Film Actresses & Global Classics
Catherine Deneuve Actress 2: Repulsion
When it comes to sex, all of us have experienced longing and frustration, but where along the continuum of love and madness does desire tip into terror?
Catherine Deneuve Actress 1: Introduction
The actor’s art as demonic and erotic: this vision will inform my reflections on Catherine Deneuve as an actress.
Nicole Kidman Actress 4: Dogville
In playing Grace, Kidman’s challenge was to maintain a constructive tension between naturalness and artificiality…
Nicole Kidman Actress 3: Eyes Wide Shut
As a film about a couple in crisis, the specific genius of Eyes Wide Shut is that it foregoes infidelity in favour of fantasy, adultery in favour of desire, and shows the imaginative forces to be more powerful that the enacted ones.
Nicole Kidman Actress 2: The Portrait of a Lady
As a character, Isabel Archer challenges the actress to plumb her depths even as she maintains her surface composure. In accepting this challenge, Nicole Kidman delivers what is for me her finest screen performance.
Nicole Kidman Actress 1: Introduction
Nicole Kidman, because of her vast range and versatility and the radiance of her feu sacré, is the finest actress, in my view, in English-language cinema today.