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Mulligan New

The Oscar for Best Actress tomorrow night should go to Ms. C. Mulligan, pictured, whose meteoric breakthrough in An Education, is nothing less than revelatory. Mulligan has a jejeune star quality that sparkles like Audrey Tatou, or Audrey Hepburn. She's arguably the most exciting new English actress since Julie Christie, and she brings a genuinely fresh air to the screen. Baby-faced, pleasingly slim, and able to be sultry or pouty, wise or silly, at will, her performance in this fine, troubling and very sad, moving film (which constantly asks the viewer to question what love, what desire, and what ambition are worth) is striking. She becomes the Sixties ingenue par excellence. Ms. Mulligan makes the film a classic. She deserves the statue. Meanwhile, she is to appear, this year, in three of the most-anticipated films: Brighton Rock (with Sam Riley), a Kaz Ishiguro adaptation (with Keira Knightley), and Wall Street's sequel.

Comments

James Brookes said…
Mulligan was at school with my significant other, so I'm getting a higher dose of the mingled envy/satisfaction that the emergence of a new British talent usually generates. As a performer, jejuene she ain't - a very canny girl. As regards her upcoming film choices, I hope she develops as more a Swinton/Blanchett than a Knightley. I fear her accomplished grasp of mannered 'Englishness' (the Hollywood version, that is) might get her pigeonholed (dovecotted?!). We'll see.

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