Three Actresses’ Quest for Characters

Kinga Gałuszka

Abstract

The text is an attempt to describe three female acting performances: Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves, Isabelle Huppert in La Pianiste and Kerry Fox in Intimacy. Gałuszka characterises types of the characters and focuses on a description of their physical appearances and techniques employed in character building. She writes about the ways body, facial expressions, gestures and movements are used, as well as about verbal expression and voice modulations. Watson as Bess can be numbered among such film simpletons as Joanna in Dreyer’s film or Gelsomina from La Strada. The director of La Pianiste claims that Huppert is an actress who can play everything, without feelings involved, simply imitating them superbly. Her heroine remains locked in a small tight shell of mental and moral inhibitions, which cracks again and again releasing hidden emotions. Fox in Intimacy plays two personalities, two faces of her heroine: that of an ordinary frustrated wife, mother and actress in a second-rate theatre and that of a passionate lover and a liberated and happy woman. What the heroines have in common is the desire to go beyond the limits defined by fate.