2010 in Review: Best Actress in a Leading Role

2010 Addict Awards

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Juliette Binoche, "Certified Copy"

Taken from review:

Binoche gives Elle startling complexity, flirting with the active courage of a teenager, and cunningly baying James to play along in her playground fantasy. She colours her impassioned silent hope with bitter self-realised existential crisis, painfully unable to quash the mentality that keeps her family in a tentatively ephemeral state.

Furthermore:

A re-watch proved even more beneficial in terms of assessing the performance, since there is a shift in dynamic midway through the film. Particularly in the scenes where she's driving, Binoche shows an increasing lack of tolerance (probably born out of the fact that she is essentially in control of where they're going for once) and her inflections match the tension of the exchange, while remaining inherently joyous about the promise of the day ahead. It's a beautifully-acted segment. 

* Jeong-hie Yun, “Poetry” *

The very idea of somebody's desire to write poetry co-inciding with a devolved act by a member of their family feels a bit contrived, but Lee Chang-dong's film manages to say an awful lot through this technique that it becomes a bit of a moot point. Yun, the Twiggy of the older generation (in agelessness if not stature), festers gladly upon the many compliments to her cutesy appearance with unmistakable pride — she knows her own strengths and limitations. When she finds out what has been going on under her nose she grows ever more bemused with her role; unsure of herself, angry with life and literature, and as she charts the inner struggle between her moral and familial responsibilities Yun displays a revelatory burden of composed, introspective grief.

Nicole Kidman, "Rabbit Hole"

Nicole Kidman, and to an extent, "Rabbit Hole" itself, is much more cynical about grief than one would expect. This helps to make her character Becca more accessible, in the sense that she has a faux-objective impression of her plight, casting judgements on couples at her counselling group for using religion as a coping mechanism. There's an element of elitism in the inhibited self-importance Kidman brings to Becca; the 'victim' that nobody can ever relate to. While Kidman telegraphs the aloof, partitioned rigidity of Becca, she also carves a personality for this woman, impulsively open to avenues that feel instinctive to her; following them with the pepetually aimless nature of a woman with little decision left.

Yahima Torres, "Black Venus"

Taken from review:

Yahima Torres gives a display that is so introspectively devastating that it defies belief. Often an escalating vessel for the film’s thematic presentation, rather than an active proponent within the narrative study, her moves to suggest Saartije’s ideological shifts (both past and present) add valuable substance to the character. As she gives a personal account to a packed courtroom she states, “I am an Actress,” with such an inflected sense of motioned duty, realising just as she utters the words that they are ridiculous. Torres reveals Saartije’s sense of performance, ensconced in a culture that shuns any real esteem, her bemusement with science reflecting that, on some level, she has accepted what she has become.

Michelle Williams, "Blue Valentine"

While Ryan Gosling's character most radically alters through the course of the film, Michelle Williams' Cindy has an altogether more curious arc. One of Williams' best assets as an Actress is in her absence of belonging; how she manages to cast bursts of fierce emotion unnervingly off-the cuff, and yet also make them seem like a deceptively natural progression. Her style of acting is very understated (some suggest too so) but she remains able to register with the intricacies of Cindy's initial cautious approach to her relationship with Dean, and the later realisation that she took the easy option (if not necessarily the wrong one) in accepting his advances in the first place. 

Exceptional Runners Up: Natalie Portman, "Black Swan"; Isabelle Carre, "The Refuge"; Emma Stone, "Easy A"; Catherine Deneuve, "Potiche"; Sally Hawkins, "Made in Dagenham"; Greta Gerwig, "Greenberg"; Annette Bening, "The Kids Are All Right"

Worthy of Note: Lesley Manville, "Another Year"; Jennifer Lawrence, "Winter's Bone"; Irene de Angelis, "Dark Love"; Tilda Swinton, "I Am Love"; Rinko Kikuchi, "Norwegian Wood"; Julianne Moore, "The Kids Are All Right"; Rebecca Hall, "Please Give"

A Review of Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2010)

Copie Conforme (Certified Copy)

Directed by Abbas Kiarostami

Starring: Juliette Binoche, William Shimell

Grade: A –

Written for Subtitled Online:

Like the vacant microphones which dominate the first still of Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy,” one feels like a lonely figure waiting to be broached; waiting for an unknown address from an unknown addressee. Throughout the film this feeling never really dies, since its two principal characters each take it in turns to validate their case, like barristers squabbling in a courtroom. And yet “Certified Copy,” as dialogue-heavy and briskly meditative it is as an assessment of what constitutes a committed relationship, is as fluid and engaging a disquisition as Kiarostami has produced since 1997’s “Taste of Cherry”.

