Judi Dench recved her sixth nomination (and third in Best Actress) for playing Barbara Covett, a lonely spinster who befriends Sheba (Cate Blanchett) , who has an affair with one of her students which Barbara finds out about. But instead of reporting it to the authorities, she tells Sheba that she will tell no one, thinking that this will result in a close friendship between the two which does happen. But Barbara becomes obsessed with Sheba and this will lead to terrible consequences for both women. All I can say, is just brilliant! Dench makes Barbara a fascinating character, incredibly manipulative and borderline evil, but I still felt sympathy for her. As someone who has felt very lonely, I could also identify with her. Another amazing thing is how deep she goes with it. She completely shows her character's bitterness and isolation and those diary entries! As I said, brilliant! She and Cate Blanchett both work so well together. It's just fantastic to see them play each other off. This is a very hard role to play since we have to feel sympathy for Barbara and it could have been played way over the top, but, god, Judi Dench nailed it. A great actress in an outstanding film which, of course, gets
5 comments:
You're right. Dench is brilliant. And another great thing about her is that you can't compare her performance to anything else.
That's true! Some compare it to Kathy Bates in Misery, but I think that that's an unfair comparison since they're both completely different. If she could only have pulled off a mindblowing upset over Helen Mirren............
I really doubt anyone could have upseted Mirren...she literally won every award.
There's one consistent thing that has always lured me towards the Dame.
Her sharp delivery of lines. And boy was she on point with that in this film.
Sage: I know, that's why I said mindblowing upset.
Nigel: Yes, she was!
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