Cannes Actress: Zhao Tao and Jane Fonda
Wednesday, May 20, 2015 at 9:43AM The latest buzz from Cannes is that the Best Actress race is heating up. Or at least speculation is. Marion Cotillard's Lady MacBeth has yet to screen but those that have seen it early are typically wowed. But we know at this point not to expect Cannes juries to point and go "Her! Her!". If there is a Blanchett-Vanquisher out there it may well be Zhao Tao who stars in the "giddily ambitious" Mountains May Depart.
That's the latest from the reknowned Jia Zhangke, a regular at the fest for whom Zhao Tao is a recurring player (Still Life, Platform, A Touch of Sin). Mountains is Zhangke's fourth try at the Palme and though he usually comes away empty-handed, his last attempt A Touch of Sin (2013) took Best Screenplay. Despite the jury completely changing each year Cannes somehow has an Oscar-like sense of momentum wherein you generally move up the ranks as to which prizes you take; longevity wins the Palme. (It's not as simple as that of course but there can be a weird cumulative coronation effect.)
So that makes the Palme race: Hungary's Son of Saul vs. USA's Carol vs China's Mountains May Depart? (Or am I forgetting something that's been similarly ecstatically received?) Typing them out that way it makes Cannes sound like the Olympics of the movies, only annual instead of bi-annual. And maybe it is?
In other Canne actressy news, our friend Kyle Buchanan says that Jane Fonda walks away with Paolo Sorrentino's Youth which stars Michael Caine as a retired film composer. I'm hearing that Fonda's role is very showy (an old combative muse to Harvey Keitel's director character), but quite small. Nevertheless I couldn't help but immediately picture both Grace (Jane) and Frankie (Lily) as Oscar nominees this year in Supporting (for Youth) and Lead (for Grandma) and how much media fun would that be? Sorrentino had a major Cannes sensation and eventual Oscar winner with his last film The Great Beauty. This one is in English which naturally will give it a leg up with Oscar voters if it opens this year but it's already more divisive which can be a problem. Still love/hate divides are tough to predict with awards. All you sometimes need is the right people on the love side to turn the critical tide around. And anyway when this mixed review called it 'elegant fun' I just thought... doesn't that describe a lot of well received prestige films?
But just to remind us that she's already one of the immortals (with 2 Oscars, multiple classic films, and celebrity outside of acting as well, the legend is assured) here is Jane Fonda looking amazing on the cover of W -- their oldest cover girl ever.
Here's an interesting bit on self-awareness from the W interview:
One day on the set of On Golden Pond, a film that she coproduced so that she could costar with her father, the legendary actor Henry Fonda, she was fixing her hair when Katharine Hepburn (who played her mother in the film) pinched her cheek and demanded, “What do you want this to mean?” “It was 1981, and I didn’t know what she was talking about,” Fonda recalled. “Back then, I didn’t give my looks a fare-thee-well, and that bothered Katharine. She said to me, ‘This is what you present to the world. What do you want it to say about you?’ Her question has been lodged in my psyche ever since. I now think what Katharine meant was awareness of a persona. She wanted me to consider how I wanted to be seen. Now I pay attention to how I present myself to the world. I realize that it matters.”
Reader Comments (29)
Jane Fonda is more of an Academy favorite than I realized. Seven nominations, six for leading roles. And contrary to my assumption that that supporting nod for On Golden Pond was the end of her run, she managed a Best Actress nomination five years later (the film's only nomination for ANYTHING). And that came just two films before her retirement.
Fonda was Julianne Moore's age when she left acting. Considering some of my favorite actressing ever has been done by 50 and 60somethings, it's amazing to think of what could've been hers if she'd stuck with it, although I respect her for really committing to that long break.
But what I love the most about Jane Fonda is that for all her multihyphenates (activist, celebrity, style icon, workout queen, aging guru) no one is as committed to the craft as she is. We're distracted but she's not. I love watching her method. On "Grace and Frankie" she might as well be a nineteen-year-old at the Actors' Studio, so earnestly experiencing the moment and entering scenes with such preparation. Jane Fonda has never phoned in a scene in her life.
