Nicole Kidman Tribute: Paddington (2014)

by Nick Taylor

I’m going to tell you a secret: I think the first Paddington movie is better than its more critically-adored sequel. Not in every way is this one better: There’s a couple instances of harsh overlighting that take out some shots at the knees, like a key character emerging from a phone booth as a one-sided meet-cute. You could also say that both films - but maybe especially this one - are leaning into Wes Anderson-type confectionaries, especially with the score. But Paddington’s got a lot of buoyant, colorful entertainment to recommend it, and I can’t help but feel Nicole Kidman’s delightful, icy villainess has been overlooked as one of this series’ most notable achievements, alongside the children’s-book palette, Hugh Grant’s more lauded performance in Paddington 2, and fumbling the bag on Sally Hawkins for the upcoming trip to Peru...

Kidman plays Millicent, the Director of Taxidermy at the Natural History Museum in London. Millicent is very, very good at her job. She especially loves the part where she kills and stuffs exotic animals after hours. It’s not regulation, but she’s sneaky and mean and wants to be evil, so who can stop her? Kidman’s demeanor is deliciously hateful, her wig a lemony blonde Velma Kelly moment that discreetly suggests her character has no ears. The ridiculous and the cold-blooded coexist quite happily with Millicent, and with Kidman’s performance. You can’t have a secret lab decorated with the back halves of taxidermied beasts and not be a little silly with it. Millicent is all set up to slice open a little monkey until the guard who transported the poor beast mentions an animal stowaway on his last trip from Darkest Peru... a stowaway who survived on an unseemly amount of marmalade.

Millicent knows exactly what this stowaway is. A bear, one of a unique species of bears discovered by the dashing explorer from Paddington’s black-and-white prologue. She hurls a scalpel at the wall, and the camera reveals a serial-killer maze of yarn, maps, and newspaper clippings built from decades of material, all focused on hunting down these mythical bears. Millicent’s mission is absolute, and she will do anything to anyone, with no hesitation or moral conniptions, in order to stuff that bear and put it in her museum.

The script doesn’t waste time with the sort of long-winded evil declaration of intent I’ve just typed, and Kidman’s performance is just as to-the-point about Millicent’s comedic villainy. There’s no cartoony overplaying or ham recipes. She’s all business all the time, which only makes her sneaky maneuverings and assaults against human life funnier for the audience. Rarely have I ever heard someone threaten to torture a man with such unbothered and self-satisfied certainty as Kidman does to a poor cabbie. Millicent is also a very hands-on villain, which means we get a lot of time with Kidman rather than some silly henchmen eating up her screen time. Even Mr. Curry is more of a willing, misled watchdog than anything properly menacing, and he never gets to do any cool stuff like grapple down from the ceiling shooting tranquilizer darts.

Bless Nicole for being the kind of actress whose constant desire to challenge herself has always involved nourishing her funny bone. She’s clearly having as much of a ball with Paddington as Paul King and her co-stars and the inspired folks responsible for designing those sets. To be so synchronized with a warmly comic vision while playing coolly against it is a challenge of its own, and Kidman aces it splendidly. Her hushed, venomous  of the word “sabotage” is maybe the funniest line reading in the movie, and that says a lot when the whole cast is this smart about comic timing and delivery. Kidman's a dab hand with physical comedy, something we've learned throughout her career but truly peaked at the moment Millicent reflexively hoists a taxidermied otter to her ear when her phone starts ringing. Oh, and thank you Lindy Hemming for outfitting Millicent with so many animal print numbers and accessories to go with her very professional attire. A fantastic character detail that never steps into Cruella De Ville parody.

