People, most of the time, do not go to see movies for entirely reputable reasons. Which, of course, is code for “I, most of the time, do not go to see movies for entirely reputable reasons.”
Take last weekend, for instance, when not even the oceans of brown slush clinging to every street corner were enough of a barrier to keep me from checking out V for Vendetta. This film had been on my must-see list for a while—not because I was a fan of Alan Moore’s graphic novel, or because I wanted to see if the Wachowski Brothers could rebound from the last two Matrix sequels or because I was interested in the film’s “subversive” political message. No: honestly, the only reason I went to see V for Vendetta is because I wanted to see Natalie Portman get her head shaved.
And if I’m going to admit that, then I guess I also have to admit that there must be something deeply, deeply wrong with me, because I’ll go to see any movie that promises to depict an actress... well, losing parts of her body. I never imagined I’d want to see a movie as universally panned as Aeon Flux—but when I stumbled across an article that mentioned that Sophie Okonedo played a character with hands at the ends of her legs instead of feet, I rushed out to catch it the very next day. Death Becomes Her is a loud, unfunny comedy, but that image of Goldie Hawn with a gaping, circular hole in her stomach inspired me to see it on three separate occasions. My eyes almost popped out of my head during the scenes in The Cremaster Cycle where Aimee Mullins, the beautiful bilateral-amputee track star, modeled an astonishing cheetah-lady costume, complete with leg prostheses that tapered down to dainty, catlike paws no “whole-bodied” actress could ever wear. And don’t get me started on Boxing Helena! Has any movie ever contained a premise that more perfectly captured the central appeal of filmgoing?
I realize it’s a leap to equate a girl with a shaved head to the mutants in those other films, but when that first, frustratingly grainy publicity photo appeared of Portman clutching her newly shaved dome in her sticklike arms, people everywhere certainly gawked at it, fascinated. And why shouldn’t they? From Persis Khambatta in Star Trek: The Motion Picture to the current cast of America’s Next Top Model, bald women always look amazing! But unfortunately, there’s no pleasure to be had from watching her lose her hair in the film itself—like the rest of V for Vendetta, the scene is cold, heartless and pretentious. (I don’t want to give away one of the film’s big surprises, but it might have been very suggestive in retrospect if this whole sequence had been... well, not sexy, but maybe a little more sensuous.)
Anyway, disappointed at V for Vendetta’s lack of gusto, I found myself drifting off to sleep right there in the theatre, lulled into dreamland by happy thoughts of Gwyneth Paltrow’s wooden finger tapping against the side of her bathtub in The Royal Tenenbaums. Tap... tap... tap... (March 23, 2006)
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