Natalie Portman’s life goes on display as curtains raise in Toronto
At film fest opening night soirée, American-Israeli actress walks down memory lane, from her work as a child actor up through her directorial debut, the adaptation of Amos Oz’s ‘A Tale of Love and Darkness’
TORONTO — Every high roller in Canada put on their best suit and called the finest escort service in town to strut their stuff at the Toronto International Film Festival’s opening night soirée Wednesday. As with last year’s chat with Al Pacino, the biggest donors were invited to an intimate sit-down with an international film star prior to a roofdeck party in which they could literally look down upon the masses.
This year’s guest of honor was the Jerusalemite/Long Islander/Parisienne Natalie Portman, absolutely stunning in a light lavender Dior dress with flowing bell sleeves and metal ring appliqués. It looked a tiny bit like chain mail armor, but, like, the most stylish chain mail armor you’ve ever seen.
Festival director Cameron Bailey led Portman down memory lane, talking about her early work as a child actor up through her directorial debut, the adaptation of Amos Oz’s “A Tale of Love and Darkness” (that I really wish I liked better).
As a kid on Long Island, Portman was always “putting on shows” and saw many of her friends going into Manhattan on auditions and begged to try it, too. Despite the protests of her parents (a doctor father, an artist mother) they allowed it.
“I would have been happy if my first job were a Cheerios commercial,” Portman recalled, but instead it was French director Luc Besson’s crime drama “Leon – The Professional.”
Both that and her next big role, “Beautiful Girls,” traded a bit on her precocious nature and natural beauty disarming older men. “It’s a trope as old as cinema,” she shrugged, “and not necessarily a good thing.” She later commented that these types of roles may be, in some way, screenwriters acting out their fantasies.
She also spoke of her role in “Garden State,” which has been held up in some corners as the epitome of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a female character whose entire reason for being is just to make a male character go on some sort of journey. Without getting into whether or not she agreed with the criticism, she mentioned that she was a huge fan of the television show “Broad City,” and she was a tiny bit heartbroken when “Garden State” and Zach Braff’s Kickstarter campaign were held up for some ribbing. “Hey, waitaminute!” she joked.
When the conversation turned to her new role as a director, she remarked that, perhaps in Hollywood, she’d have had a rougher time as a female director, but that isn’t the case with an Israeli crew.
“The new crop of film directors actually skews more female than male, plus women in positions of power – or just bossy women – are more common there,” joked Portman.
She said that she wanted to keep her set open to suggestions from her actors, something she learned from Darren Aronofsky, whose “Black Swan” won her the Academy Award five years ago. Aronofsky was on-hand to attest that it was Portman who wrote the movie’s last (perfect) lines, rightly remarking that the scene should be about her, and not others reacting to her.
“But on my film, sometimes it went to far. I had every Israeli extra coming up to me saying ‘No, no, she would never wear her jacket that way!’” said Portman.
Prior to shooting “Black Swan,” Portman worked on the mostly forgotten but still rather funny stoner comedy “Your Highness.” Its director and star, David Gordon Greene and Danny McBride, were college buddies from North Carolina, and she suspects that hanging out with them would have been a lot of fun, but she didn’t really get the chance.
“When we weren’t shooting they were having a blast and living up to the film’s title, but I had to spend every spare moment in ballet training.” So she missed the party but won the Academy Award; maybe it was a fair trade.
After looking at film clips and talking about some of her other directors like Mike Nichols, who watched an early cut of her film before he passed away, Kenneth Branagh, who would come up between takes on “Thor” to regale with juicy tales of the British theater and George Lucas, who she said was “a visionary,” she commented on the current dearth of women film directors.
While not as bad overseas (certainly in Israel or Portman’s current residence, France) she remarked that she didn’t specifically feel like a “woman film director.” Nevertheless, she commented that when women see her movie they cry and hug her, but most men say, “Oh, it was nice.”
While Portman didn’t look directly at me, perhaps she sensed my presence?
“It was nice,” is about the best thing I can say about the movie, which dilutes Amos Oz’s brilliant narrative into something of an emotionally uncentered and lethargic story about madness and loss. But, okay, maybe it’s not meant for me?
Portman keenly pointed out that most of the film distribution companies are run by men and while “women aren’t better or worse directors, those biases maybe still linger.” It’s worth pointing out that “A Tale of Love and Darkness” does not yet have an American distributor.
