Kirsten Dunst in All Good Things. Photo Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

If there’s one word that’s probably never been used to describe a Kirsten Dunst movie, it’s “challenging.” Not that she hasn’t been in some entertaining films over the years. She was great as vampire jailbait in Interview With a Vampire, a cheerleader with strong opinions about racism in Bring It On, and an archduchess with a taste for 80s New Wave in Marie Antoinette. But even her finer cinematic moments have been less about Oscar buzz and more about Teen Choice Award buzz. Her most famous movie role, as Mary Jane Watson in Spider-Man and its two blockbuster sequels, nabbed her an MTV Movie Award for best kiss in 2002, and even the least snarky of critics had to concede that it might be the top of the accolades mountain for her.

But everything you thought you knew about Kirsten Dunst might be about to change. After a two-year hiatus, the now 28-year-old Dunst is staging a comeback, and not of the signing-on-to-the-inevitable-Spider-Man-sequel variety. It started earlier this year, when she appeared in a bizarre art video for an exhibit at London’s Tate Modern, in which Dunst wore a blue wig and Sailor Moon costume and danced through Tokyo’s Akihabara shopping district to the tune of “I’m Turning Japanese,” for some reason. Opening nationwide tomorrow, she co-stars (alongside Ryan Gosling) in All Good Things, a feel-not-good romance and docu-drama, loosely based on the true story of New York real estate millionaire/drag queen Robert Durst and his disappearing wife. It’s the perfect film for anyone who loved Elizabethtown but wished it had more emotional abuse and uxoricide. Dunst has also been working on two new film projects—On the Road, adapted from the Jack Kerouac novel that inspired thousands of useless poetry M.F.A.s, and Melancholia, from filmmaker Lars von Trier, whose last movie featured Willem Dafoe ejaculating blood. It’s possible that Dunst is maturing as an artist, finally taking on roles that ask more of her than flashing her dimples and being adored by her male co-stars. Or maybe she’s going through a stage, like all young adults do, forging an identity by pretending to be interested in beat poetry and art-house films. Regardless of whether she succeeds, it’s admirable that she’s wandered so far outside her comfort zone. Even if her fanbase accepts her new “adult” direction, there isn’t a Teen Choice Award for best dysphoric topless scene.

When I called Dunst to talk about All Good Things, it was like talking to any of her movie characters. The meter of her voice, the inflections—it was all intimately familiar. The only difference between Dunst the actress and her on-screen persona(s) was that when she laughed, she actually said the word “Ha,” like she was reading stage directions.

Eric Spitznagel: The first thing I heard about All Good Things is that there’s a scene where you’re doing cocaine in a bathroom with Kristen Wiig. A setup like that comes with certain expectations of hilarity. But it was profoundly unfunny.

Kirsten Dunst: Yeah. But it wasn’t supposed to be funny.

Was that a missed opportunity? For such an otherwise gloomy movie, it would’ve been a great excuse for some wacky hijinks.

It’s a pretty dark moment for my character. She’s looking for anything to get her mind off of what she just did.

Were you at least having fun when the cameras weren’t rolling?

We had more fun on other days. That was a day when I had to be pretty emotionally unhinged. So I wasn’t really in the mood for hanging out and having fun. But Kristen is awesome. I love her, she’s so hilarious. There’s a scene where I visit a divorce lawyer and that was really funny. I was definitely cracking up with her in that scene.