Charlotte Gainsbourg in surreal corset scene
June 18, 2007 
Charlotte Gainsbourg, daughter of musician Serge Gainsbourg and actress Jane Birkin, is no stranger to wearing corsets, as her role in Jane Eyre will have required her to don one, but a scene in a new film she stars in sees a most unusual portrayal in the garment.
In The Golden Door, by Emanuele Crialese, Ms Gainsbourg plays a mysterious English woman who gets involved with a party of poor Sicilians, who embark on a ship bound for New York at the turn of the last century.
But in the role in the magical-realist fable, she was required to bathe in a swimming pool full of milk, accompanied by a giant plastic carrot and dressed in an Edwardian corset, which is supposed to represent the Sicilian immigrants' fantasy of America.
Ms Gainsbourg told the Irish Independent: "I entered the film with a great panic; I felt completely isolated because of the language," as the actress had to play the role in Italian.
"It was really an adventure, but the way Emanuele talked about it was so passionate that you couldn't not want to go there with him," she said.
Gainsbourg and corset fans alike can catch The Golden Door in cinemas from June 29th.
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