Chimie
It’s pronounced shimmy. It’s French for chemistry. Despite her many trials and tribulations, Asia Argento’s autobiography is surprisingly romantic, and not as cinematic as one could have hoped. For someone who loves women so much, there aren’t as many recollections about the lesbian side of her bisexuality. It’s one thing if we’re talking about women who are not out of the closet, but it would appear that even outed women have their limitations.
Her best friend, Angelica Di Majo, has known her since they were five years old. When Asia attended the Rome Gay Pride in 2016, she was quoted as saying: “We are all gay; I am gay too.”
In an interview that was published in the Novella magazine that year, she also spoke about her relationship with the opposite sex: “Men don't know how to touch a woman's body, they are terrified.”
In her 2021 book, she wrote: “With sex, I had always had a liberal approach. I consider myself bisexual, if you really have to define yourself.”
I’m reminded of something that Asia mentioned about one of her half-sisters in her memoir: “Anna was always a tomboy, like me, by the way. She didn't wear skirts, neither when she was little, nor when she was older when she became anorexic, obsessed to the idea of having big calves. My mom was convinced she was a lesbian, she would always send her to spend time with her gay friends, so she could confide. I never knew if she was. I only know that before she died, she had a few boys, but not a single orgasm.”
I should also note of something else that she had written: “After they separated, my father sometimes got harsh with me, probably for the same reason that he got harsh with my mother when she hit me - each of them found the other in me. He would shout things like: "Your mother has orgies, she's a lesbian, a drunkard!" I would go from one apartment to another. This was the beginning of a long period of vagrancy, during which I would go back and forth between Mom and Dad, until one of them would throw me out because I had answered badly or refused to follow an order, or because I wasn't anyone's favorite daughter, just a reflection of an old love that had devoured them to the core.”
About what Dario said, Asia later wrote about when she had an early ‘90s anecdote about being a teenager: “When I went back to live with her, I found my mother in a terrible state, she was constantly losing her temper, forcing me to stay with her lesbian friends, I never saw her, the bottles of vodka were flying around in the fridge.”
Asia’s memoir has a Cinderella quality with the tumultuous relations with her half sisters during her childhood. To add to that, her mother was so abusive that I suspect Angelica was the reason why Asia never committed suicide. The French word for lust is luxure, which makes me think of luxurious. How apt since sex in the entertainment industry is perceived as the pinnacle of sexual paradise.
About Trauma (1993): “During the filming, I cheated on Federico a lot. And for the first time, I felt guilty about betraying someone sexually. I had sex with: the main actor, an electro, a rather good musician I met at First Avenue, Prince's club, where they let me in without asking for my papers because I looked a little older than my age. The legend goes that Prince had a loft above his club with one-way windows to watch the dance floor. If he liked a girl, he would have her come up to his place: that was my dream, for him to have me come up. It didn't happen, and I still regret it, because I'm sure that in bed, Prince and I would have made sparks.”
About xXx (2002): “I think I slept with the actor who played the bad guy, but I remember almost nothing about it, just a walk by the river in the setting winter sun, nothing else. If I had liked him, I might remember it. None of that is very important. But shortly after, we left Prague to go and film in a castle near the Austrian border.”
About Vin Diesel: “I had more or less fallen in love with him. I found him fantastic, cultured, intelligent, full of self-mockery. Much better than his character. He had a hard time believing that he had found a friend, someone who looked at him beyond his muscles and his media visibility. I appreciated him as a man and as an artist, and I was there to remind him not to let himself be swallowed up by success. I had been doing this job for ages, I had never believed in hype: money, false promises, false El Dorados did not impress me.”
Hooking up with a director, Leos Carax, in 1995: “Sex with him was far from romantic. He wanted to subdue me, the bed would be the ideal place. The first time we slept together, his kisses were hard, he wrung my breasts, his hands were squeezing my neck, and at the end of our lovemaking, he asked me to leave. It was dark, I found myself alone in the streets of Paris, drunk, looking for a taxi. This encounter had been humiliating enough to make me believe that I was in love with this little guy; this fortress to conquer would be on a par with my egocentrism. Our clandestine affair lasted about a year. And finally, I never acted in his film. He chose a Russian actress who became his partner and who committed suicide ten years later when they were still together. Our story ended the day I left his Parisian apartment without warning. I doubt he suffered. That said, if I managed to make him feel a minimum of sorrow, I am glad. Deep down, that is what all @ssholes like him deserve.”
Sergio Rubini: “Rome, in 1993, had already turned into a cesspool, a caricature of itself. I had moved there to be close to my fiancé-obsession at the time, Sergio, an actor-director almost twenty years older than me. He was skinny and had a long nose, but he was also, let's say it, super well-built, married to an actress his age, like a hysterical blonde-bourgeois, highly respected in Italy, precisely because of her (true) image of a neurotic woman. This affair with this actor-director began when I was 17, after I had left Federico, and lasted four or five years.”
