“To know the Peploes is to love them,” wrote filmmaker Jonathan Demme in a 1988 essay for Interview. “As individuals. As a family, a concept, a chunk of humanity.” The Peploes have been entrenched in the worlds of art and cinema for more than a century. Clotilde “Cloclo” Peploe raised her daughter and son, Clare and Mark, in London’s Belgravia while painting canvases of the cypress-filled coastline of the Cyclades islands. Both children became influential contributors to films by Michelangelo Antonioni (Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point, The Passenger) and by Clare’s husband, Bernardo Bertolucci (Novecento, La Luna, The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky). Now Mark’s daughter, Lola, is carrying on the Peploe name with her own film, Grandmother’s Footsteps, which focuses on Cloclo.
Lola, 45, bears a striking resemblance to her grandmother, from the corn-silk hair to the warm, regal smile. “As a child, listening to conversations [at] the dinner table were such gifts,” Lola tells me from her home in Paris. “On the other hand, it’s difficult because it makes one feel the pressure [of] finding an artistic niche.”