Those microphones stand for James Miller (Shimell), who is attending a conference to promote, recite, and discuss his book, “Copie Conforme” (Certified Copy). As he charms the Tuscan audience with his ambivalence and dry, pronounced British humour, he also draws apparent enthusiast Elle (Binoche) into his gaze. After she quarrels with her young son about the extent of her feelings for James, they later meet inside the boutique that she owns, and embark on a day trip to a handsome nearby town.

When journeying to get to this town, their conversation in the car extends to intellectual debate based on James’s book, the philosophy of which is framed upon cultural artefacts: what makes one artefact authentic and another false? They appear to have opposing views, his disillusionment with celebrity mirrored with her embracing of the PR world. And as Elle berates her own friend Marie’s simplistic attitude towards realness he reveals a pedantic, self-righteous streak in endeavouring to fight Marie’s corner, claiming a final, elitist word on the matter. The increase of tension flaunts a degree of harvested resentment; she’s frustrated, he’s resigned, and we aren’t quite sure until halfway through the film quite why they’re acting in this way.

Kiarostami uses the basis of a book about authenticity to show conflicting views about what a relationship and a marriage means; whether relationships are a product of natural chemistry, or whether we construct them to suit our own needs and plug inherent insecurities. The cavalier (anti?) charm about “Certified Copy” is that the subjects at the head of it, James and Elle, are either theorising their real feelings to accommodate the context of their exchange, or regressing to idealistic views of romance. Each grows more direct and assertive as they learn how much they can give of themselves without being stung, and the dynamic of their dialogue grows more tumultuous and unpredictable with every passing frame.

“Certified Copy” becomes a fascinating study of relationships, of how we use different modes of address to assert our point-of-view, and to justify ourselves to each other. Binoche and Shimell’s canny ability to draw you into their interplay makes the film vibrant and stimulating as an intellectual standoff, keenly mysterious in alluding to how emotional connection can devolve into figurative deadness. Even the quaint Tuscan hideaway that they peruse, with its dotted galleries and towering antiquity, becomes more of a weapon to the couple than a distraction, a method of instilling ideological sentiment into an emotional outlet that feels all but extinct. Art becomes the subjective canvas on which they coat their philosophies and belief systems, either through frustration towards the other, or to confirm to themselves that their lives aren’t an exception to a rule.

Binoche gives Elle startling complexity, flirting with the active courage of a teenager, and cunningly baying James to play along in her playground fantasy. She colours her impassioned silent hope with bitter self-realised existential crisis, painfully unable to quash the mentality that keeps her family in a tentatively ephemeral state. “Certified Copy” recalls the recently-released Blue Valentine in its display of a disintegrated romance that may have failed through being formed upon impulsivity and false perceptions, but rather than show the car crash, Kiarostami’s film is more about picking up the pieces and confronting one’s own failures. Particularly in Elle’s case, it feels as though she’s trying to find if her grievous loss is genuine: whether she’s mourning for something that ever existed, or if it all began as a result of mismatched agendas.

Gorgeously crafted and expertly played, “Certified Copy” achieves profound worth at generating back-story through spirited cajoling, even as deeper motives lie underneath the exterior. Such is the depth of each exchange between James and Elle, one can see a single scene of this succeeding as a short film, with enough tiny inflections of hollow affection to allude to years of unspoken contempt. What begins as a resurrection turns into a fatal re-enactment, and finally a sorrowful lament. The film’s title says it all: never has an imitation of a marriage felt so true.