PWN0604

JUNE 4, 2020
Not just kissing vampires: Now’s the time
to watch the best of Kristen Stewart
By Chris Hewitt
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Kristen Stewart’s mom in
her first big movie was Jodie
Foster, and she has followed
Foster’s example ever since.
Playing a mother and
daughter terrorized by home
invaders in David Fincher’s
“Panic Room,” they reportedly
grew close (their characters
even share the same limp,
blunt-cut hair). It’s not hard to
imagine Foster giving Stewart
advice on how to navigate the
perilous journey from child
star to adult performer, which
Foster managed better than any
other actor in movie history.
Stewart has finessed it, too,
taking pages from the Foster
playbook: avoiding children’s
movies, seeking out offbeat
projects rather than blockbusters,
working with foreign
filmmakers (both have demonstrated
French fluency on film)
and exploring other aspects of
movie production. It’s only a
matter of time before Stewart,
like Foster before her, directs a
feature.
What made it possible for
Stewart, of course, was a smash
franchise: “Twilight.” The four
vampire/werewolf romances
were all in theaters by the time
she was 22 and earned her so
much money that she could
have retired then. Instead, she
made movies she wanted to
make rather than those she
“had” to make to build a career,
appearing in a succession of titles
more likely to pop up at the
Cannes Film Festival than at a
drive-in. Stewart hasn’t been in
a big hit since the “Twilight”
series and she probably doesn’t
care.
Along the way, she learned
a lot about movie acting. In
“Panic Room” and a couple
other childhood projects, she
was a natural, but when she
needed to start crafting performances,
it took a while for her
to look comfortable on camera.
She appears to wish she were
elsewhere in the first two
“Twilight” movies (although,
with those scripts, who could
blame her?). In the last two,
though, she seems to accept the
material for what it is, allowing
her humor and intelligence to
shine through the dopey Team
Edward/Team Jacob stuff.
In those years, she also began
seeking out not directors who
made hits but innovators who
could challenge her to work in
new ways: Olivier Assayas (who
made two of her best movies),
Kelly Reichardt and Ang Lee
among them. It hasn’t always
worked _ “Cafe Society,” by
Woody Allen, is both terrible
and ethically problematic _ but
few major actors are more adventurous
than Stewart.
One result of her boldness is
that fans probably missed many
of Stewart’s small, offbeat projects.
It’s like she envisions the
movies she makes as sparkling
gems to collect and share with
small groups of people who
will appreciate them. So think
of these seven gems as your
Museum of Modern Streaming
Stew-Art.
‘Certain Women’ (2016)
My favorite Stewart leading
performance also happens to be
the shortest, since Reichardt’s
“Certain Women” links adaptations
of three Maile Meloy short
stories. Stewart’s a lawyer/
teacher who develops an intense
bond with one of her students.
It’s a subtle movie, in a
way that may not be ideal for
stop-and-start home viewing
(you need to force yourself to
fall into its deliberate rhythm),
but Stewart’s work is quietly
devastating. Bonus: Laura Dern
and Michelle Williams, both
great, anchor the other stories.
‘Personal Shopper’ (2016)
I’ve heard it described as a
“ghost story” and a “psychological
thriller,” but neither term
captures the queasy suspense of
the more recent of two movies
in which Assayas cast Stewart
as a star’s lackey. For most of
“Personal Shopper” (maybe all
of it), it’s not clear what’s happening
as Stewart’s title character
deals with a gruesome
corpse and text messages from
her twin, who is supposed to be
dead.
‘Charlie’s Angels’ (2019)
Stewart’s one attempt at a
post-”Twilight” blockbuster
didn’t do well and, honestly,
it’s so-so. But she is astonishing
in it, giving the kind of movie-star
performance I would
never have guessed she’d want
to, or be able to. Most Stewart
characters are introverted and
mumbly, but her Sabina Wilson
is charismatic, wisecracking,
loud and sexy. Weirdly, Stewart
is so wildly enjoyable that she
may hurt the movie; her pizazz
makes the other two angels
even more blah.
‘Panic Room’ (2002)
Stewart is a good match for
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Kristen Stewart
Foster, but in an early sign of
her versatility, it’s also possible
to imagine Stewart with the
originally cast Nicole Kidman,
whose injury forced her withdrawal
a couple of weeks into
production. The kid is sometimes
a brat, but she’s also the
one who saves the day.
‘Clouds of Sils Maria’ (2014)
Stewart has not been nominated
for an Oscar, but she
won the French equivalent and
a bunch of other awards for
her work in Assayas’ cheeky
comedy/drama, with Juliette
Binoche as a movie star and
Stewart as her assistant. Assayas
lays out weird mysteries he
never intends to solve, while
the leads sometimes play their
characters and sometimes seem
to be versions of themselves,
talking about how to play their
characters.
‘Seberg’ (2019)
Stewart portrays various aspects
of actress Jean Seberg in
this fictionalized drama, which
depicts the FBI hounding her
to suicide because of her political
activism at the height
of a career that included the
Minneapolis-shot “Airport”
and Jean-Luc Godard’s masterpiece
“Breathless.” Stewart’s
Seberg is a different person on
movie sets, where she must be
compliant, than she is with her
family, where she seems unsure,
or with members of the Black
Panthers, who show her a kind
of freedom she didn’t know existed.
That’s because Seberg became
a star as a teenager, which
must feel familiar to Stewart,
who does her best work when
she re-creates the fresh-faced
Iowan’s audition for her debut
in “Saint Joan.”
‘The Runaways’ (2010)
At the time, introspective
Stewart seemed like an odd
casting choice for brash Joan
Jett, guitarist for the pioneering
all-female band. Instead, she
uses her own tentative quality to
suggest that Jett leaned on a bold
onstage persona to overcome her
own shyness. The Bill Pohladproduced
musical drama may not
be the definitive portrait of the
band (that’d be the documentary
“Edgeplay”), but Stewart rocks.
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