in 1982 actress jessica lange was having a good year. she had proved her ability in a demanding portrait of a sadly doomed actress from the thirties, francis farmer, and met her long time love playwright sam shepard, who had a role in the film.
jessica's performance is pure and stunning. frances was hounded by police, betrayed by peers, and domineered to the point of insanity by her mother. her incarcerations in mental hospitals had less to do with her ultimately living a good life as they had to do with her getting on with the job of pleasing the movie studio.
kim stanley, as her suffocating mother, is a strong as ever. her desire to see her daughter live by her law and still succeed in areas she, as the mother, could not, is very powerful.
the fact that frances was an intelligent and willful woman who ended up deprived of her right to live her own life is difficult. i feel sure it was a lesson for many to come.
jessica is beautiful, like an animal, and her performance is amazing.
1 comment:
thanks pal for adding this film to your blog. this is one of my all time favorite movies. Its hard to comprehend the treatment for artistic flair and talent in that era. The archaic brutal frontal lobotomy performed with a screw driver reminds me of my biology lab class when we did this to frogs prior dissection.
Post a Comment