Wanting Annette

I have always liked Annette Bening, but now I think I'm in love with her. I've thought about it long and hard, and I've decided that she has officially knocked Nicole Kidman out of the #1 spot in my list of favorite actresses (who, according to my criteria, must be gorgeous as well as a great actress). We saw her last night in "Being Julia," for which she got an Oscar nomination. She is wonderful in the role of Julia Lambert, a pre-war star of the London stage, who is going through something of a midlife crisis. (Although I disagree mightily with Netflix's blurb, which describes her as "estranged from her son and willfully ignorant of her husband's philandering"—her son is away at Eton, and she's at least as philandering as her husband [played well by Jeremy Irons]; they have an "understanding.")

I have two complaints about the movie: First, I didn't care for the scenes in which she was meant to be downright giddy. They seemed forced and didn't ring true. Second, the big climactic scene near the end didn't hang well with the rest of the movie. In fact, we started watching the movie on Monday night, but Andy was tired, so we paused it and watched the last half-hour or so last night. It was almost as if someone had switched movies on us—the tone was that different. Most of the movie is pretty dramatic and serious, although not solemn in any way; I thought they could have achieved the same outcome without resorting to such a weirdly comedic, entirely unrealistic "big" scene. But it was well worth watching all the same. There's also a nice little performance, as always, from Juliet Stevenson—I wouldn't have minded seeing more of her.

While we're here, I'll add "Being Julia" to my ultra-nerdy list of movies whose titles begin with gerunds. I don't yet know whether I'll be able to add "Trainspotting"; you might have noticed that Netflix delivered that to me over a month ago. We started watching it one night while eating dinner and got to the "Worst Toilet in Scotland" scene and nearly lost it. We have not been brave enough to try again, but we haven't yet sent it back, which suggests that we intend to watch it eventually. But I don't yet know what "Trainspotting" even means, so I can't tell you whether it's a gerund. And that's all that matters anyhow, right?

Comments

[scott]

Even factoring in a decade age difference, Nicole Kidman is a wretched hag next to Annette Bening.

[nina]

I thought "Being Julia" was mighty fine indeed. I'm always happy to see the experience and cunning of middle-age win out over the beauty and freshness of youth.

[TwoBusy]

Does you list mean you've never seen "Gleaming the Cube" -- the Christian Slater skateboarding epic? Not to mention "Kicking and Screaming" - the annoying film about slackers trying to figure out what to do with their post-college lives - or "Kicking and Screaming," the horrifying soccer movie with Will Ferrell and Robert Duvall?