Horror Actressing: Geena Davis in "The Fly"
Monday, April 27, 2020 at 3:00PM by Jason Adams
I think it was Roger Ebert who once said about Geena Davis she seemed difficult to cast in the movies as a normal human being because she always looked more like a Valkyrie come down from Valhalla than she ever did a simple waitress. And, Roger Ebert thinking with his hormones aside, he wasn't entirely wrong. For every Thelma there was a pirate, an assassin, a gigantic vampire countess waiting in the wings. Even in a reality-based movie like The Accidental Tourist it was her proto Manic Pixie character that represented a break in the mundane -- Geena Davis sweeping in always feels like an occasion!
That's why I think some of her absolute best work came in films where the reality rose up to meet her on her larger-than-life level. Her six full feet of rosy-cheeked goddessness needed a heightened world to roam most comfortably within, something like the afterlife wackiness of Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, or as with today's subject, the deranged splatter romance of David Cronenberg's 1986 The Fly remake...
In The Fly Davis plays Veronica Quaife (Cronenberg films always have the greatest names), a reporter for a science magazine who we meet at film's opening in the smack dab middle of being picked up at a party by Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum). Or so he thinks, that he's picking her up -- turns out she only agreed to go to his lab because he's just promised her an unrivaled scientific discovery and she's sniffing a scoop. Either way, besides being a perfect match height-wise (nobody standing on a box here), from this very first moment Goldblum and Davis (who were dating in real life) have enough chemistry to fill their own laboratory of bubbling tubes and beakers to their brim -- they're the lightning that reanimates Frankenstein in couple form.
Which is vital, because Cronenberg's about to ask an awful lot of them. Stuff that might otherwise, in more simple, human-sized hands, strain credulity. I don't speak just of the, you know, barfing fluorescent goo onto miniature doughnuts -- The Fly is somehow all at once a romance, it's a gross-out comedy, it's a creature-feature, and it's also an operatic tragedy in the vein of an old-fashioned Disease Melodrama. Davis said Cronenberg told her to play her scenes as if Seth Brundle was dying of cancer, and she absolutely breaks your heart in the film's final act as Seth succumbs to his mutant malady.
If you watch Davis' wondrously expressive face as Seth's final form, half BrundleFly, half Telepod, holds the shotgun to his head to relieve him of his monstrousness... well, first off its a testament to Geena Davis' wondrous face that you can manage to look at her face opposite the jumble of concepts and oozing liquids that I just described. But watch her wondrous face you can, you do, because she's selling every ounce of it -- both her heart and her mind seem absolutely broken, but beneath that pools a kindness, a strength and and an empathy, a genuine frisson existing between attraction and repulsion that is perhaps the platonic ideal of the Cronenberg brand. She did that.
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Reader Comments (13)
Genevieve Bujold gave the best actress performance ever in a Cronenberg movie in Dead Ringers (1988). Although, an entire series devoted to the performances in Cronenberg movies would be fun. I think Holly Hunter is underrated in Crash (1996).
Geena Davis really has two Oscars while Susan Sarandon will die a pariah.
The first time I watched The Fly, I couldn’t sleep and turned it on around 3am. By the end, I was so rattled and upset that I cried for a while, made my way to the window, and stared out until the sun rose. That’s also the only time I’ve watched The Fy. Always trying to get myself to a place where I feel okay putting it on again.
Cronnenberg doesn't get enough credit for directing great female performances:
Geena Davis in The Fly
Genevieve Bujold in Dead Ringers
Judy Davis in Naked Lunch
Holly Hunter and Deborah Kara Unger in Crash
Jennifer Jason Leigh in Existenz
Miranda Richardson in Spider
Maria Bello in A History of Violence
Keira Knightley in A Dangerous Method
Julianne Moore in Maps to the Stars.
Just an amazing collection of weird roles these actresses nailed to perfection.
The only disappointment was Naomi Watts in Eastern Promises.... the character was so underwritten as I recall... Maybe it wasn't her fault.
@Gio-While I will disagree with you respectfully on Naomi Watts, I do agree with you on Cronenberg and how he manages to get great roles for women as he doesn't get enough credit for that. He's often known as a man's director but he often does create compelling characters that women play as they often do a lot more than we give them credit for.
I just love her!
I love eXistenZ!! Just putting that out there haha :)
A great remake
@Gio - Miranda Richardson in Spider was fantastic. Thank you for reminding me of it; she really should get more acknowledgement in general, and for this performance in particular.
I've re-watched several Cronenberg movies this past week besides The Fly and agree, he's given women tons of atypical and beautifully complicated roles. Women get to be tough, mean, unapologetically sexual, in his films.
On that note I didn't mention it in this piece but Geena Davis is horny af in The Fly too -- I love the scene where Goldblum suddenly starts doing sweaty acrobatics and she is just like "Break me off a piece of that!" with her eyes.
Funny enough I was about to re-watch SPIDER too but I have started having terrible nightmares, so I might have to give the Cronenberg a rest for a bit, haha
I love Geena Davis in this. It's one of her best performances.
@adri doppelgänger: I love her too.
If you used your own handle, we could show how widespread the love was. And you could add specifically why you loved her. That would be interesting.
I like to pretend that Julianne Moore won her Oscar for MAPS TO THE STARS (it was eligible in the same year as STILL ALICE) as it is IMO her best performance.
Their chemistry is like a romantic comedy as is there banter before she learns much about him,we really feel his loss at the finale due to how Geena sees him,What happened to Geena,she seemed to fall of the map in 1997 yet a few years before she was on the top 10 highest earning actresses and movies were made because of her involvement.