey.
It was described by critics as psychologically uneasy and emotionally claustrophobic, with Keough serving as the restrained emotional center of the film.
She had been a fan of Kantemir Balagov’s “Beanpole,” and really wanted to work with the director.
“It’s not an intellectual thing. It’s more just like I read it and I start to feel like, ‘Oh, I know who this is,” she says of her gut reaction to scripts.
“It’s kind of just a feeling where I feel like I connect with something on a sort of spiritual level somehow,” she adds.
Working with Keoghan was also visceral, and the two could play off each other. “He and I work in a very similar way,” she says. “Which was really fun for me — sort of like, who knows what’s gonna happen? It’s very sort of open and free. It’s my favorite way to work and I don’t often get to, so it was really someone nice that I could spark off of.”
Seeing it premiere in Cannes also transformed the experience of the film for her.
“It’s much more fun to watch it with a group of people in a theater,” she says. “You can hear responses and reactions. It’s much different than watching something on a computer.”
Like many actors arriving at Cannes this year, Keough spoke almost nostalgically about the disappearing ritual of communal moviegoing.
“Anytime you do go to the cinema, you’re like, ‘Wow, it’s so much better watching something on a big screen,’” she says.
Cannes, of course, has become an important recurring backdrop to her career evolution. Keough has attended the festival multiple times, and recalls the year she won the Camera d’Or prize for “War Pony,” the directorial debut she co-directed with Gina Gammell.
“It was so unexpected,” she recalls. “Even getting into Cannes was unexpected, and then winning was totally — no part of us expected it at all.” So much so, she adds, they had already gotten a plane to leave.
But the moment still sticks with her. “It felt like a dream,” she says.
“It’s such an iconic film festival,” she says of Cannes. “It feels like the birthplace of so many incredible films and filmmakers and careers.”