It’s a sunny spring day in Paris, and a young woman is in a mechanic’s workshop, tending to a retro silver Ford. She checks the engine oil and polishes the bonnet, grease smeared across her cheek. She hops in the car and begins a flâneur-like odyssey around the city, where she undergoes a series of strange, lightly surreal encounters—helping a woman move an antique chair across the street, dropping off boxes of plants at a store—before approaching the famous Fontaine des Lions in the city’s 12th arrondissement, where a figure stands waiting.
That figure is wearing an incongruously wintry outfit for this balmy weather—a trapper hat bedecked with embroidered crystals, an equally snug shearling-lined coat, knee-high boots—and carries bags with her, as if arriving for a stay with our unnamed protagonist. Then, she begins to walk towards the camera, and as you look more closely, you notice: is that… Kim Gordon?
Yes, in fact, it is: the maverick musician and former Sonic Youth frontwoman is the titular star of this Claire Denis-directed short film, Avec Kim. (Real Gordon-heads will know that this isn’t her first time in front of the camera, having made brief but memorable appearances in Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There and Gus van Sant’s Last Days.) The film, which co-stars the French actor and director Suzanne Lindon as the younger woman, is premiering today at Venice Film Festival as part of Miu Miu Women’s Tales, the acclaimed short film series spearheaded by Miuccia Prada and her right-hand woman, Verde Visconti.
While previous directors have included everyone from Agnès Varda to Ava DuVernay to Miranda July, having Denis involved this year feels like a particular coup: the legendary 80-year-old French auteur behind modern classics like Beau Travail and 35 Shots of Rum is famous for her unflinching examinations of the lingering scars of colonialism, impacted by her upbringing in West Africa, as well as her tactile, elliptical visual style. As one of French cinema’s most uncompromising directors, it’s exceptionally rare for Denis to take on projects outside of her features; it’s been over a decade since she made a short film.
Thank goodness she did: Avec Kim is a mysterious and ultimately poignant meditation on intergenerational female friendship, which seems to echo the relationship Denis herself shares with Lindon. After watching Lindon’s debut feature, 2020’s Spring Blossom, Denis reached out to share her admiration, sparking a close friendship; they ended up collaborating on the screenplay for Denis’s most recent film, The Fence. (There’s some Gordon-Denis lore worth knowing here too, with Denis also directing a Sonic Youth video back in 2006.)
It all feels part and parcel of the overall Miu Miu philosophy, which—despite its associations with a more youthful, playful version of the Prada spirit—has more recently made a deliberate shift towards more age-inclusive casting, with figures such as Kristin Scott Thomas, Gillian Anderson, and even Willem Dafoe all walking the runway over the past few years. It’s not about youth necessarily, but a rebellious streak: the kind that both Gordon and Lindon possess in spades.
On a hot, humid afternoon in Venice the day before the premiere, Vogue caught up with Gordon and Lindon (the former fresh off a flight from Los Angeles, as cool as ever in a grey version of the sunglasses worn in the movie) in a mercifully air-conditioned booth at their hotel—and learned more about how the film prompted a friendship between them, too.
Tell me a little bit more about your relationship to Claire’s films, and how you first connected?
Kim Gordon: I met her years ago through Olivier Assayas, who I’m close friends with. I don’t remember when, exactly. But I always admired her films: Beau Travail, White Material. She also did a Sonic Youth video a long time ago. She just asked me if I wanted to do this project with her. I was incredibly happy and thrilled to do it.
Suzanne Lindon: Actually, my dad [actor Vincent Lindon] did a film with Claire when I was born, but I’d never met her. She went to the movies to see my first feature, Spring Blossoms, and she left me a message that I kept because it was so surreal to have Claire talking to me about my film. Then she reached out to ask me if I wanted to write her latest film, The Fence, with her. So I started writing with her, which is very intimate—we worked in her kitchen, and we saw each other every day for a year and a half. Then she asked me to do the project with her and with Kim. I knew that you [gesturing to Gordon] and Claire were friends because she talked about you sometimes when we were working together.
I read that you had to learn to drive in two weeks for the film, Suzanne?
