(My) Best of 09: Actress.

5. Giovanna Mezzogiorno in "Vincere" (read my review)

Love is the devil for Ida Dalser (Mezzogiorno), her devotion to Benito Mussolini is such that she sells her goods to support his newspaper and when he refuses to acknowledge the existence of their son and sends her to a mental institution she assumes he's just testing her love.
Few actresses would convince us this insane looking behavior would be real and Mezzogiorno does so with enough inspiration that we even find her plea romantic sometimes.
Her eventual realization that the man of her life might be the monster the rest of the world thought him to be is heartbreaking as few things you've seen.


4. Charlotte Gainsbourg in "Antichrist" (read my review)

Seeing how she plays an archetype more than an actual character, it's remarkable to see what Charlotte Gainsbourg does in "Antichrist".
As a woman grieving the loss of her young son she embodies some of the most heart wrenching pain put on screen (watching her physical reactions to sadness makes your blood cold and punches your gut).
And when she goes all von Trier on Willem Dafoe's ass-and genitals-in the controversial ginocyde chapter she is so convincing that we can't just judge her for her actions.
Few actors commit themselves so fully to their performances in the way Gainsbourg does in this film. Despite the horrors she subjects herself to her work is a thing of beauty.


3. Penélope Cruz in "Broken Embraces" (read my review)

As the obscure object of desire in Pedro Almodóvar's "Broken Embraces", Penélope Cruz gives the most mature performance of her surprising career.
She plays Lena a secretary/actress/mistress/lover/muse that sets the film's labyrinthine plot in motion. Considering how she represents something different to almost every character in the movie, Cruz's ability to maintain a definite personality for Lena is magical.
Pedro often concentrates on her beauty and her look in the movie has often been compared to Audrey Hepburn. However the essence of her performance here is owed to another classic beauty, the great Ingrid Bergman who the movie refers to more subtly than Hepburn, but in the end becomes the moral, aesthetic and emotional axis for Lena.


2. Tilda Swinton in "Julia" (read my review)

Once every couple of years comes a performance with the kind of raw energy that the movie around them becomes elevated to the point where it makes the film seem much better than it actually is.
In 2009, awards groups decided to acknowledge this element to the more conventional choices and have all shown unanimous marvel for the work of Sandra Bullock and Mo'Nique.
Sadly it's the thunderous work of Tilda Swinton in "Julia" that should have gotten this recognition. Unlike Bullock's one note performance-and probable one time awards opportunity-we already knew Swinton could act, the only surprise here being that she could push herself even further and use genre in her favor.
And unlike Mo'Nique who made a big deal about the ugliness of her character, Swinton's Julia is the kind of monster that's never merely a prop like something out of a Spielberg blockbuster, but an actual human being who happens to lack any morality and sense of decency.
It's a shame her performance went by so unsung but Julia probably wouldn't give a damn about what others thought of her.


1. Abbie Cornish in "Bright Star" (read my review)

If you have never been in love you will want to have the kind Fanny Brawne (Cornish) has in "Bright Star", tragic ending and all.
And if you have been, you'll doubt the nature of your own feeling upon seeing the intensity of the one Ms. Brawne has for John Keats (Ben Whishaw).
She has the kind of movie love that doesn't even require physical intimacy but still convinces us of its overwhelming spirit.
But perhaps more marvelous than her love for Keats, is Fanny's love for herself. Cornish plays her like a free soul ages ahead of her time-the kind which Jane Campion has always specialized at-but the actress makes Fanny appropriate for her time as well.
There is not a single anachronistic detail in her revolutionary methods; her clothes, her designs, the forward way in which she addresses people she dislikes, her equality with John...all are time specific yet timeless.
It helps of course that Cornish has the ability to make harshness seem delicate and part of Fanny's charm is how she sees herself as more mature than she actually is. But Cornish succeeds in all the unexpected moments, she pulls off a butterfly sequence with enough innocence and airiness to make us sigh with her and later in the film she provides a moment of grief with emotional pain that overflows into the physical.
Abbie Cornish gives in to Fanny's romantic whims with such conviction that you never doubt she inspired Keats.

FYC: Best Actress in a Leading Role.

Not sure how this movie will fare in terms of release dates and such to qualify for the Oscars. It's a shame that Italy chose to submit something else though, cause as far as they go, this is the best movie from 2009 I've seen and Giovanna Mezzogiorno gives a performance of such power and beauty that it must be seen to be believed.

