Word: swinton
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...this 1993 rethinking of the Virginia Woolf novel, Swinton plays Lord Orlando, a gallant 16th century nobleman whom Queen Elizabeth awards a stately manor, on one condition: "Do not fade, do not wither, do not grow old." Over his 400-year life, Orlando is a man, then a woman, then a bit of both - the two sexes evolved into one. Swinton had played men before: she was Mozart in a production of Pushkin's Mozart and Salieri, and in the play and film Man to Man she was a woman in Nazi Germany who assumes her dead husband's identity...
...Reviewing Orlando in TIME, I lauded Swinton as "the pearl and perfection of any gender. Her poise and gravity, and the drama of her pale face under a crown of red hair, could mark her as this generation's russet Redgrave." Anyone who saw her made the comparison to an actress of similar height, looks, talent, famous family and attachment to left-wing causes - and who won an Oscar for another movie called Julia. Yet Vanessa Redgrave, behind her imposing facade, always suggested the shy vulnerability of a little girl lost, Swinton radiates a self-confidence that is commanding...
...this is where her artistry trumps her persona. Though the regal, haughty, alpha-female roles might come more easily to her, Swinton is no less convincing in less pedigreed parts. She won Golden Globe and Independent Spirit awards for The Deep End, as a middle-class mother frantically trying to protect her son and the status quo. And she's scary-good as two underclass drabs: a fishwife having a torrid, ruinous affair with Ewan McGregor in Young Adam, or Bill Murray's ex-girlfriend, now trailer trash, in Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers. (She also has a few moments...
...border wall and fights off a bunch of tough Latinos - all without taking a drop of her favorite beverage. At times Julia seems to have been made by a sloppy drunk, lurching down new narrative alleys, forgetting where it started, heedless to where it's heading. Indeed, Zonca and Swinton have both called it "an alcoholic film...
...there are rewards for the patient or masochistic viewer. If you get into the movie's unsteady rhythms, the experience can be an enthralling ordeal. That's because Swinton gives Julia, and Julia, all her power and coherence. It's like so much of Swinton's work: a huge star performance in an ornery little film. When she meets directors with grand or weird or disturbing ideas, she does make their dreams come true. We expect no less of the queen of the indies...