Bitesize Best Actress Oscar Profiles: Anjelica Huston

Anjelica Huston in “The Grifters”

Lost the 1990 Best Actress Oscar to Kathy Bates in “Misery”

Grade: ***

Renowned for her formidable, disconcerting presence, Anjelica Huston was on stellar form in 1990, first scaring audiences to death in Nicolas Roeg’s adaptation of the famous Roald Dahl book, “The Witches,” and months later returning to haunt John Cusack’s troubled con-artist in stylish crime thriller “The Grifters.” As both a Witch and a Grifter, Huston asserts an air of immovability, and exercises a bitter self-righteousness towards those that pertain to know better than she does. While the maniacal nature of her cosmetic, made-for-children performance in the former offers no doubt to her character’s motivations, in Stephen Frears’ film one is likely to ponder more dubiously over whether her bite lives up to her bark.

Cusack’s troubled Roy never once refers to Huston’s Lily as a maternal figure, having clearly relied on her very little as a child. Estranged mother and son, Roy and Lily haven’t seen each other in the eight years before “The Grifters” commences, and boy it shows. Huston’s attitude towards him in their reunion scene is one of someone revisiting former shame – and her behaviour has such a removed, clinical edge to it, without making Lily seem operatically cool (like Swanson or Crawford might have), or stretching to the psychosexually trashy levels of dementia Diane Ladd opted for in “Wild At Heart.” You can see her going through the motions, remembering how it feels to care, and even amidst the stony Medusa glare Lily uses as a physical defence mechanism, there’s a solemnity and sheer terror at having to confront this area of her life again.

Huston’s underplaying of the role aids in clouding an already uncertain relationship, but it isn’t always to the benefit of the character or the film. Frears doesn’t seem to get what Lily is about – or at the very least isn’t as concerned about her as he is about Roy or girlfriend Myra (a Glorious Annette Bening) – and doesn’t give Huston much opportunity to demonstrate the more inherently volatile characteristics of Lily. “The Grifters” is often interesting, but pretty tonally half-baked, and Frears is far too shy in plugging the pulpier devices of the narrative, opting instead for sinister stylisation and repetitive visual tropes. You can sense Huston struggling to put her stamp onto scenes (especially those which feature Bening) as it’s unclear whether Lily is supposed to be predominantly jealous of Myra or wise to her youthful, rash ambition.  The politics behind the relationship triangle never seems to reach the forefront of the film’s motivations, and Huston’s time-biding style of intuitive acting rarely sees a point of refraction to exploit in the underwhelming efforts of John Cusack.

Resultantly, however, Huston dredges sufficient amounts from Lily’s character – more through layering this woman’s history onto celluloid than dealing with the here and now of her predicament. A scene in which she is wholly subservient to her boss offers a wealth of history in that regard, and in the tensely-played finale she finds a more emotive outlet in Roy than she’s ever offered. Nevertheless, Huston can’t shake off the frustrating aloofness of “The Grifters” as a tentative adaptation, more thoughtful and noteworthy than the nondescript ethics of the film itself, but still a slighter entity than the powerhouse actress we’ve grown accustomed to. 

Reversal of Fortune (1990)

Directed by Barbet Schroeder

Starring: Jeremy Irons, Ron Silver, Glenn Close

Grade: C+

Reversal of Fortune begins with the facetious introduction you're more accustomed to hearing on an episode of Desperate Housewives. Glenn Close, as troubled braindead corpse Sunny Von Bulow, provides an immediate voice-over narration from all-but-beyond-the-grave, casually outlining her husband Claus's subsequent arrest for her murder, while at the same time remaining maddeningly coy about whether Mr. Von Bulow is guilty or not. It's no real spoiler to divulge that the film never reaches a concrete conclusion about this - admirably, it can be argued - but in walking a non-committal line Barbet Schroeder's film quickly opts for an easy way out.

That "way out" is Jeremy Irons, given license to colour the accused Claus's ubiquitous self-satisfaction with shades of mystery (a freedom he guzzles as rapturously as his character does champagne), and singularly responsible for shifting perceptions of Von Bulow's gainly mechanics and bone-dry humour. The uproarious Irons allays the menace and revelry enough to allude to the man's use of wit and façade as a defence mechanism, somewhat justifying the sanguine attitude towards his wife's death and the impending threat of lifelong imprisonment by playing up to his status as an hermetic media villain. This role also won Irons an Oscar at his first and only attempt.

The decision of Schroeder et. al to let Irons have the floor could therefore be seen as a wise one, were the attempts to back up character analysis with investigative intricacy more substantative. Employed to take on the defence case is lawyer Alan Dershowitz (Ron Silver), whose vocation is now based more in the world of academia than the courtroom. The cynical Prof. Dershowitz recruits his students to help him analyse the demise of Mrs. Claus - a case which mostly comprises of medical deficiencies and unambitious timing issues popular with hour-long TV crime drama's. Moreover, the very nature of Reversal of Fortune's analytical strand appears to stretch Von Bulow's humility to questionable lengths. A risk-taking debonair he may be, but enough ingrained in the class system to entrust his case to more cunning, reputable practicioners than Dershowitz and his merry men.

So no, I'm pretty sure that Schroeder makes a dire mistake in heaping all of his eggs into one basket, bound by component Irons and his slow-burning genius, to the point where his tour-de-force renders the film's flashbacks redundant. Pre-occupied with maintaining a stolid median, the interspersed scenes between Mr. and Mrs. Von Bulow feel tentatively reluctant to reveal much about either their relationship or the tragic events that ended it. Instead, I suspect that the story plays as it was actually born, and that watching Von Bulow's feather-ruffling was enough to deem an altogether tedious non-event worthy of adaptation.

Something that feels particularly poorly thought-out is the title. It would have been interesting to have experienced and witnessed the reaction to Reversal of Fortune, a film that teeters but never veers enough to reach obtuse angles, never mind a one-hundred-and-eighty degree swing. And thus, there we have it; a movie one man cannot conquer. He can, however, electrify a film that never quite reaches the courage of Claus Von Bulow himself, and for that the titular fortune, while not gold, is glittering, majestic Irons.