Fonda's definitely a great actress and a screen legend. But I have to say that I find her really irritating as a celebrity. So humourless and full of herself.
I was a child in the 70s, and Jane Fonda just seemed like The Most Famous Actress. In films like Coming Home and The China Syndrome she was like a public conscience for the big issues of the day. She was so controversial back then (that recent Mad Men jab, when Betty called Sally "Hanoi Jane" for her anti-war statements, was one heard in households everywhere). The aerobics years and her time as Mrs. Ted Turner turned her into something else. I'm glad to have her back at the top of her game. She's an icon.
Love, love, love Jane! Such a talent, for those unfamiliar make sure to catch They Shoot Horses, Don't They?-it's a gut punch of a movie but Jane and everyone else is phenomenal in it. Klute as well and many others. I'm glad she returned to acting and I'd love to see her back in competition and hopefully taking the stage to add to her awards take.
Clearly we demand a Jane Fonda retrospective.
I'm glad Jane Fonda is having a little late career renaissance!
Nat I thought you would have done a Fonda retrospective it really is a great career,can I just say I think she is comedy gold in monster in law,whose her contemporary now Blanchett,Watts,Connelly (where did she go) or Winslet maybe.
My heart brims with admiration for this fascinating woman. She defines the art of film acting. Her performances are so textured and layered that they stand the test of time--you can always find new facets of character upon revisiting her movies. And her gifts have not diminished.
Her harrowing performance in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is a thing of beauty and my favorite among many great feats. For me, Maggie wins the Oscar by only a whisper.
That W cover image...timeless beauty.
Ryan & Mark -- this is clearly a good idea. Let me think on it. I had a different retrospective in mind but maybe Fonda first.
....so about 2 weeks ago I was on the Key Bridge in Washington, DC watching an air pageant of WW2 fighter planes. I was standing by a group of Viet Nam vets. I had asked them which plane was which / what plane did what. Then, being a movie fan, I asked them their opinion of Jane Fonda. (I'm a lefty) They were quite vocal & very non-forgiving. "A frivolous, pampered, wealthy, elitists, ignorant actress, out for attention - who herself gleefully pointed deadly weaponry at American soldiers." They said that is the overall feeling of the majority of Vietnam vets...and many other veteran groups. They don't care if she says how sorry she is. Yes - a great film actress. But she did make a grave mistake with that one act. She strikes me as an extraordinary vein woman who is brilliant at working the media.
Fonda's four Redford films are an interesting progression over two decades: in the first (Tall Story, 1960), she stars with Tony Perkins and Redford (in his film debut) is an uncredited bit player; in the last (The Electric Horseman, 1979), they're both arguably in the twilight of their mega-stardoms (anyone know what their respective paychecks were?). And in between: the lightweight classic Barefoot in the Park (1967) and...Arthur Penn's The Chase (1966): with a cast led by Marlon Brando and featuring Fonda, Redford, E.G. Marshall, Angie Dickinson, Janice Rule, Miriam Hopkins, Martha Hyer, Robert Duvall, James Fox and Diana Hyland, I'm wondering why I have never seen this movie...
Hi Paul, I recently watched The Chase. Dayum, what a mess--and not even in a good-bad way. What to say about this overcooked, halfbaked Tennesee Williams ripoff? The dialog alone could make you give up fried foods for good, so there's that. Even James Fox, who I love, can't save this. Jane is pretty good but her part makes no sense. Actually, Angie comes off best! Watch at your own risk.
Always happy to see a thread that leads to love for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? It's such a great film, and Fonda and Susannah York are so good in it. Can't wait to see Youth.
I agree, brookesboy, The Chase is pretty bad. Redford is miscast (he should have played the James Fox role) and Fonda has little to do. I actually thought the section involving Rule and Duvall was the most interesting part of the movie, but it doesn't go anywhere.
I'm happy to see this revival of interest in Jane's career, but it would be nice if there were the same level of interest in Lily Tomlin, who is a great actress in her own right.