Vincere ****

Director: Marco Bellocchio
Cast: Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Filippo Timi
Corrado Invernizzi, Michela Cescon, Fausto Russo Alesi

History has a way of forgetting people and events that don't fit into their books. One of these people was Ida Dalser (Mezzogiorno) the woman who married and gave birth to Benito Mussolini's (Timi) first son.
She's the subject of Marco Bellocchio's "Vincere", a rousing operatic masterpiece which narrates the story of a country through a single character.
When the film begins Dalser is the wide eyed ingenue who falls in love with Mussolini's enormous presence. She stares at him full of pride as he defies God in front of a Socialist party assembly and then submits to his powerful sexuality which overcomes her body but remains distant from her heart.
He thrusts into her, perhaps thinking of his Napoleonic dreams, while she moans and softly whispers "I love you".
When Dalser sells all her belongings to get him the money to start a newspaper, she clarifies "it's not a sacrifice, it's a joy...I love you".
He takes the money and declares he will pay back, never returning the affection. It's not a surprise then when he marries Rachele Guidi (Cescon) and disowns both Ida and her child who she named after his father.
The surprise, to Ida at least, might be that he also disowns his leftist past and his marriage and new family are his way to try and please the Catholic church which he once repudiated.
She moves to her hometown where she's kept in practical imprisonment by the Fascists who send her to a mental asylum and take her son away from her.
The movie then turns into this woman's quest to regain her child and the sanity she never lost to begin with, but "the Church is the only mother fascism stills fear" she learns as the years go by and her claims are drowned between wars and political upheaval.
Carlo Crivelli's overpowering score serves to give the film a disquieting, haunting mood. Sometimes you're almost expecting Mezzogiorno to burst into a heartbreaking aria as the emotions accumulate.
Her performance of heartbreak and pride are the film's anchor, watching the way she modulates her emotions feels like a privilege.
History made an effort of erasing most proof of Ida's story, but the actress brings her to urgent life; her passion is evident in erotic scenes and in more quiet moments when she sees her whole world crumble within her.
But Mezzogiorno does more than that; she fully embodies both the woman and the symbol as the film offers various readings.
There's the biopic of impotence and sorrow, but there's also the other one in which the actress embodies Italy throughout the first half of the twentieth century.
With a stunning mastery of his craft, Bellochio-who also wrote the screenplay-makes sure that whichever way we watch the movie we will be witnesses of the specific and the general.
During the first hour or so he let's us see why Ida fell in love with Mussolini (Timi's work is majestic) as he presents himself with the charm and tenacity of a hero.
When he speaks of Napoleon we do not see the eventual insanity of the Emperor, but the nationalist idealism which got him started.
Ida, like the rest of the country, falls for Il Duce (although she later reminds us she came first) only to have him become a monster.
Bellochio cleverly makes Timi disappear from the film's latter half, as Mussolini became a figure of power.
When first we saw him in meetings, street protests and intimate encounters, he's later represented as an icon of epic proportions.
"I saw Mussolini today" says Ida to a surprised listener, but she clarifies "on the movie screen, he looks different, like a giant".
How did the man she loved become like a deity is something she asks herself, but also Bellochio's reminder to us that every political current came from a single tiny point.
During the rest of the movie we only see Il Duce through stock footage (although it's a compliment to Timi's splendid work that we might wonder if it's not him under disguise at times) as he addresses Italians and later Nazis.
Bellochio also provides us with a more benevolent look at the Italy that took in the dictator; he asks us if like Ida, in a latter scene, the country wasn't just lying and going with the current to protect itself from Fascism's tortures and horrors?
This also offers an option for what results one of the film's most profound examinations, which is the role of the media in creating history.
This isn't only obvious from the historical footage the director uses, instead it's what we don't see what lingers the most.
Would Italy have welcomed a man who sent his wife to a mental institution, would Mussolini's pact with the Vatican even have happened if this had become a known fact?
Because Mussolini is on film and Ida never was, Il Duce could make up his own public profile as he wished and we are left only with what Bellocchio offers.
No disservice to the director, because his film provokes the audience to look beyond propaganda. It's certainly ironic, or maybe not so much once you think about it, how the filmmaker recurs to violent, clashing images to edit his work.
"Vincere" is comprised of cuts that recall Eisenstein's most powerful work and can also be used as a compendium of how cinema evolved in its earlier ages (from Monumentalism to Chaplin, Bellocchio shapes his film after known works of the era).
Some of the first scenes occur inside theaters where a single piano accompanies the action on the screen. In one of the most striking scenes, the audience begins to react to what's going on in the movie and the room becomes divided into the two predominant political thoughts.
As they go beyond booing and actually begin to fight, cinematographer Daniele Ciprì shoots them against the light and they too become shadows projected in the movie screen.
Notice how the accompanist never stops playing the piano-establishing there might no difference between the reality on the screen and the reality in the movie we're watching- stating that we can never know for sure what will eventually be deemed important enough to become immortal in the medium.