She herself says that "Under the Sand" depicts her own life.
TWENTY YEARS AND SUDDEN DRAMA!
(Emmanuele BACH)

Feline looks and a strange jade stare, Charlotte Rampling remains, at 50 years old, the most enigmatic English lady of French Cinema.In Francois Ozon "Under the Sand" she portraits the wife of a man that dissappears at a beach of Landes, after 25 years of marriage. After an impossible mourning, she will deny the reality of this disparition, on the verge of madness. A story that Charlotte has somehow lived in reality. "This movie, -she states-, is about my life".

"this role, she admits, has been played by me solely on the basis of instinct and of my experience of life. The expression of this suffering is there. I live with it. I transmit it through the screen because it is about me..."

The origin of this suffering is a drama that haunts Charlotte since she was 20 years old.During a stay in Argentina, her sister Sarah, three years younger, died from an aneurisma rupture. She had just given a baby to birth. Terribly shocked because of this disparition, the actress never did really recover, like she recently revealed to Studio Magazine: "Everything stopped and changed for me, it was a pain I interiorised.This death influenced all my life, my actress and woman choices. I directed myself to more serious things. It was like if I had not the right to make people laugh.It was like if had to pay a debt... It was like if Charlotte was mad for not dying in the place of her sister.
"We had a very stern childhood.My father was a colonel at the army. Since we moved very often, my sister and I had not a real chance to make friends.That explains why we were so close."
Totally hit by this tragedy at twenty years old. Charlotte found herself absolutely stranded. "Like Marie in Sous le Sable, I found myself in absolute denial, I did not know how to resolve mourning. I did not find a therapist at the time. I was all alone with my pain."

A suffering that, bravely,beaking certain tabous, the actress dared to call by its name: maniac-depressive psychosis.... After confessing, five years ago, that she was affected by this disorder, she also admited that she attended hospitals in order to heal herself. Her husband Jean Michel Jarre helped her by making her laugh. "In my family, because of our education and our english heritage, we never learned to laugh.My children and husban provied me with the stability I needed.We laugh a lot together".

Unfortunately, after twenty years of passionate love, this couple was solid as a rock, teared apart. Jean Michel's heart felt for another...but then, even when the separation was evident, Charlotte refused to accept reality: "I don't divorce, she declared to France Soir, "Michel has an affair with another woman, but when we love a man, we set him free". No matter what, their lives lead separate paths.Having almost perfect love with Jean Noel Tassez, one of the most important leaders of Alcatel Corporation,the fifty five year old actress has not faded,she is so sublime.Apparently healed, living peacefully with her own demons, the actress admitted recently:" the need(envie,n.t.) of playing, of loving is back. I love very much this french word "envie" (need) en vie (literally "in life", n.t.) a rebirth ("a renaissance).