Condannato a Nozze (1993): “I had acted in a film with him in which I played the role of his mistress, a film that fell into oblivion, like many feature films of the 1990s. I remember a scene in which I had improvised a leg movement hoping to excite him. I wanted to make him react, him whom I idolized not only as an intellectual, but also as a mature man (which he was not at all, something I would realize many years later). His wife played the protagonist's wife in the film; all this made things terribly exciting. So, in a way, I managed to conquer him, and our toxic and destructive relationship began, with some reasons for existing: first of all, he had a huge cock. At the time, I considered him a genius artist; since he was married, I could go and see elsewhere. Above all, he satisfied my frantic and typically adolescent desire to consume myself with love.”
BDSM: “He demanded that I worship him like a god. He the dominator, and I the dominated. He the master, and I the apprentice. He the brain, and I the body. Yes, almost all the men I thought I loved turned out to be incurable indecisive, self-conscious, terrified of everything that concerned them deep down, from their brain to their cock. A continual struggle to conquer me and submit to me, a game that I lent myself to while knowing deep down that no one would really succeed. In short, seen from the height of my 17 years, Sergio Rubini was a hot guy, while now, I wouldn't even touch him with a stick. That said, he was much better than most boys my age, and I gave myself over to this relationship with the right amount of sense of drama and recklessness that one possesses in adolescence. One thing is certain: it was with him that I learned to f#ck. We watched tons of p*rn movies before getting into it wildly, always clandestinely, either in his office or in my rotten two-room apartment in Campo de' Fiori, but also in his marital bed when his wife went to the spa with her friends. I gave myself completely and I don't regret it. However, and despite its positive aspects, the status of mistress did not suit me. While I waited patiently for the moment when he would introduce me to his friends as his companion, I had other lovers with whom to spend my nights, other films to shoot, other drugs to take, other parties to lose myself in. I never told him anything about my life because he was a jealous and possessive man.”
1995: “I was cultivating my dream of becoming a director and I had started shooting my first short films. It was also at that time that I had my first sexual experience with a woman. I had been contacted by a famous writer who said she was interested in adapting her novel for the cinema. In truth, she wanted to put me in her bed. I ended up giving in, seduced by a sensual massage during our second meeting, at my place, to discuss the project. This lovemaking left me confused and disgusted. Her smell had permeated me, and as soon as she left, I ran to the bathroom to slip into the shower, that kind of old shower where you sit down to wash yourself, and I stayed under the water for hours to get rid of it. I was supposed to see Sergio a little later, I was afraid he would notice. But he didn't notice anything, and the film never saw the light of day.”
The making of Michael Radford’s B. Monkey in 1996: “I met the other actors in the film - Jared, Rupert and Jonny. I flirted with everyone. Michael was a complete freak, and whenever he asked me if I was dating so-and-so, I denied it. I didn't want to get into a fight, he was a b!tch enough. In reality, I dated all the actors, including Rupert, who was openly homosexual. I was not well. Except when I was with Jonny. We were having sex in my trailer between scenes. One day, in the middle of our lovemaking, someone knocked on the door. Still panting, I went to open it and shouted, "We're coming!" He was a beautiful, sensitive boy, and I'm sure he remained that way. At that time, he was young, impetuous, charismatic and full of poetry. I don't remember why I left him. He took it very badly, yelled, kicked my caravan, he even wanted to knock it over. I read, a few years ago, that he tried to commit suicide. It made me sad, I would have liked to talk to him, but I didn't make contact. I sincerely hope he is feeling better. And that he has forgiven me for hurting him. We were too young at the time to know how to love each other without hurting each other.”
Lenny Kravitz's apartment in Paris circa Septeber 2017: “Watching Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Chloë Sevigny and a whole bunch of celebrities showing off while trying to dance, squeezed into dresses that cost thousands of dollars, made me die laughing. Lukas and I made fun of them so much that I nearly p!ssed myself. Kravitz had passed around shots of tequila, and I was dancing around like a possessed person after taking off my jacket and T-shirt, in shorts and a bra. Everyone was looking at me, half-awesome. An actress came up to dance, and I grabbed her long blonde hair and kissed her on the mouth. She was in ecstasy, while the music Kravitz was playing was uninteresting, it was so bad that I danced without really believing it.”
Music is her muse: “I was obsessed with books, but music was my fiancée. It kept me company, let me let off steam, dried my tears. It has made me see the most beautiful films of my life. Music elevates me, invades me, obsesses me. I always have a song stuck in my head. I always have something in my head, and that something is the only weapon against myself, especially when I end up finding myself unbearable. Music is my most faithful mistress, the sexiest I've ever had, the only one that has never abandoned me. My chick, as I call her, I pay, she's mine. I bring her home and I make love to her. Sometimes she gets sad and cries and moans, like a primitive blues; sometimes she makes me jump on her thighs with a doo-wop. Love expires, but music is limitless. It is the only absolute that humans can perceive, it is eternity, lux æterna dazzling the world.”
This book was published the year before Metallica released their 2022 single - Lux Æterna (the title track of their 2023 album).