Kidman also saves her big face crack for the very end of the film. The revelation of who she is and how she knows the explorer doesn’t ripple the water too severely. Neither the glee of almost accomplishing her lifelong dream nor the many barriers thrown at her by Paddington and the Brown family inspire big outbursts. Much like Judith Anderson in Rebecca - and wouldn’t we all like to see Paddington Bear face off against Mrs. Danvers? - Kidman doesn’t allow Millicent the physical release of a breakdown until her last seconds onscreen. Once she learns of the barbarous fate inflicted upon her by the English judicial system she collapses to the floor screaming and weeping. She’s still raging in the brief, terrible glimpse we see of her punishment, finally letting out an animalistic howl when a long-gone foe executes terrible vengeance upon her. The tragic intensity of a Von Trier heroine as interpreted by Anna Faris in Scary Movie, that’s what that final scream is. A terrifying synthesis only an actress of Kidman’s caliber could ever hope to achieve. And all in that fuckass bob.

I would never ask anyone else on this internet to hop into the comments and say anything is better than Paddington 2. Dangerous behavior, that would be. But surely we can agree that Kidman’s performance is a goddamn joy? Millicent may never be a canonized figure in the annals of Kidman’s career, or of villains of children’s movies, or the Paddington series itself. None of that changes the truth of Kidman's work, making Milicent a treasure in her own right, a rare and vivid creature as worthy of exhibition as the many animals in her museum.

Previously in the Nicole Kidman TFE Tribute: 

• Introductiom (1983-1989) - Early Australian films
• Billy Bathgate (1991) – her first Golden Globe nomination!
• Malice (1993) - when Kidman met Sorkin
• To Die For (1995) - her first Golden Globe win!
• The Portrait of a Lady (1996) - a Campion experiment
• Practical Magic (1998)  - comfort food cinema
• Eyes Wide Shut (1999)- Kubrick. Cruise. Kidman.
• Moulin Rouge! (2001) - her first Oscar nomination!
• The Others (2001) - a foray into horror
• The Hours (2002) - the Oscar victory!
• Dogville (2003) - Lars von Trier's masterpiece
• Birth (2004) - her best performance ever?
• Chanel N°5: The Film (2004) - a glamorous miniature
• The Stepford Wives (2004) - horror remade as comedy
• Bewitched (2005) - a magical misfire
• Margot at the Wedding (2007) - Rohmerian thorns
• Rabbit Hole (2010) - her third Best Actress nomination!

From a fuckass bob to Australian curls, the next stop in the Nicole Kidman Tribute will see the star get her first Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. It's time for Lion.

Comments

[Joe G.]

When this came out, I felt a twinge of sadness for Kidman. Given the lack of box office success she was having in the early 2010s, I thought she might be saddled in supporting roles in family films for a while, and wondered if this was the beginning of the end for her.

How great that I was wrong. Instead, she laid the groundwork for Paddington villians being a role that isn't slumming it, but can actually lead to a BAFTA nomination. It's no wonder the third film has Olivia Colman and Antonia Banderas.

It's really great to see Kidman in this mode. She slips on her villian wig, and she's both loose and controlled in a way that suits the material, and provides a lot of entertainment.

[ScottC]

Thank you! Sure, of course Grant is fun, but 1 > 2!

[DK]

This is fun but we've now entered the "Kidman working way too much" decade.

[Amy Camus]

I loved Paddington, and agree that it is better than the second. Not only that, it gave me one of my favorite memories of movie-going ever. As Paddington was climbing up the chimney to escape the fire in the furnace below, a little kid yelled out "Hurry up Paddington! Hurry Up!" It was reassuring to know that someone else was as into the movie as I was.

Nicole's fully committed work was truly award-worthy. (Slumming? Ha!) A word of praise should also be bestowed on Ben Whishaw's amazing voice work. Too bad there wasn't (and still isn't) an award for this category..

[thevoid99]

I haven't seen this one. It's one of these films that I need to see. Plus, I really love the 2nd film.

[Cláudio Alves]

I can't wait to see how Colman and Banderas follow the legacy of Kidman's bobbed evil and Grant's theatrical shenanigans.

Also, "her wig a lemony blonde Velma Kelly moment that discreetly suggests her character has no ears" made me laugh in a very loud and undignified manner. Thank you, as always, for your wonderful writing.