Hot welly and Suet Pudding action from Keira and Co.
It’s not a new Idea but when is there going to be a romantic film where the main love interests are if not ugly but well plain.
Take for instance the new film of Dylan Thomas’ life (h)edge of love. From the pictures of Thomas in real life he looks fairly normal a bit jowly and fleshy maybe you might mistake him for a back bench Tory MP. His wife Caitlin has one of those faces we’ve seen many times before staring out of old family photo’s, it’s a characterful face but no pin up. These aren’t bad things just the facts.
But come the movie the main characters are replaced by the beautiful but dull faces of Keira Knightly, Matthew Rhys and especially Sienna Miller* (sister of Savannah, their other sister Skegness never gets mentioned!).
Now I know actors are self selecting in that the pretty one’s rise to the top and I’m all for glamour and fantasy but when it comes to real people aren’t we diminishing them some what by denying the plain their quota of passion and ? Isn’t it all the more involving seeing people with bad hair and battered faces in passionate tumult? And I don’t mean that nonsense where someone hot puts on a false nose and has “messed up” hair but the sort people normally cast as character actors playing romantic leads.
It would add to the realism, Mathew Rhys wouldn’t have any problem wooing Miller in real life where as Rhys Ifans would (oh no that’s wrong but you know what I mean) if Dylan Thomas was charismatic it wasn’t because of his cute looks and fluttering eyelashes it was his words and character and this requires actors to act not to rely on back lighting and lip gloss.
Now this film was written by Keira’s mum which probably accounts for Knightly Jnrs appearance but that’s no real excuse.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a love story with normal looking leads, you see them as the best friends, the crippled deaf and dumb family members but never in modern films see them having their “sun drenched Ingrid Bergman Kiss”.
Now I know actors are self selecting in that the pretty one’s rise to the top and I’m all for glamour and fantasy but when it comes to real people aren’t we diminishing them some what by denying the plain their quota of passion and ? Isn’t it all the more involving seeing people with bad hair and battered faces in passionate tumult? And I don’t mean that nonsense where someone hot puts on a false nose and has “messed up” hair but the sort people normally cast as character actors playing romantic leads.
It would add to the realism, Mathew Rhys wouldn’t have any problem wooing Miller in real life where as Rhys Ifans would (oh no that’s wrong but you know what I mean) if Dylan Thomas was charismatic it wasn’t because of his cute looks and fluttering eyelashes it was his words and character and this requires actors to act not to rely on back lighting and lip gloss.
Now this film was written by Keira’s mum which probably accounts for Knightly Jnrs appearance but that’s no real excuse.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a love story with normal looking leads, you see them as the best friends, the crippled deaf and dumb family members but never in modern films see them having their “sun drenched Ingrid Bergman Kiss”.
*On the subject of the over exposed Miller am I the only person who can’t hold her face in their mind, she’s some kind of shape changing bland walking news story I swear I couldn’t pick her out of a line up if my life depended on it. Also she seems to have sustained a career on the basis of never making a good film ever
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