David O'ConnellSarah Polley, a Tale of Two Films
April 29th 2008 06:27
Canadian actress Sarah Polley has mostly confined herself to smaller projects over the years and has steadily built up a very impressive body of work. Talented and striking, though not really a conventional beauty, one suspects she could have been lured by the prospect of the much larger fees of vapid American films and made the transition with ease.
The 29 year old has been acting since she was 6 and has worked with some of Canada's most renowned auteurs like Atom Egoyan (Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter) and David Cronenberg (eXistenZ) as well as Michael Winterbottom (The Claim).
In recent years she's been involved in 2 outstanding productions in different capacities.
Firstly, as lead actress in Isabel Coixet's My Life Without Me (2003), which I think has its flaws but is still compelling viewing and features Polley's best performance to date. She plays a young mother, who after having been diagnosed with a terminal illness, decides to keep it a secret from her two girls and writes a list of things she wants to do before leaving them behind, including making recordings for them for their birthdays until they're 18. Despite the dubious morality behind this decision, I think Polley gives an amazing naturalistic performance, with every painful nuance revealed in her expressions and actions. I could hardly look away from her and the understated way in which it's filmed allows the silences between the characters to fill the spaces around them with mysterious meaning.
So many of the great qualities of My Life Without Me which I admired are even more powerfully transfered into Polley's stunningly directed film from last year, Away From Her, which will quite possibly wring every last tear out of some people (well at least one person I know!!(; ).
Apapted by Polley herself from an Alice Munro short story (I really need to read more of her work!), it tells the heartbreakingly simple tale of a husband and wife who are drifting apart, the ghost of Alzeimers placing further distance between them as the wife, Fiona, played by Julie Christie, slowly succumbs, forcing her husband, Grant, played by Gordon Pinsent, to put her into a nursing home.
Filmed against a bleak and suffocating wintery landscape Away From Her is filled with a powerful accumulation of so many small and tender moments, and a heavy, pervasive sadness that you feel like your heart will break at any time. Making it all the more painful for Grant is seeing the attachment Fiona makes to another man in the home, every painful moment of intimacy he is now deprived of reflected in their burgeoning friendship.
The whole thing sounds like it could deteriorate into sentimentality of the worst kind but it doesn't because the direction is so assured and the performances so grounded in what feels like truth and reality that by its end, you can't help but be moved by it.
Julie Christie at 66, is still beautiful and gives one of her greatest performances. She's truly amazing, and though I haven't seen La Vie en Rose yet, surely she was robbed in not receiving the Oscar this year!!??
However, as imposing as her lead actress is, it's Sarah Polley who reveals herself as a new star behind the camera and hopefully she'll continue down that path if the right project comes along.
Away From Her should be seen by everyone, I highly recommend it; it's a beautiful and important film.
The 29 year old has been acting since she was 6 and has worked with some of Canada's most renowned auteurs like Atom Egoyan (Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter) and David Cronenberg (eXistenZ) as well as Michael Winterbottom (The Claim).
In recent years she's been involved in 2 outstanding productions in different capacities.
So many of the great qualities of My Life Without Me which I admired are even more powerfully transfered into Polley's stunningly directed film from last year, Away From Her, which will quite possibly wring every last tear out of some people (well at least one person I know!!(; ).
Filmed against a bleak and suffocating wintery landscape Away From Her is filled with a powerful accumulation of so many small and tender moments, and a heavy, pervasive sadness that you feel like your heart will break at any time. Making it all the more painful for Grant is seeing the attachment Fiona makes to another man in the home, every painful moment of intimacy he is now deprived of reflected in their burgeoning friendship.
The whole thing sounds like it could deteriorate into sentimentality of the worst kind but it doesn't because the direction is so assured and the performances so grounded in what feels like truth and reality that by its end, you can't help but be moved by it.
Julie Christie at 66, is still beautiful and gives one of her greatest performances. She's truly amazing, and though I haven't seen La Vie en Rose yet, surely she was robbed in not receiving the Oscar this year!!??
However, as imposing as her lead actress is, it's Sarah Polley who reveals herself as a new star behind the camera and hopefully she'll continue down that path if the right project comes along.
Away From Her should be seen by everyone, I highly recommend it; it's a beautiful and important film.
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Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
Surely you jest? I found this whole film an exercise in utter boredom. Bad screenplay, boring, conventional direction and cardboard acting from Christie.
Yuck, yuck, yuck, I cannot tell you the utter contempt I have for this film and its director. Let's admit it, the only reason it received the fanfare it did was because it was directed by a pretty young actress.
I'm tired of reading favourable reviews of this useless film. Where are the dissenters?
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
Anyway, that's fair enough but I don't agree, I think it's a modest film but one crafted with great care and sensitivity. I cried at the end of The Iron Giant which may tell you something else!! (;
Comment by Morgan Bell
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Comment by RubySoho
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