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We are sitting under the awning of Café du Monde, eating local delicacies: a café au lait( me), chocolate milk( her), and beignets— doughnutlike fried dough piled high with powdered sugar. As I gingerly lift one to my mouth, trying to avoid getting the sugar everywhere, she tells me not to overthink it, then adds, deadpan:“ Just don’ t breathe.”
Fanning is funny. On the set of The Beguiled, she and Dunst dreamed of starring together in a comedy.(“ She’ s hilarious,” Dunst says.“ I’ d like to see Elle host SNL.”) The girls’ school exterior was shot at the Louisiana plantation that Beyoncé used in Lemonade, but interior scenes were filmed in the exquisite, rambling New Orleans home of the comic actress Jennifer Coolidge, whom Fanning knew best as Paulette from the legendary bend-and-snap scene in Legally Blonde.(“ We didn’ t ask. We were too scared.”) Coolidge has a famous Halloween party every year, and Fanning and Dunst went as, respectively, a fairy and a nurse. They felt as if they’ d missed a memo.“ Everyone was in Marie Antoinette Gothic garb,” Fanning says.“ We really stuck out.”
She didn’ t care, though. Since a period of early-adolescent effort to blend in( skinny jeans, neutral tops), she has tried to embrace doing things her own way, with proud Elle-ness, even if it strikes others as strange. For instance, senior prom. Fanning and her best friend, Cassio, had planned for weeks to be each other’ s dates. Then Fanning learned she had to go to Cannes and wouldn’ t be able to make the dance. She had a crazy notion: What if they both went to France and made it their own version of prom? They did, and Elle wore her prom dress to the red carpet, and Cassio wore his prom tux, and it was a great time— actually, the greatest time— a time so good they do not like to talk about it, because they think they’ ll never have so much fun again.
A number of Fanning’ s friends are of a different generation, encountered through work. Aside from her close bond with Dunst, she often gets dinner with Mike Mills; she spends a really surprising amount of her life chatting on the phone with the 80-year-old Bruce Dern. She also leans on her school friends— many of them have parents in the movie business, so they understand her long absences to shoot— and, now that some have left for college, worries about her social world thinning. She’ s single at the moment, although she daydreams of being swept off her feet.“ I’ m superromantic,” she says— and then, as if worried I didn’ t hear, throws out her arms and shouts it on the Café du Monde patio:“ Superromantic!” Still, she doesn’ t really know how you meet people, at least the right people, outside school.
“ Will I be in Café du Monde? Will there be a spotlight on someone? I don’ t know where to find these people. But I also don’ t want to screw with the magic of organically finding someone.” She wants to have a family, but to be eighteen, nineteen, is not to be there yet.“ We’ re just going with the flow. We haven’ t learned, you know, the hard ways of the world.” She considers for a moment, and adds,“ We’ re not humans yet.”
Well, one of us, anyway. Having just gobbled up two plates of beignets with Fanning, I am feeling all too human, and we walk off the pastries around the Quarter. It’ s a warm, clear day, and Fanning is dressed for spring: a lovely, full, white shoulderless dress by The Row, sandals by Chanel, a big white Rochas bag. As we step into the sunlight, she pulls a blue-and-pink Chanel sweater over her shoulders.( Another thing that Elle Fanning does not do: tan.) We stop by the costume-wig store where she found the perfect hair for her fairy costume, and then a vintage shop. In The Beguiled, the women wear period attire, but without the usual hoop cages.“ The silhouette looks like something you could wear now or in the seventies,” says Coppola.“ These long floral dresses.... It’ s this kind of dusty-pastel world.”
Fanning has made her last three movies for female directors. Following The Beguiled, with Coppola, she went to Savannah, Georgia, to film the crime thriller Galveston, directed by Mélanie Laurent. And she’ s just about to fly to upstate New York to shoot a new Reed Morano film, I Think We’ re Alone Now.(“ Basically, it’ s just me and Peter Dinklage,” she says.“ He’ s the last man on Earth— and then I show up.”) She has been receiving vocal coaching in preparation for Teen Spirit, a movie about an American Idol – like competition, made by the same team that produced La La Land.“ That will be challenging, for sure,” she says.
The really big challenge that Fanning dreams of is directing.“ I definitely, definitely want to do that,” she says.“ As an actor, you’ re exploring someone else’ s vision. I’ d like to be able to create that vision instead.” Refn, the director of The Neon Demon, strongly supports the idea, she reports. And as she talks, I realize that there’ s little in the world I want to see more than an Elle Fanning – directed film. She’ s in Aries mode now: focused, businesslike, confident, full of urgent vision.“ I know it’ s hard— so many people asking you questions all the time,” she says.“ It’ s a huge challenge. But I want that.” □
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 112 have patience for,” Jalbert says.“ Except dogs.”
It was almost a decade ago that Jalbert crossed the apricot-colored Loretta Lynn Van Lear( his own creation) with Julia Child( a popular, fragrant yellow rose).“ I remember when that rose was born,” he says; the young plant caught his eye— and nose— and held it. The breed, which he labeled Jal-011-2-10, was an English-style rose with leaves of an unusual, glossy bright green. It seemed to resist most diseases, such as black spot. It bloomed, and bloomed again, and then again, from spring to fall. It could thrive as an“ own root” rose( not a graft onto another root system), which meant that it could freeze to its base in winter and reemerge, in spring, as itself. And it“ trimmed” its own flowers, growing into a lush, leafy bush of knee height.
A breeder normally hopes to find the rare rose that brings together two or more desirable qualities: color, blooming habit, fragrance, resistance, shape, maintenance. A breed that combines all is a moon shot. By some cosmic turn of destiny, Jal-011-2-10 was reaching its debutante age just as Vogue was scouring the country for its perfect rose. Jalbert sent the magazine several of his new breeds, but there was never any competition. This was a match made not in heaven but deep in the earth: Jal-011-2-10 was the long-sought-after Vogue rose.
By late afternoon, Francis and I are careering toward the Phoenix airport, on our way to the next outpost on the path of rose production. He’ s on speakerphone, making an adjustment to his flight. When a customerservice rep breaks through the hold
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