vol. 3, issue 3: grace Archives - cléo

vol. 3, issue 3: grace

cléo journal — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 18:39:46 +0000

The word grace might recall an actor’s perfect poise — à la Lupita Nyong’o post-Oscar fashion spreads — or evoke an image of old-Hollywood style embodied by Grace Kelly or Sophia Loren. In our ninth issue of cléo, we want to think about what is the it they exude? Is gracefulness synonymous with femininity? Or, […]

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Editor’s Note: Grace

kiva reardon — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 14:42:54 +0000

“In this film I wanted to say the sum of who we become is thanks to the people we meet.” – Danielle Arbid on Parisienne (Peur de rien) In the aftermath of the bombings in Beirut and Paris, I found myself searching for something in the world that resembled beauty, kindness, and yes, grace. After […]

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Between a Boxer and a Nun: An Interview with Geraldine Chaplin

kiva reardon — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 14:41:18 +0000

“I’m very much in love with a Dominican woman.” “How old is she?” “I don’t know.” Like age, there’s a tendency to lie when it comes to love. We lie about expectations, motivations and transgressions. We lie to friends, family, and, more often than not, ourselves, which tends to lead to the most painful consequences. […]

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Heavy as a Thread: An Interview with Mary Stark

samuel la france — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 14:39:21 +0000

Mary Stark is a hands-on artist whose film installations and performances demonstrate that there’s a place for grace in the heavily mechanized world of movie-making. The Manchester-based artist has spent the past half-decade developing a film practice that juxtaposes the delicate and ephemeral (represented in her work by thread, light, music and speech) against the […]

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HOLY TILDA SWINTON!

so mayer — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 14:38:53 +0000

“Holy Tilda Swinton!” These three words—proclaimed in the sci-fi series Orphan Black (2014-) to describe the arrival of a transmasculine clone—articulate the cinematic gift that is our most mercurial, protean actor: Katherine Matilda Swinton. At home in the sci-fi genre, Swinton’s grace is in her transformations, especially those of gender. Whether she is narrating Björk […]

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The Bourgeois Out for Blood: Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger

colleen kelsey — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 14:38:12 +0000

“For me there are two things: action and reflection. And I find that I’m more into action.” – Catherine Deneuve Female vampire mythology has long traded on erotics and unquenchable sexuality. From Theda Bara’s kohl-eyed, fangless silent movie-era “vamps,” to the bayou night-dwellers of True Blood, these creatures embody a lethal exceptionalism. Freed from the […]

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The Impossible Love of David Lean’s Brief Encounter

justine smith — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 14:37:15 +0000

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:27-28) Given that David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945) is about an affair, the film opens with something of […]

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Neorealism’s Closed Gates: The Women of Rome, Open City

sarah gadon — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 14:31:30 +0000

It was shortly after the Toronto International Film Festival this year when Kiva Reardon asked me if I had anything to contribute to this issue of cléo. I had just screened Sicario by Denis Villeneuve, a director with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working. There has been a lot of talk about Emily Blunt’s […]

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“The prettiest prettiest girl”: Complex Beauty in Gia

maria isabel martinez — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 14:30:13 +0000

Michael Cristofer’s Gia (1998) opens with a tight shot of makeup brushes accentuating an impossibly beautiful face. The features are those of Angelina Jolie in the role of 1980s supermodel Gia Carangi. The face is unnaturally still, perhaps foreshadowing the well documented fate of the model. Gia lived a life of toxic glamour—she is remembered […]

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“It can be like grace”: Enlightened Political Possibility

corinn columpar — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 14:28:04 +0000

Amy: I don’t want the same old sad story. I want a new story. Levi: It will be new. It’ll be brand new. You know? That’s the beauty of it. It can be like grace. Amy: Grace? Levi: Yeah, life is beautiful. In her essay “In Praise of Vulgar Feminism,” Agata Pyzik considers the star […]

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