Friday, December 7, 2007
Film I heart JJL
Posted by Felicia Feaster on Fri, Dec 7, 2007 at 2:56 PM
(Photo courtesy Fine Line Features)
At the risk of sounding stalkerish, I love Jennifer Jason Leigh. Her choices in films: sublime. Her performances: quirky, neurotic, intense. Like Jodie Foster, Leigh has grown up on screen, allowing for a deeper appreciation of her highly idiosyncratic sensibility and interests and the feeling that certain actresses can engender in viewers, that we know her because of the many facets of herself she has revealed in her roles. Leigh has never approached acting, as some performers do, as a narcissistic exercise. Instead she invests characters like the grunge-era, attention-craving wannabe singer in Georgia, or the phone-sex worker/mom diapering her baby while she talks dirty in Short Cuts with something women rarely get to see onscreen. Her characters, like real women, are vivid, complicated, often unlikable, sometimes pathetic and sometimes abrasive, but deeply human. If I were to compose a list of favorite contemporary actresses, Leigh would be high on my list. Leigh was one of the reasons Margot at the Wedding (directed by her husband Noah Baumbach) was such a hit with me. See my review here. But there are few Leigh vehicles that haven’t rocked my world. Some of my favorites:
Georgia (1995, Ulu Gorsbard)
Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989, Uli Edel)
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982, Amy Heckerling)
The Anniversary Party (2001, Alan Cumming, Jennifer Jason Leigh)
Dolores Claiborne (1995, Taylor Hackford)
eXistenZ (1999, David Cronenberg)
Rush (1991, Lili Fini Zanuck)
The Big Picture (1989, Christopher Guest)
Short Cuts (1993, Robert Altman)
How about you? I have a theory that Leigh is an actress women like more than men, but I could be wrong. What are your favorite JJL roles?
Comments (5)
Showing 1-5 of 5
'Miami Blues' has two of my favorite performances of both Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alec Baldwin.
like
dislike
"Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle" was too easily dismissed as a mimic job, I thought, while for pure camp value, I LOVED her in "Single White Female"; she ran circles around Bridget Fonda. (OK, not a difficult task, but still...)
I still believe my parents should never have let me watch "Single White Female."
JJL is always good in everything she's in, but sometimes she comes across as overly mannered in her performances. She's an actor's actor. Since a hot spell in the 90's, she's landed tv work, animated voice over work, minor roles in Hollywood films, and quirky roles in indie and ultra indie films. Lacking conventional (Hollywood) beauty, she's not afforded the variety of roles available to her male counterparts like Ed Norton, or Paul Giamatti. She's great in HUDSUCKER PROXY, a note perfect comic performance. I also liked her in PALINDROMES. I wonder how she would have fared as Bob Dylan?
"Georgia" = m-a-n-n-e-r-ed. Here's the complete menu: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000492/
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