' ' Cinema Romantico: In Praise of (Anne Hathaway's) Selina Kyle

Sunday, July 22, 2012

In Praise of (Anne Hathaway's) Selina Kyle


Tomorrow my inevitable "Dark Knight Rises" review will be up and then everyone can tear me down but before we get to that I wanted to get to this......namely my kickstarting of the Oscar campaign for Anne Hathaway's as Best Supporting Actress.

Dryly witty, smartly sexy, subtly underplaying amidst the hugeness all around her, and channeling any number of the hard-boiled femme fatales of the 1940's rather than Michelle Pheiffer, you could say that she stands outside of the movie she is actually in. And that is precisely right. Because that's precisely what her character of Selina Kyle is doing in "The Dark Knight Rises" - standing outside all the urgent chaos swirling to and fro in Gotham.

And there is a moment a good ways into the proceedings when she is making a plea to Bruce Wayne and sandwiched between her two pleas is a "Please." Except she doesn't actually say "Please" out loud. She just mouths it. To which I say......O.M.F.G.

If that single moment doesn't deserve at least a look from Oscar, nothing does.

2 comments:

Alex Withrow said...

Ooohh bold statement, I like it. Hathaway for a nom is something that I can get behind at this stage in the game, but come Dec. 31... well, we'll just see. I thought she completely killed the role. Great work there.

Nick Prigge said...

Yes! Thank you! I'm pretty sure she won't actually be in the Oscar mix but either way I always tend to know when I've seen one of my favorite performances of the year. This is one.