Word: bassette
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...some prime acting by Angela Bassett in How Stella Got Her Groove Back. She emits her patented hot-coals stare, fondles an engagement-ring box with sweet subtlety, sheds urgent, persuasive tears at sexual climax. She smolders and glows--just what's needed as the heroine of a sudsy upscale romance. But Bassett doesn't need a camera to cue her glamorous art. She can give an Oscar-worthy performance sitting across from a journalist in a suite at Manhattan's St. Regis Hotel...
...speaking of her admiration for her Stella co-star Whoopi Goldberg, who was kind to Bassett years ago. "You could see the warmth coming from the heart and straight out the eyes," she recalls. "But I've had the other happen too. Not mean, exactly, but, 'Hi, how're you doing?'" Instantly, the room temperature drops to arctic levels as Bassett pretends to stare a hole through someone talking to her. "Then, after I became known, it was, 'Oh, I love you.'" And she swoops down from the chair, practically to her knees, in a deft satire of sycophancy. Drama...
Some folks have it, some don't. Bassett does. She animates and elevates her roles with fire, precision, suavity. And she accomplishes her little miracles in showcases that few would mistake for film art. What's Love Got to Do With It, for which Bassett earned an Academy Award nomination as Tina Turner, and Waiting to Exhale, a $67 million hit that forced Hollywood to notice the box office appeal of middle-class black movies, had their value as consciousness-raising exercises for women, but they turned too many characters into cliches. Which makes Bassett's work even more impressive...
...Stella, Bassett is a successful 40-year-old stockbroker who meets a hunky lad (Taye Diggs), barely half her age, on the Jamaica vacation she's taken with her pal Delilah (Goldberg). Is it love or just great sex? And how will Stella cope not only with the inevitable gibes from her family back home but with the quibbles in her own suspicious heart...
...Sullivan, isn't in that league. With its diffuse lighting and teary sex scenes (the camera can't take its eye off Diggs' extravagant muscularity), the film qualifies as soft-pore cornography. But, heck, Bette Davis spent half her career ennobling similar kitsch. Like Davis and other strong actresses, Bassett just has to get used to being better than her movies...