Paul Outlaw-The Chase is a bit of a mess but for an old movie fan there is much gold in it. Beside Jane at or near the peak of her early blonde lusciousness as is Robert Redford you have Janice Rule and Miriam Hopkins chewing the scenery with great relish and in almost every role an actor of note, either at the time Brando, Angie Dickinson, James Fox or the future, Robert Duvall, Paul Williams etc.and all with that high gloss Hollywood sheen. It's not a "good" movie but I've always found it an enjoyably bad one.
Thanks, you guys. My curiosity is definitely piqued...
joel, Jane does look great. But all I could keep thinking while watching this was: Then she did Hurry Sundown. Out of the fire and into the the frying pan LOL. It's a testament to her all-encompassing talent that she survived this trifuckta (including Barbarella)!
they love omitting her plastic surgeries, don't they? :) I still don't understand her motivations; she looked great without them. Well, yes, VANITY, of course.
A Jane Fonda retrospective would be most welcome. And I agree with others citing "They Shoot Horses Don't They" as an amazing performance. I'm not sure why this film isn't seen as often as "The Godfather" - to me the direction and overall film-making is every bit as wondrous.
Fonda has led a long life, and it's nice to see her back, she deserves the kind of parts that Judi Dench and Maggie Smith routinely get.
brooksboy-I think how she managed to sustain with those "gems" in her filmography is the films that surround them. With The Chase she was fresh off the enormous success of Cat Ballou (love her in that!!), her follow-up to the disaster of Hurry Sundown was Barefoot in the Park and then right after Barbarella came They Shoot Horses and the end of the blonde sexpot phase of her screen career.
joel, Cat Ballou--sigh. so good!
Cate blanchett fatigue has already set in...
The 1965-69 span of her career is quite amazing for the sheer numner and gamut of films it runs: Cat Ballou (xoxo, Lee Marvin), The Chase, Any Wednesday, Hurry Sundown ("with my friend, Faye Dunaway"), Barefoot in the Park, Barbarella, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? The last three alone show a remarkable segue from ingenue to sexpot to master class. (The only other actress who comes to mind with such a sequence to compare her to is Gwyneth Paltrow, circa 1995-1999.)
I sometimes, OK, often, recast the 2001 cover of Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue with Fonda (and/or Julie Christie and/or Diane Keaton) front and center. It's only my favorite V.F. cover of all time, and an actressexual's (wet) dream), so it's kind of hard to believe a legend like Fonda wouldn't be on the cover with a Deneuve-Kidman-Loren-Redgrave line-up. Alas...
P.S. Tomlin is BY FAR the M.V.P. of Frankie and Johnny...er, I mean, Grace and Frankie (with June Diane Raphael a not-quite-distant second).
Is Jane Fonda single? I would totally like to do her.
Right now, I also am a little sick of Jane Fonda oversaturation. Her looks are very plastic now, and I find her voice and self-obsession grating. And I cringe every time I hear about Hepburn pinching or yelling at people. Hollywood creates monsters.
I always thought Jane Fonda was an intelligent, skilled, and committed actress. But as a person, she always seemed defined by the men in her life.
Now Fonda seems defined by her situation: aging Hollywood actress. Since Jane made a comeback with in "Monster-in-Law" a decade ago, it's like she's playing catch up in the plastic surgery department. Not that there's anything wrong with that...if I had a few extra bucks, I'd get some myself! It just seems a little late in the game.
As for that W cover, it reminds me of why I hate Photoshop. Not ONE wrinkle on a 77-year-old woman. Especially for a star who has lived many lives. What a safe, boring cover for an actress who most definitely is not either of those things...
Rick
Just looking at some of the potential campaigns on the horizon - including Caine, Keitel & Fonda from Youth, Beatty, Tomlin, Blythe Danner from I'll See You in My Dreams, Kurt Russell, SLJ, Bruce Dern from The Hateful Eight, DeNiro from like 3 movies, Brendan Gleeson, Streepx2, Michael Keaton - the 60+ set could rule the night.
Love Jane. We should all be so lucky to be "over-saturated" with her presence.
Also, Zhao Tao is also Jia Zhangke's wife.
Is there a Hit Me With Your Best Shot for They Shoot Horses, Don't They?