A Dame To Shill For
Tuesday, July 29, 2014 at 11:24AM 
JA from MNPP here. My boyfriend likes to tease me that he loved Eva Green first, and he did - he loved her the first time she showed up on some red carpet wearing long glamorous sleeves in a sea of bared skin. It's not that you can exactly call Eva Green demure - the first time any of us saw her she was taking a bath with her on-screen brother while pawing at Michael Pitt's genitalia after all, and earlier this year she toplessly mounted Sullivan Stapleton while swinging around a sword for god's sake. Not to mention the bizarre throwback moral brouhaha that's currently been greeting every piece of art-work associated with her Sin City: A Dame To Kill For character - hide the children, there are breasts!
So no, demure's not really the word for her. But dive as she does, time and again, into these depths of gorgeous depravity, she still always manages to keep her long glamorous sleeves clean. She's a class act. So my boyfriend might've been there first but am I ever there now - watching Penny Dreadful's first season was for me a contact sport. I cheered and threw my fists in the air like it was the World Cup I was watching whenever she was on-screen. (That seance!) I need to print up a jersey with her name on the back for when the show returns. That's where I am with her.
I figure some of you can relate. So with that Green-flecked giddiness on the tip of our tongue, we greet the news that she's going to work with Tim Burton again. She's set to star in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an adaptation of a children's book (anyone read it?) about a group of super-powered orphans battling evil creatures intent upon their doom. Eva will play the titular Miss Peregrine, the children's guardian.
I know Nathaniel was as big a fan as I was of her first performance for Burton in the otherwise notsomuch Dark Shadows - she brought it and then she brought it ten more times in that movie... far more than was called for, she was bringing it. And I think we all have high hopes for Burton's film Big Eyes with Amy Adams. If that one sticks, maybe he can swing around a dreary few years of movie-making, so let's keep our hopes up. Eva demands it!
Eva Green, Tim Burton
Reader Comments (13)
Sigh, Eva Green! She is the Money! ...to quote from my first encounter with her :)
so great. remember when she played a witch inGolden Compass? I feel like the set off a chain of events for which i am very grateful. she's so good on Penny Dreadful but i wish the show were at her level.
Nathaniel - I feel like that's the constant theme with Eva Green, lately. 300, Penny Dreadful, Dark Shadows, (siiiiigh) Sin City 2... she's incredible but the films/shows never justify how good she is. (I'm guessing on Sin City, of course, but it's an educated guess based on the SDCC trailer and general Frank Miller bitterness.) I'm torn, because on the one hand I want better things for her, but on the other hand she's clearly enjoying the weird career she's carved out for herself.
Oooh, I've read that book and she would be perfect! Burton COULD be the perfect director for that story if he doesn't indulge his worst instincts.
Anne Marie: Yeah, carving out a career as a rampantly elevating genre starlet (and pretty much nothing else) is completely bizarre. The fact that she's hit pretty much every so called genre staple (Bond, YA fantasy, Dystopia (thrice, two of them dystopian romances), All-Girls Boarding School (yes, she even hit THAT staple), King Arthur, Vampire, Ancient Greek War, Western, Victorian Horror, film noir and now, with Ms. Peregrine's, superhero) on her quest is maybe just as shocking as the high level of quality she brings to the projects, whether they deserve it or not.
Eva Green is perfect.
I LOVE HER.
It's a love affair that started with Casino Royale. I love her as an actress (by far the best thing in Dark Shadows) but i'm quite partial to her particular brand of dark beauty. One of my favorite things ever is her commercial for Dior's Midnight Poison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzcrAHOOx_U
and now she's a femme fatale in Sin City? I'm so there even if i don't really care for the movie as a whole.
She was so wonderful in Casino Royale. "Something you expect me to wear?"
The best bond girl IMO and every big Craig's equal in Casino Royale.
Eva is lovely. I think she is accepting what she is getting offered. Two cable shows (Camelot, Penny dreadful) and unwanted prequels/sequels to cult hits from a decade ago (300 & Sin City) and the string of weird little bad films after Casino (Cracks & Perfect Sense) aren't a sign of someone who is in huge demand (hopefully that's changed by now though). If she got first pick in everything, I could pretty much guarantee she wouldn't have picked any of these.
So I don't think she's purposely creating a weird career for herself - instead I think she picks the most substantial roles out of the sub par to slightly above average projects she gets offered and then makes them special by being her ravishing and weird self.
Eva Green is one of the actresses whom I feel like was truly born in the wrong film eras. I've seen a good chunk of her filmography and am still unable to tell whether she's versatile or not, but frankly, I don't care. There are so few other actresses her age right now, maybe none her peer, who bring that reliable amount of flame, sultriness, pitch-perfect melodrama, and drop-dead gorgeousness to every role. What do you call something that is always kind of the same and yet you never tire of watching it? A friggin star, that's what.
Yes @ this Eva Green lovefest.
Her genre stuff is interesting and she does well in them but I wanna see her work with an amazing French director in a good modern drama or something. I dunno. Olivier Assayas, Jacques Audiard maybe? Someone who can really bring something out of her.
Or someone who can do great genre films with style, like Nicolas Winding Refn.
Back in the 1970s, she would've been a really good type of actress for Eric Rohmer.
I don't think I can ever forgive Burton for Dark Shadows. He should have been dragged before the World High Tribunal for crimes against culture. Ugh.
I really like her as well, but I'll echo the comment above questioning her versatility. Not because of a lack of talent, I think. She has such a specific, overpowering "look" that it's difficult to imagine her in more mundane contexts. She's like the opposite of Michelle Williams. Or she's similar to Jolie. I think there was a similar post earlier this year discussing how terrible Jolie's filmography is, and my guess is that the reason for that lack of quality in both women's careers is very similar.