Word: simper
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Writing not long after the death of Leonardo da Vinci, art historian and biographer Giorgio Vasari described the late master’s “Mona Lisa,” placing special emphasis on the lady’s uncanny simper. “And in this work of Leonardo’s there was a smile so pleasing, that it was a thing more divine than human to behold; and it was held to be something marvelous, since the reality was not more alive,” he wrote. The sublime expression of “La Joconde?...
Hirsch's Charles epitomizes the dilemma of having too much of a good thing. Bigamy normally isn't considered a funny topic. Yet the way Hirsch manages to deal with his world as it falls around his knees is funny. The simper on his face expresses the utter absurdity of his situation. As he tries to explain to Ruth: "Why should having a cheese thing after lunch make me see my deceased wife after dinner...
This is the way Eva's world ends: not with a bang but a simper. She is an aged immigrant, almost totally withdrawn from husband and family, living immersed in memory and in imaginary dialogues with great literary and political figures of history. Stricken by cancer, she is taken on a farewell visit to children and grandchildren, reaching a final resting place in the San Francisco pad of a hippy granddaughter. Eva finds in the girl an echo of her own past, and she makes some inarticulate efforts to pass on her heritage. But as played by Lila Kedrova...
...Deborah are toasting each other in a too sweet victory celebration, which is capped by upbeat footage of Deborah and her now cured friend gamboling in the countryside near the hospital. After a good many touching and vivid moments, the film ends not with a bang but a simper...
...that makes her look plagued even before the dis ease breaks out. Or why poor Martin Sheen, cast as Ava Gardner's creepy gigolo, undergoes such unmotivated regeneration in crisis. And why OJ. Simpson is required to run around in a priest's collar and talk in an imbecilic simper. Doubtless the hero sympathizes with Lee Strasberg, who appears to be so affronted by his dialogue that he whispers all of it in virtually inaudible silence, and wishes to bestow on the other players the gift of still deeper silence...