CANNES, France (AP) – 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.
“We need to take more action and talk less about it,” Blunt said in an interview shortly after her “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 prominently on display in “Sicario,” a drug war thriller directed by Denis Villeneuve that’s among the films competing in Cannes for the Palme d’Or. Lionsgate will release it in the U.S. on Sept. 18. She plays Kate Macy, a steely FBI agent whose brave efficiency gets her enlisted in a covert CIA task force (led by Josh Brolin) aiming to take down a Mexican cartel boss.
As the mission increasingly pushes the boundaries of legal law enforcement, Macy becomes ever more wary. As practically the only female in the film, her strong presence anchors “Sicario.”