Suzanne: Yes. I didn’t know what the movie would be about, but she called me and said that she wanted to film me driving, and I didn’t know how to drive. I told her, ‘Yeah, sure! Great idea!’ And then I called the driving place in the corner next to my home immediately. [Laughs.] I started taking lessons, but I knew that I had to pick Kim up in my car, and I was so afraid because I wanted Kim to be safe in my car.
Were you nervous to get in the passenger seat, Kim?
Kim: Actually, not at all. [Laughs.]
Suzanne: You were less nervous than I was.
The film has no dialogue, and I know that Claire likes to improvise and work things out on the fly. Was there a script of some sort? What was the material you were working off to play your roles?
Kim: There wasn’t a script. I was just told we’d be riding around Paris in the car.
Suzanne: I guess she told us that she wanted to film us in the car, and that’s it. This is what I liked about the project—I knew that Claire would film things, but she didn’t need to explain to us what she had in mind.
Kim: I mean, she’s also so abstract and poetic when she speaks in English. I don’t know about in French, but in English, no matter what she’s saying, it comes out amazing. She mentioned the statue of the lions as being really special. That was one of the main things.
Suzanne: I remember from working with her on the script for The Fence, she has a special way of writing films because she never fully decides at that stage. She’s always writing, but I think what I love about working with Claire is that you stay very free. I mean, we were talking in the car, and I think we almost forgot that we were being filmed at some point.
There’s a mysterious quality to the film, where it’s not entirely clear when it’s set, or what the relationship between the characters is. Was that something that you spoke about with each other, or with Claire, to try and unlock it? Or did you want to keep it ambiguous for yourselves, as well?
Kim: Well, I think I just assumed that it was two friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time, and were going to have this adventure together. It was also just so fun for me meeting Suzanne. I enjoyed it so much that it became easy. She made me very comfortable.
Suzanne: What I love is that, to me, this film will be a memory of the day we had. Sometimes we were waiting for the set to be ready and the team to be ready, so we talked to each other and really got to know each other, just like two friends who hadn’t seen each other for a long time. I was so happy to get to know you, and I think the relationship in the movie is actually the relationship we had that day.
Kim: It’s true
The clothes are really folded into the story so seamlessly—the workwear from the spring 2026 collection for the mechanic scenes, or that fabulous crystal-embroidered trapper hat you wear, Kim. Were you involved in picking that out?
Kim: It was among my options. It was very hot that day, by the way. [Laughs.]
Suzanne: It was April in Paris, and Kim was wearing this shearling hat in this hot old car. Why did you go for the hat?
Kim: I just thought it was awesome. I thought, I’m never going to own this, but I am going to wear it. I don’t know, really.
Suzanne: The moment where we swap the hat and sunglasses meant a lot to me, because it’s really the image of this friendship, and these two generations of women who are friends. I love that, because that’s how I feel about Claire. I feel closer with Claire than with friends I have from high school. So that moment of us sharing the hat says a lot, I think.
Kim, tell me a little more about working on the score. Was that always the plan?
Kim: Originally, I wanted to do it like the way Neil Young did Dead Man Walking—just by watching it and playing along. I did some of that, but I also went back and inserted some parts. At the beginning, Claire said she wanted something mysterious—she doesn’t give a lot of direction, so it can be hard to figure out what she actually likes. I knew that she wanted something in the beginning with the mechanic to feel more industrial. There was a song on my latest record she really liked. And she said, ‘Oh, can you do something with that melody?’ I wanted to do something that felt very open.
Suzanne: I haven’t seen the film yet, but I can’t wait to listen to the music. My memories are very clear of what we shot, and so I have an idea of what the film could be. But I know that Claire will surprise me, so let’s see.
It sounds like you really struck up a friendship through the process of making this. Have you seen each other since? What’s it like to be reunited here in Venice?
Kim: It’s so great. It feels like we just saw each other yesterday. And Suzanne’s made a whole film in between!
Suzanne: Kim was one of the first people I dared to tell about the film, because I felt that she could understand how stressful but incredible that experience is. I remember you really encouraged me to pursue it, and that meant a lot. I just started editing it 10 days ago, so we’ll see what it becomes. But Kim will be one of the first people I show it to.
Kim: That’s awesome.
Suzanne: You’re a part of my story now.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
